Ask Lemmy

Smart phones aren't magic. They are also not super high tech spy devices. They are dangerous because they promote you to willingly give all your personal information away. They usually aren't spying on you in secret instead you're giving them all the information you want. People get Google and Facebook accounts and tie their full name, date of birth, gender, family relationships, sexual preferences, upload photos of themselves and all their friends, then spend 6h a day using the services which gives them plenty of usage data to tell them what you like, what you hate, what engages you, what they can market to you, your fears, your fetishes, your secrets, etc. You may opt in to Google maps tracking your location history. You can literally check by going onto your Google account and checking your location history. It tracks everywhere you go. They have enough information to know where you go every Thursday at 1750 and who you're with and how bad the traffic was and potentially even what beer you bought.

But they don't do it in secret. They make sure to ask you first but hope you are too ignorant to question the point of it. You ever hear people say "it's fine I have nothing to hide"? That's the propaganda at work. Throw privacy away for the convenience of being able to look at ai memes on instagram.

You agree to allow your phone to listen all the time when you enable siri or Google assistant. You allow it to scan your face to use face unlock but it's not that they're collecting this information in secret. They don't even need your camera footage and your secret voice recordings, and they don't need to steal your dick pics.

They already have everything they need. We gave it to them.