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Comment by beebmam | Hacker News Reader

> Call criminal behavior for what it is; don’t pretend it’s not criminal. If we all start identifying Big Tech for what it truly is, a band of stalkers, perhaps we can start changing the future.

I have a hard time taking this article seriously with hysterical statements like this.

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Also, crime is whatever the law defines as such. Smoking weed is a crime, and data collection and processing is not.

But I’m pleasantly surprised the author puts the responsibility for abandoning the tech on users rather than governments.

there is actually a lot of data processing and collection that is illegal: anything that is done as part of an illegal activity, inclusive of privacy breaches, gathering of information about religious beliefs or sexual orientation in GDPR countries...

Well, of course it’s illegal if it’s part of illegal activity. The author seems to be applying broad charges of criminality to all software that tracks user behavior. We can argue whether any tracking should be illegal, but not whether it already is.

I didn't buy it. There are so many laws that at the very least we are all lawbreakers if not criminals.

Except for me.

I felt the analogy with the hooded guy in a corner actually quite fitting and not hysterical. Note that there is a long history of using the term hysterical to refer to various non-compliers to enforced badnenss, eg. women demanding a vote.

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