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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Arguments like, “Well, why do you have clothes on then?” are not effective, because they aren’t equivalent forms of privacy.

    There are a couple pieces of media I like to recommend:

    • Targeted by Brittany Kaiser - Kaiser being intimately involved in Cambridge Analytica, it outlines how digital record of user behaviour, traits, and engagement can inform agents to which form of manipulation would be most effective on a given person (psychographic analysis), which can then be used by whomever wanted to exert influence (micro-targeting), whether it be on consumer or political preferences.
    • The Great Hack is a documentary adaptation of the above story if someone prefers film over text, but the book has more detail of the methods and examples of when it’s been used in the past (alarmingly many political campaigns).
    • The Social Dilemma is another documentary that touches on how exploitation of user data drives issues like addiction, radicalization, and depression on social platforms. Just recently, Meta was found to be feeding increased beauty advertising to girls and women who had recently deleted selfies.

    Providing real examples of this exploitation is, in my opinion, a more effective argument for promoting online privacy. It nudges people to think, “maybe it would be better if advertising companies didn’t know about my recent (breakup, miscarriage, job loss, promotion, unplanned pregnancy, debt, car accident, birth of a baby, death in the family, deletion of a selfie…).”




  • Since we’re on c/privacy; from perplexity itself:

    What Does Perplexity Do With User Information?

    Perplexity:

    Collects: Search history, queries, device and location data, browsing activity, and navigational behavior (especially via its new AI-powered browser).

    Uses: These data points help personalize results, train their models, improve functionality, and—crucially—build detailed user profiles for targeted ads and marketing.

    Potential Risks: Privacy experts warn this data collection may turn users into marketing profiles, similar to surveillance practices seen in other big tech companies. Even actions outside the Perplexity app (via their browser) may be tracked and leveraged.

    Transparency and Privacy: Perplexity does not offer strong privacy protections (like end-to-end encryption), and isn’t fully transparent about how all user information is used. Cookies, device fingerprinting, and web beacons may track even non-logged-in users.

    Enterprise risks: Businesses using Perplexity’s enterprise tools must be cautious about uploading sensitive data, as it could be used for model training and not always protected from leaks.