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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

People shouldn't have to avoid activities because governments are abusing their authority.

No. They should avoid activities that are majority negative value to themselves, their freedom and their liberty.

If you use social media, you are a fool. You are completing your own STASI dossier for FREE and WILLINGLY. You are aiding and abetting in your own enslavement and oppression! You are an idiot.

I'm pretty sure HN counts as social media.

If we have social media, and a STASI-equivalent, the latter is the problem.

I mean... we do have a stasi equivalent now...

I personally dislike social media as well, but this is really over the top. Social media has advantages. That's like saying never tell anyone your name or anything about you - sure, it could at some point be used against you, but humans are still social creatures.

That isn't over the top at all. "Don't tell anyone your name or anything about you" is good advice for online. I think extremely carefully before I do post online under my real name. I think it's crazy that people don't.

IRL interactions are strongly bounded by geography and the frailty of human memory. Online isn't. The difference is scale and persistence. Our social intuitions aren't calibrated to it. It only takes one deranged person to ruin you, and that person might be on the other side of the planet, and might not even have been born yet.

Sebb767 is referring to "don't tell anyone your name" in real life (ie, cop stop).

Problem is that there is so much data collected that if the government ever gets better at connecting the dots, then just using most digital devices will put you in a similar spot.

Example: I have an app for a well known convenience store. I decided one day to disassemble it to see what libraries are being used. In addition to all the tracking one finds in most apps, there was a Bluetooth library that apparently allows the store to track where you walked around the store because of strategically placed Bluetooth beacons.

You basically have to be a hermit to avoid a lot of this and even then its not great.

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