At the first opportunity people started to ctrl-c/ctrl-v their entire lives into machines just so they could avoid making a decision or doing a 5 second web search.
LLMs need to be heavily regulated and taxed to within an inch of profitability to offset the economic and ecological damage they do. But users also need to be slapped around for willingly handing their personal information to techbros.
To be fair that’s not really new. Look at the amount of personal info people will put on Facebook. And even doing a web search isn’t as private as people think. We walk around with our phones on us all day, and these things passively track our activities. There’s basically no privacy left in the modern world.
I think that the conclusion here is, “there’s basically no privacy left in the modern world,” speaks to the tech literacy crisis more than it does to the expanse and fortitude of surveillance infrastructure. Like, yes, there is an incredible lack of state regulation to limit the scope of data collection, but that doesn’t mean that this is unavoidable.
There are measures you can take to secure your home network against data collection and telemetry such as buying a managed, wired router and using wireless access points, as well as hosting a DNS so that you can better regulate the data that enters and exits your network. Your phone is definitely more difficult to prevent collection from by merit of the restrictive design of most operating systems and the fact that they literally transmit your location to function, but Android devices can take measures like installing GrapheneOS, which helps to severely limit the ability of apps to transmit that data without your knowledge. Even beyond that, phones themselves are not super expensive and performance has plateaued for about half a decade now (used devices are relatively cheap), so, you do not need to use a single device for everything and can disperse your usage data in a way that also works to obscure your identity. As you said, the information you provide to social media can be controlled by users, and their penetration into other services you use and its access to your user data in browsers can be limited similarly.
There certainly is still privacy in 2026, but the state benefits from making it as difficult as possible to restrict, and so there is now a skillset to ensure a level of privacy that was not required before. Our system feeds on precarity, so this is not even close to a new phenomenon. Think about the need to develop driving skills, finance literacy, workplace etiquette, consumer caution, knowledge on your rights, the fact that you do need a cellular device to participate in this system without punishment or that much of what I mentioned above requires some sort of income to execute effectively. All of these are consequences in the same way that the need to develop privacy skills are.
There are measures you can take, but the reality is that if you want to participate in the broader society you’re going to have to start making compromises somewhere. You’re going to have to use chat apps other people use, payment methods that are accepted in the stores, and so on. Some people are conscious of these things, but most people just don’t care. And if you are one of the people who worry about this stuff, you’re still stuck in a world where most people you interact with don’t. I don’t even think it’s so much a problem with tech literacy as just plain apathy. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that putting your whole life online is not a good idea, but people do it anyways.
And you’re completely right that there is systematic pressure for people to just give up and accept that they have no privacy. Having skills and money to opt out of surveillance becomes a privilege.
Dufresne said that throughout the investigation, OpenAI engaged in good faith and took measures to address the regulators’ concerns. As a result, the federal privacy office considers the investigation to be “conditionally resolved.” Québec’s Commission d’acces a l’information du Québec has labelled the investigation as conditionally resolved on several points, but unresolved on the issue of consent. British Columbia and Alberta’s findings label the investigation as unresolved under provincial PIPA requirements. Both provincial regulators noted OpenAI’s efforts to improve compliance.
So they won’t be reprimanded…? Makes the law seem like a joke wtf.
laws are there to publish little people
Oh no, they’re gonna have to pay a fine!
Oh well
Not even that. I’m seeing nothing about any fines in the linked article.
For being nice about being investigated and promising to do better next time, they get to continue trawling and stealing whatever the fuck they want (if I’m reading this right). Same shit when the parasite class rolled out Uber, AirB&B, PayPal, etc. “Yes, this breaks every applicable labour and privacy law we have to protect people, but it’s here so what are you gonna do about it.”
At least these days it’s much easier to link this to material impact to people. Unlike in the past when data collection was a distant, often abstract problem that people didn’t see as requiring action. Thanks to surveillance pricing being raised into the social consciousness, it’s easy to explain how OpenAI’s (or insert other Big Tech corpo) data scraping is used to make the person pay more on Amazon, or Walmart.
Yup, that’s really the only way to make people care. You have to draw a direct line to their wallet.
Hmm the past tense imllies they’ve stopped surveilling us now, I suppose? /s
OpenAI gathered “vast amounts of personal information,” potentially including details like health conditions, political views, or information about children.
No! 😲
