CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@lizzy@social.vlhl.dev

it's not like this is used for commercial data collection

Corporations own and operate cell towers and the networks that feed them? In the talk I referenced, the academic had acquired data from corporations she was partnering with in her research. I honestly do not understand where this response is coming from.

I feel like you're disputing for the sake of disputing, so this is my last one, which is unproductive for me. Have a good day!

@lizzy@social.vlhl.dev And if you forget? Or if your phone sends signals to cell towers you don't know about? Have you audited every chip in your dumb phone to make sure that when the software "off" (airplane mode or whatever) is toggled, it doesn't actually communicate with cell towers anyway?

Like I said, people who are cautious about surveillance are right to worry about this sort of thing. These dangers are quite real.

@lizzy@social.vlhl.dev If your phone is connecting to a cell tower, which is necessary to send and receive SMS, then you can often be tracked to within a few meters. If you leave it on always, then your movements to and from school, work, home, stores, etc. is logged and studied. I've seen academic talks as far back as the early 2000s about this; something on the order of 80% of individuals can be identified just from the tracks their phones leave in cell tower logs. I'm sure that percentage is higher now. Your phone has a unique identifier so as soon as anyone is able to link that identifier to your IRL identity you become an easy surveillance target.

Cell phones, even with just SMS, are a surveillance nightmare. People who care about that sort of thing are right to be cautious, in my opinion.

I have fond memories from the 1990s of people on IRC telling me they were going to come murder me.

That's a big part of the problem, seems to me. Mom signs up for IRC, someone says something like that, Mom leaves IRC, calls the police, and tells all her friends about what happened. Nobody in her social circle will ever consider signing up for IRC after.

This kind of tech, whether IRC or insert your favorite here, can't spread if it can't guarantee the boughie white person experience. Entire shopping malls go bankrupt after an assault happens in front of them.

CC: @t_var_s@phpc.social @tux0r@layer8.space @zzt@mas.to

@bert_hubert@eupolicy.social This really makes me wonder whether the decades of constant blog posts about method, such as software craftsmanship, *-driven design, agile, extreme programming, etc etc etc (event sourcing, the hexagonal architecture, etc etc etc etc etc dear lord there are so many), were all, ultimately, not serious. If a single technological advance coupled with hype and corporate pressure is enough to convince people to throw all of that out, how serious could it have been, really?