I’ve come to realise that people perceive me as taking my digital security very seriously. It’s probably a conversation that comes up more in my work environment than in other personal environments, given that I’m currently working on data justice, which includes in its wider repertoire, the issues around datafication, generative AI, the increasing technofied lives we live.
I stay away from Siri, Alexa, and any other forms of voice-to-text technologies (because they mean that your devices are always listening to you, whatever your conversations may be about, taking that as data to be used in means that you don’t fully know for purposes that you will never know). I had a FairPhone for 2.5 years (before it got stolen), and part of the reason for getting it was also that it supported other Operating Systems (OS) than just the default Google Android OS (yes there are de-Googled OS out there). Sadly, they’re too expensive for me to risk another one getting stolen, and so I got a OnePlus that runs on their default OS (that isn’t de-Googled, because Murena, which was what I used on my FairPhone, was not (yet) supported on the model I got) and de-Googled the services I didn’t want myself. Such as Google Assistant. And something else that required me to have my location services on all the time.
But I mean seriously, do people not care about their digital security? Am I the only weirdo who, more-often-than-not, takes the extra steps to express my non-consent to non-essential cookies when visiting websites? Do people really not care about how much data companies are taking off you, through every online behaviour you express, and turning that into money in so many different ways? And more insidiously, that you’re allowing yourself to be surveilled, constantly? To whatever means and ends, because it’s out of your control once you consent? Does the convenience really outweigh all these potential negatives?
This post really was triggered by this ad that Facebook decided to put on my timeline for me to see, a Top Kickstarter Inventions page in which what they were recommending to me was a game called Biome, in which the objective is apparently to protect (your) baby animals and build the most diverse ecosystem. Somehow they knew I was a “nature lover” (at least that my Google searches revolved a lot around ecological/nature/conservation issues, because that’s what is also suggested content to me on my phone when I happen to swipe left on the home screen, and I don’t know what this feature is called or how to disable it and one of the good things about Murena was that it did not have this feature). Because my friend who “liked” Top Kickstarter Inventions probably doesn’t identify themselves as a nature lover, and I doubt they bought/supported Biome, so it’s not like a straightforward recommendation (your friend liked this product so you must like it too!).
So well, perhaps I’m a bit more of a weirdo in that this bothers me a lot and I do not like where this is going (for society, for humanity, for the Earth, for non-human nature).
Jocelyne Shimin Sze 