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The Astronomer CEO's Coldplay Concert Fiasco Is Emblematic of Our Social Media Surveillance Dystopia (www.404media.co)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

See it, sure. But as a society we used to have an expectation of anonymity, for better or worse.

If there was a video of you dancing funny in public, maybe your friends would recognize you, but the whole world wouldn't know your identity and remember it forever.

Shit, my workplace couldn't even identify the people who walked in the front door and stole stuff and walked out. The police could see their faces clearly in the security footage, but they weren't from around here and no one knew who they were.

Society used to be like that.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    See it, sure. But as a society we used to have an expectation of anonymity, for better or worse.

    That's the case if you are some unimportant rando, yes.

    But these two people we are talking about are very public figures due to their jobs, and they are compensated very well for this. As a public figure you can't have the expectation of anonymity. That just comes with the territory.

    Every time JK Rowling lets out an anti-trans fart, the whole internet is up in arms. When my transphobe uncle does the same, nobody cares. Because one of them is a public figure and the other one is not.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    If you would read the article, you would understand the point you're missing.

    No one recognized them because they were public figures. In this case it's not clear how they were recognized, but in the general sense, it is clear that social media will gleefully dox randos using technology like facial recognition. Attractive security guards, people dancing, etc. Just yesterday, someone took a picture of me at the pool just for walking with messy hair.

    The point the article is making is that anybody can be made a public figure now, because of technology.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    I have read the article, and I got your point before, and I still think that it's totally moot and besides the point.

    If they had been two total randos, say Max the car repair man cheating with Mandy the receptionist, then nobody would have even tried to recognize them. Not with social media, not with facial recognition not with anything else.

    And even if Peter, the coworker of Max and Mandy would have recognized them, he'd maybe have told their partners, or he might have made fun of them at work, but that's it. Because these people don't matter.

    To get back to your example: Somebody took a picture of you. Ok. Now what? Did that picture go viral on social media? Did that picture make it into international news? No. Because you don't matter.

    And you said it yourself:

    Shit, my workplace couldn't even identify the people who walked in the front door and stole stuff and walked out. The police could see their faces clearly in the security footage, but they weren't from around here and no one knew who they were.

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