• treadful@lemmy.zip
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    13 hours ago

    Thanks for including the mirror, OP.

    Companies that obtain mobile phone location data generally do it in two different ways. The first is through software development kits (SDKs) embedded in ordinary smartphone apps, like games or weather forecasters. These SDKs continuously gather a user’s granular location, transfer that to the data broker, and then sell that data onward or repackage it and sell access to government agencies.

    The second is through real-time bidding (RTB). When an advert is about to be served to a mobile phone user, there is a near instantaneous, and invisible, bidding process in which different companies vie to have their advert placed in front of certain demographics. A side-effect is that this demographic data, including mobile phones’ location, can be harvested by surveillance firms. Sometimes spy companies buy ad tech companies out right to insert themselves into this data supply chain. We previously found at least thousands of apps were hijacked to provide location data in this way.

    I really despise these practices. I don’t know how people can build these tools with a clear conscience.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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      5 hours ago

      It’s the same for anyone who works for Meta or MS or Google or Anduril or whatever these days: you look at your comp package that’s worth roughly half a million annually, and you say

      They have been paying people to not have morals for quite a while now.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      I don’t know how people can build these tools with a clear conscience.

      Have you seen the job market for programmers lately? It feels like it’s almost all for AI slop, abusive rentier middleman business models that add no real value, defense war contractors, or all of the above at once.

      That’s not to say that it’s acceptable for people to work those jobs with a clear conscience; it’s to say that for a bunch of people the only ethical options would be to remain unemployed or leave the industry.

    • otacon239@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      That’s easy. You just ignore your conscience because money speaks louder to these people.

    • Cruxifux@feddit.nl
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      11 hours ago

      Jesus fucking Christ. Time to delete the two games I’ve ever downloaded. Dunno if that even helps at this point.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      12 hours ago

      build these tools with a clear conscience.

      Because if they don’t their masters they will become destitute and starve while homeless

      And all social interaction happen at veiled gunpoint

      Under these conditions it is no surprise at all that conscience plays no role whatsoever, it is just a savage free-for-all for survival happening under our cursed star, an insane 10 billion years long churning of thinking meat, consciousness behind birthed into the wreckage, screaming uncomprehendingly at what is happened until it soon it is just as easily, mercifully and meaninglessly snuffed out again.

      Fortunately we have a shot at scorching the surface of this planet thanks to global warming and really the question is, can we make it happen before we genocide ourselves, leaving this planet’s biosphere still capable of sustaining the horrors of life ?

        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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          11 hours ago

          I met some real people this week, they were watching advertising.
          They thought the government cared about them.
          One wanted to upgrade their car to add another 100 horsepower they cannot use anywhere.
          Another told me, he does not like raising cows but he had to get more cows to make it more economical to raise cows.
          They were all bummed out that the end of the end of the week was upon us, and soon they would have to work 40 hours in the next 5 days, doing things they stopped liking doing a long time again, if they ever did at all.