zlacker

>>rapnie+(OP)
I think this is a good example of how pro-privacy arguments should be framed. It is takes the varied aspects and complex implications of tracking users across the web (or even in the real world), and distills it down into an easy to understand concept.

When you think privacy of in in the terms of 'social cooling', or consider things like China's 'social credit' system, I can't help be think we are much closer to the world depicted in the last season of Westworld than we might want to admit.

>>40four+6h
Right. Apart from the sci-fi tropes, the extreme drama, and aesthetics, it's a spitting image. A great deal of effort is quietly spent on social control, keeping things as they are, and extracting value from people-as-cows, both here and there. Any technology in a position to add robustness to that system, to reduce its upkeep effort, or improve its efficiency at generating wealth for the privileged is likely to succeed, so it's reasonable to think some of the not-yet-here but possible aspects their world will make it to ours in time.

Sometimes I think that authors who see patterns and make reasonable but dire predictions about where society is going actually end up providing a game plan to career oppressors.

>>smolde+co
People-as-cows, huh? What does that mean to you?

>>jawarn+sw
Probably a reference to the individual user as an member of an aggregate “herd” that produces value for the social media platform from the perspective of the business.

>>chorda+SO
There are also deeper potential meanings, though the OP did clarify some.

Cattle are products on a farm. They have purposes. A few bulls are left for breeding, the rest are gelded. Some cows are for milk. Others are fattened up as much as possible.

But all end up in the slaughterhouse. Anyone that steps out of line causes problems before that time may find themselves culled from the herd.

The purpose of the system is not to make cows happy, or meet cow needs. It's to produce as much economic product as possible.