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Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate what you're trying to say, but ultimately... Sucks to be you. If you don't want others to share that data, you'll have to stop interacting with them.

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Do you hold such a hard line stance on the moral correctness of revenge porn, I wonder?

After all, if you don't want others to share the data, you shouldn't interact with them.

I think its probably pretty good advice to follow: If you don't want someone posting revenge porn after you break up, don't give them nude photos/videos. Its always a risk you either accept or avoid.

There is a clear moral distinction to be drawn between people who use Windows 10 knowing that it might be sharing some data with Microsoft, so its algorithms can streamline certain everyday tasks and those who maliciously upload their exes' sex tapes to the Internet without their consent.

There are huge differences here on at least three crucial dimensions: intent of the sharer, the audience with whom it is shared, and the sensitivity of the data shared.

This is specifically in the context of your windows 10 install uploading data about me, without you asking me if that's ok. My wifi password over wifi sense, for example.

Yes. I understand that this is about "my" Windows 10 install sharing data about "you." I should have been more clear (and, unfortunately, the editing window has closed so I can't clarify). But if you re-read my comment with this in mind (as I had intended) it remains the case that while this a Bad Thing, and I see the analogy to revenge porn, it also is radically different in degree from revenge porn on several morally significant dimensions.

I've done that. They revert to traditional methods like phone calls when they want or need something. Every time.

Sucks to be you if your relationships, be they business or personal, are as fragile as a volatile technology.

And let me guess, they don't have your phone number memorized; they probably save your phone number in their phone's contacts list alongside your name, which is automatically backed up in the cloud in either Google Contacts or iCloud depending on what phone they use.

Expecting your friends not to use cloud services seems a bit unreasonable and unenforceable. Are you really going to tell all your friends they should write down or memorize your phone number instead of storing it in their phone?

No as that information is public.

What we talk about isn't.

While your name and phone number are public, the list of people who have your phone number saved is not public. These companies can effectively map who you associate with only by looking at other people's phones. They can profile you by association, and that is very wrong.

At some point privacy is no longer a choice, not a real choice anyway. You get to chose between participating in society or keeping your privacy. It shouldn't have to be this way, but it is.

Oh, uh, I thought you were talking about your name.

Microsoft collects your friends' names so it can spell their names correctly when you use speech-to-text or related features. I thought that's what you were objecting to. What kind of data are you talking about?

Conversations (SMS backup), photos (onedrive), email (outlook/office365), calls (skype) etc etc.

If you really are as charming in real life as you are online, people might indeed accede to your quaint insistence on anachronistic media, until they don't.

Personally, I require that all my so-called friends communicate with me in morse code over short wave radio. It works a treat.

I was a QRP operator so that's actually quite funny.

I like CW too :)

You mean "sucks to be any normal person today."

The ramifications of the destruction of anonymity and privacy affect everyone whether or not we understand enough right now to get this.

Also, "sucks to be all these people who would benefit from interacting with me but where I may stop interacting".

This is not a problem that is a personal, individual problem. This is a social problem. Period.

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