• minorkeys@sh.itjust.works
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    15 hours ago

    So it isn’t a choice between privacy invasion or watching it burn. It’s a choice between privacy invasion and being left behind.

    • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Left behind? If you’ve deemed a system to be so necessary that refusing to abandon your privacy at its behest means you are condemned to live in obsolescence, then you’re only reinforcing the idea that we must surrender our rights for the benefits of the system.

      I’m old enough to have lived in a world without the internet and if it’s going in a direction that demands I surrender my right to privacy then I’ll return to a life without the internet. I won’t be alone and just like Lemmy I’m confident we’ll build an alternative that aligns with our values.

      • minorkeys@sh.itjust.works
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        12 hours ago

        I have serious doubts that returning to a ludite existence is truly feasible anymore. These companies, along with governments, seem intent on making it a necessity to be online and to do so without privacy.

        The CEO of nvidea outright said their plans for the future involve AI agents accessing your financials and PCs being replaced with AI boxes as our interface. If they force AI into enough stuff before the bubble bursts, it won’t be a choice. The way the net works will be built for AI, not for users to manually interface with. If the infrastructure is rebuilt for AI, it won’t be a choice. With governments all pushing for OS level Id, Microsoft trying to record all user action, the push to ban VPNs, it seems like you will be making that choice sooner than you want.

        I hope it works out for you but anyone who remembers a pre-internet life is middle age now and isn’t the target market for emerging tech anymore. If AI proves to be significantly advantageous, not being online to sue it will be like refusing to use computers was to the boomers. You’ll be outcompeted and lose track of how the world is changing.

        • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Sounds like you’re trying your hardest to convince yourself that it’s worth selling your soul for whatever they’re offering. If that’s the case then they’ve already won and it’s only a matter of time before your freedoms are stripped away and you willfully become a virtual slave for fear of missing out on whatever prosperity is being promised.

          • minorkeys@sh.itjust.works
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            45 minutes ago

            These are the challenges we face, it doesn’t serve anything to pretend they don’t exist.

            • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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              4 minutes ago

              What are you even talking about? If anybody is denying the existence of a challenge, it’s you through your insistence that there is no future worth living without the unrelenting integration and consumption of technology.

              Don’t get me wrong, I rely on these technologies as much as the next. In fact, as a software engineer, it’s my livelihood and I’m going to support any means to keep it aligned with my own values.

              But I also recognize that I am a small fish in a vast ocean and that my most reliable weapon against tyranny is my own free will. If push comes to shove then I can and will simply refuse to follow society into the techno-feudalist hellscape we’re moving towards.

              You call it being left behind; I call it liberation.

        • msage@programming.dev
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          5 hours ago

          You are missing the most important part - no matter who says what, people are still here.

          We build the web, we make the food, we build houses. That doesn’t go away.

          • minorkeys@sh.itjust.works
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            43 minutes ago

            Sure but we build them on the orders of whoever signs our paychecks so we can stay alive. People fuck each other over at their jobs every single day by helping companies succeed at their ambitions. Theoretically we have power in numbers but we rarely even actually use that power.