this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 168 points 4 days ago (5 children)

This is a great example of how profiles on all of us are going to be made by governments and corporations unless we take privacy seriously.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 94 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

*Have been made long ago and are being constantly updated.

Snowden already warned us about this over a DECADE ago. Their scopes and powers will have increased exponentially. And that was under 'trustworthy' administration. I guarantee there's a type of system in place that flags people before they do anything, just on pattern recognition alone. Of course, they can't use that system as a legal basis for anything, so they don't and use parallel constructions instead.

Anyone who thinks "this is coming" hasn't been paying attention. We're already there and beyond.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

I already assumed that all project 2025 purges to date have been done with input from statistical modeling, in a way that removes far more "liberals" who might refuse orders, and retains as many MAGA/fascist bootlickers as possible.

[–] DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago

I find the funniest shit ever is how Snowden uncovered the biggest shit show and nothing happened. Probably the starting event for me losing all hope in this pathetic species I now call Homo Merda.

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[–] M1ch431@slrpnk.net 55 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Corporations have been already making profiles of various types for a while now in the form of adtech, social media, data brokers, people search websites, credit scores, devices and services that harvest sensitive and intimate data (e.g. mobile phone apps, watching habits from smart TVs, driving data from cars).

Our society has been set up for mass surveillance in a thousand different ways as a form of social control and dominance by those who wield power.

It's time people realize that privacy is a right instead of normalizing abuses of consent.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 25 points 4 days ago

Yep.

And if anyone doubts this, 15 years ago I had made a tool that created these types of profiles as a proof of concept.

I had scraped tons of subreddits, then you could pass in a user and based on both their subreddits and key words would categorize users across a few axes. That was just using naïve bayes, but worked pretty well.

The AI is just much much better at natural language processing to pull out more detailed info about patterns.

[–] Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 days ago

And those who read your comment, already knew. Those that SHOULD read it, never will. The same problem as with warning-labels et al.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 days ago

If youre even near someone with a photo on fb and they got you in it, you already have a record and a ghost fb profile waiting for you.

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[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 83 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (11 children)

That's probably a massive GDPR violation. Automated processing of extra sensitive data like political beliefs and religion is not outright forbidden but it's subject to extra protections.

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 15 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Sadly you consented to all of it

[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 46 points 3 days ago (1 children)

GDPR article 9 (1) says you can't play algorithmic guess with people's religion or political opinions unless you gave express permission to the service provider to do it (i.e. it's not covered in the general GDPR boilerplate)

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago

Hard agree with this. Does Reddit even have lawyers, or are they just using ChatGPT? Google, Meta, and Tik Tok already paid PII misuse fines for less than this. everything listed is part of the GDPR extended PII list.

Unrelated question: How do I short reddit stock?

[–] magikmw@piefed.social 12 points 3 days ago

GDPR prevents using underhanded tactics to assume consent for this type of use.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Have there been any enforcement actions against big companies yet?

[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Meta got a fine of over a billion euros. Google got a bunch of smaller fines, but it's probably way above everyone else in terms of fines. Microsoft got half a billion. Even Apple got an 8 million euro fine, but that was more a tap in the wrist to make them think twice about some data collection.

And besides this, large companies are constantly in contact with the authorities and in smaller violations the general policy is to give a warning and let companies stop the illegal data processing voluntarily.

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[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

I doubt it, since all it ostensibly does is summarize info the user has released freely. How that info is stored and retained exactly might be up for debate though.

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[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 62 points 3 days ago (2 children)

We (smart people) knew this was the end result of ai and why the far right and ccorporations love it. But holy fucking shit this is dangerous and people should be terrified of this. Stop using these platforms (I know it doesn't matter the platform, we're all fucked, but still)

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 3 days ago (2 children)

My concern is that Reddit can sell their profiling algorithm to other companies, who then can federate with Lemmy, mastodon, etc. to build profiles against users.

It's getting to the point where I may need to go back to cycling usernames every few years.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 days ago

It's getting to the point where I may need to go back to cycling usernames every few years.

You should definitely do that anyways, you never know when some crazy is going to try and dox you. Changing usernames won’t really protect you from advertisers though, software will link the two identities together.

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[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 24 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I think it goes beyond that, stop living an online life is a better advice. Use the internet to get info, not to submit info.

Submits comment

[–] FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 50 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Good thing we're not on reddit

[–] Perspectivist@feddit.uk 9 points 3 days ago (7 children)

How exactly is it a good thing in this particular case? All this information is only more accessible on Lemmy.

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[–] MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 45 points 3 days ago (10 children)
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[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 41 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Spez will fuck with Reddit's userbase and make the platform absolute bullshit to use, yet 90% of redditors will still keep sucking his dick over and over again.

"LeMmY iS tOo HaRd To UsE!! wTf Is An InStAnCe???"

[–] ksigley@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago

If my dumb ass figured it out, anyone should be able to switch.

[–] innermachine@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I think a lot of people on reddit forget that it's a forum. They see reddit as this special thing, when in fact it's not. My best description to people about Lemmy is it's a bunch of reddits that all can see eachother and none are owned by some corporation looking to harvest your info. It's like reddit, but better. As for which instance? Roll a dice and pick one, it doesn't matter all that much. I'm on lemmy.world and I don't even know half the time I just surf around. Other than that anything that makes reddit better then Lemmy is purely due to the fact it has a larger and longer established user base.

[–] Doorknob@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

I just try to describe it like email. "You've got your gmails and your outlooks and your yahoos and whatnot, you pick one you like, but they're all email and it won't stop you seeing emails from outlook guys if you're a gmail guy."

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[–] furzegulo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Every now and then I've been tempted to make a Reddit account to post in some subreddits but shit like this reminds me not to fucking do it.

You wanna know how you can avoid that temptation? Get yourself a nice little permaban. Worked for me.

[–] einlander@lemmy.world 32 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] TeddE@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago

Crime by statistical association

[–] NoodlePoint@lemmy.world 28 points 3 days ago

Also known as profiling.

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 23 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Just dont use Reddit already

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 11 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Is Lemmy somehow invulnerable to this? Can't it just be scraped the same way.

[–] octopus_ink@slrpnk.net 16 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

100% it can, and worse yet, it can be scraped and analyzed like this by Meta, or Reddit, or your nearest fascist dictator.

But that's also pretty much the entire internet in any forum or social media platform, so although I don't like it, I figure that's more or less just part of using the internet.

To me it's much like the whole "There's no expectation of privacy in public."

I hope it doesn't take AI to figure out my attitudes when I regularly proclaim that there are no maga in my life more than required by various pre-existing obligation, Luigi Mangione will be remembered as a folk hero, Trump will one day be shown to be ALL through the Epstein files in all the worst ways (as will many Dems and they should all be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law), and most Democratic leadership is 100% owned by the oligarchy too, as evidenced by things such as their support of Israeli genocide and how much more urgently they are fighting Mamdani than they are Trump in many cases.

[–] M1ch431@slrpnk.net 6 points 4 days ago

“There’s no expectation of privacy in public.”

There's no expectation of privacy anywhere. This has all been taken way too far.

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[–] hisao@ani.social 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It can, but it's not built-in into the system and shown to every moderator in their UI.

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[–] chunes@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

That's a useless summary that describes 99% of reddit and lemmy users

[–] fluxixx@piefed.social 13 points 3 days ago

this is absolutely fucking terrifying

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] ronigami@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

So Reddit is the scumbag steve.

[–] peaceful_world_view@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

No wonder I got banned.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 days ago

Which means the powers-that-be have been using it for years already. Remember when people called us paranoid for believing in Echelon in the '80s?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

[–] JollyG@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The screenshot shows an llm summary of a users posting history. Is that what you mean by “determine belief values stance and more” ? Is there more to this? How is that summary different from scrolling through someone’s posting history to see what they post about?

[–] breakingcups@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's made by a machine and can be biased by its prompt, training, and owners political beliefs (see Elon's Grok).

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[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 8 points 3 days ago

Less and less is the user's identity belonging to the user.

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