Data-Free Disney
publicbooks.org
publicbooks.org
Data-Free Disneyland - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34612732 - Feb 2023 (211 comments)
I love my privacy and my kids' but I don't understand this extreme behavior... She is worried that companies know she has kids? Can't they just pull public records to see that? Or read this article published under her full name with attached social media profiles?
Personally I don't want to be tracked by Disney in the real world, but wouldn't mind it inside the park. Or, like another commenter pointed, just don't go. Disney will track you with or without a band (isn't every square inch of the place under CCTV?)
It sets the goalpost. Without defining privacy and standing up for it, the goalpost will be moved and pretty soon no privacy will be normalized.
It helps define things for employees of these companies. If people inside the company never have to deal with someone who values their privacy, it will never be tested. This also helps employees that actually value privacy and see what goes on inside.
It sets an example for others who value their privacy and don't know what they can do to protect it.
It prompts discussion. And hopefully laws.
As a related example, Richard Stallman might be controversial in his behavior (he doesn't use proprietary software, or use a phone), but years after he created the GPL it is pretty obvious he was onto something and has helped us.
“Don’t go” is a valid one but thought-terminating.
What if those principles are extended to, say, public transports? Public services? Shops? Stadium?
In the 1980's, the German state tried twice to do a census of the population. Twice the protests by the people were so vivid, that they failed to do them. In 1983, the highest German court declared the planned census unconstitutional and in 1987, protests on May 1st turned into violence over this issue.
In 2022, Germany did a census again. There was basically no public objection.
I was an early ProtonMail and ProtonVPN supporter and for years would only chat to family members over Signal. I'm conscious of how my phone can track me and of the benefits of using cash.
But I still can't see how avoiding Disney tracking is for her kids' "safety". The Mouse doesn't loom so large in my mind. And I can't judge family members for making the judgment call that they don't really care what Facebook and Google collect about their online activity.
We badly need more experiment like those because this tell a lot about our society!
It’s exactly like vegan diets. You have moral principles and you try to see how far/how difficult it is to apply them. This also helps other realize what is happening/what they are missing.
I admire her because I would be like her before having kids. As they say: "I had principles. Now I have kids.".
Disney parks have always been a mass surveillance zone for decades in the name of safety and security, regardless of whether or not you opt into their modern tech. If you don’t like it, don’t go to their parks.
> The names on the tickets don’t have to match any government-issued ID, Allison explained.
This probably doesn't extend to hotel bookings, so if you're travelling to Disney (which many families are) and staying on property you're kinda screwed, no? Even if you're not staying on property you still need to give you details to some company.
> Still, there’s simply no way to avoid pulling your mask down for portrait photos at the gate. That’s simply “for your safety,” Allison intoned.
Portrait photos at the gate? Does Disney require children to get a photo attached to their ticket so they can be found if lost?
As a side note: I created https://mousetrack.co.uk to track prices of the tickets and hotels at Disneyworld. Hopefully me gathering this data can be considered a way to fight back against their data gathering.
The portrait photos at the gate for finding lost kids are a great idea. But only if Disney is very clear that the portrait is only retained for the time the ticket is valid, and then deleted.
The problem is that most companies in the US basically retain the right to do whatever they want with your data even if they only plan to use it in a very limited fashion.
If only there were a law that required them to enumerate specifically how your data gets used...
To clarify, it is not like hotels outside the US have fun gathering the info, in many countries it is required by Law to transmit info about guests (including children) to the Police.
It's critical to always have a secret mission on these occasions. Great, fun read!
Once these kids move out on their own they're going to have a hard time adjusting to the rest of society's social norms in the same way that homeschooled, extremely religious, or children raised in other socially or technologically isolated ways have to adjust as the real world suddenly hits them outside of the influence of their parents.
A mild example of this is the disparity between 90s kids who grew up with and without cable. The ones who grew up without it have an entire set of pop culture references that are completely unheard of to them. It's not really a big deal or anything, but it's a good analogy.
Disney just wants to sell you shit and manage the flow of traffic in the busiest theme parks in the world.
They're not trying to generate your social credit score to forward to the draconian authoritarian governments of the world.
Plus, you can do everything right and your bank or credit agency might still leak your personal info in a breach like Equifax and Capital One.
> They're not trying to generate your social credit score to forward to the draconian authoritarian governments of the world.
Well, they will, their databases will end up on the dark net, also will be used by the governments in your social credit score.
Visiting Disney parks without using the app is a distinctly inferior experience. This is no accident. It isn't possible anymore to book a dining reservation sans app, likewise to check queue times (unless you walk to the ride entrance), likewise fastpasses. The app is more convenient, but only because they actively make the parks less convenient. The quality of the rides, the scenery, the staff/cast, and the mis en scene have all been slowly degrading over the past 10+ years or so. Despite that, prices nearly doubled I think.
The website? [0]
> likewise to check queue times (unless you walk to the ride entrance)
There's giant digital signage around the park with wait times? [1]
> likewise fastpasses
Don't exist anymore, but correct (except for CS options in the park) for the new paid version. Previously you could get them at kiosks around the park.
> The quality of the rides, the scenery, the staff/cast, and the mis en scene have all been slowly degrading over the past 10+ years or so.
Fully agree.
[0]: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/dining/#/reservations-acce...
[1]: https://www.micechat.com/247615-disneyland-update-the-resist...
Am I getting old?
It was (obviously) previously possible to visit Disneyland without this sort of antics, so I don't think the problem lies with the author.
It's more like the author is demonstrating to what ends you need to go to maintain a modicum of privacy.
15 years ago, when working in the automotive industry, I made the prototype of a GPS feature that would record your travels and use simple AI techniques to predict your next destination. Prototype was working really fine (all was done onboard, not connection to external servers). When I first demoed it, upper-management told me that "no one will ever agree to have a car that record your travels. That’s too creepy!" That was 2008.
This is exactly the point of such articles and experiments: demonstrating how creepy the world become and how people pointing it are seen as the weirdos.
I loathe the “real name policy” introduced by Facebook for the internet but can’t close my eyes to the fact that I am also benefitting from all that tracking as an individual and in business.
As a [thought] experiment I am ok following even a medieval way of life for a week to see what the difference is, I just wouldn’t present it as a virtue.
The pro-privacy stance is great and helps everyone, the extreme pro-privacy stance is akin to using burner phones for everything despite not being involved in any activities that truly require that level of opsec. It’s quirky, borderline comical and provides little insight into how to deal with current state of normalcy
Yes, you feel that you benefit from less privacy now in the current context.
Using a burner phone only when something should be really hidden is like having a red light on your face. The point to not share any data voluntarly is that you never know when you will truly want to hide something. You don’t decide what is good and what is bad. What is happening with anti-abortion asking women to share the period data should be enough of an example.
The big point about privacy is also that it is not a personal choice. As soon as someone write about her personal choice of "not disclosing any private data", she’s seen as a weirdo. Proving one major point: you don’t really have the choice anymore. You must share your data. You have no control about who access your data. And as Trump demonstrated, any country is one inch away of switching to a government where each of your data can be used against you.
Sounds paranoid?
Well, the bad news is that most people perceived as paranoid about that subject in the last 40 years were not even close to imagine what we currently have.
That’s sort of my point. That battle is long lost. There are certainly people personally responsible for the loss of privacy, but the current state of affairs in that regard is such a complex, indecipherable mess, that the reasonable way forward is to work within it not against it. Invent solutions that somehow hijack the system rather than try to reject it outright in favor of some 1999 way of life. Making statements about “not sharing any data ever” is at best as reasonable as insisting on eating only the food you’ve grown yourself.
I promise I'll only read your emails, keep a copy, and sell your data as I find it profitable. I won't reset your passwords or anything.
$10 is more than what most other brokers will pay you for the same access, so this is a very good deal. If you really don't think your privacy is worth preserving, take me up on my offer.