this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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Some random company claiming this capability without any further evidence should probably be treated with some level of scrutiny.
Why?
What about modern capitalism makes you optimistic. I know for a fact this is happening. I bought a pair of Bose earbuds—I was pretty excited about them but they were defective. The app they tried to get me to download required me to sign away permission to “map” my head movements, intercept any sound coming through what I actively play through the headphones…AND “passively record any sound around you.”
And when I saw that shit, I got right the fuck out of there—even though seeing that shit required me to click through three sub menus and entirely different legal documents, all of which I would’ve agreed to like every other privacy policy: absentmindedly.
After getting right the fuck out of there, I went on their website to contact customer service about the defect. So I opened an SMS chat with customer service—where I was told “replying to this chat is tacit agreement to our CUSTOMER SERVICE PRIVACY POLICY,” which I opened. And initially I was fine because it seemed like it was a different policy just allowing them to record the conversation “for training purposes.” Until I clicked through one, two, three and now FOUR sub menus to find I WOULD’VE AGREED TO THE SAME FUCKING PRIVACY POLICY.
So I fucking called Bose. I wanted to know if I could use these headphones without ever agreeing to the privacy policy. But of course customer service couldn’t even conceive of my question. I asked to get transferred to the legal dept.
Lol of course not. What the fuck was I thinking.
So fuck them, I returned those fuckers as fast as I could.
How often are you digging into sub pages and cited clauses of the privacy policies you’re agreeing to on a day-to-day basis? Because I will tell you, they were making me sign away the right to ALL a of that information, and their specific info on how they were using it (a different sub-contract) was pretty lax on who they could share it with.
I fully believe this has been happening WAY longer than just recently. Capitalism is trading on our data in the most invasive ways imaginable. The spying and capabilities have reached dystopian levels. How long ago did those CIA leaks come out about smart TVs being used to eavesdrop? That was like 2014. Ten goddamn years ago.