Comment by pryce | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pryce | Hacker News Reader

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I am coming to believe that what we are seeing is a kind of "race" to see which aspiring superpowers will eventually control (or own) the main companies that are intentionally the most successful in invading the privacy of citizens.

People can only inhabit a finite number of social media networks, and there can eventually only be a fairly small number of big players in a position to produce massively detailed rich profiles on individuals and therefore hold most influence on them (consumer behaviour & voting behaviour)

Imagine that the USA clamps down heavily on facebook, and in 4 years some rival company from Russia or China ended up achieving the largest market share / richest per-person psych profiles. That represents a security threat even greater than the (nearly catastrophic) threat that Facebook represents today. Who wins and who loses in this race is going to make a massive difference in what the planet looks like 20, 10, even 5 years from now.

Feels more like companies own the aspiring superpowers with all the lobbying going around in the US.

The government was supposed to represent people, but since we made corruption legal, its mainly accountable to money. Corporations and the government alike are therefore controlled by those with wealth and intent. They're two sides of the same coin.

There's definitely an element of this at play. This was stated pretty explicitly in the case of Grindr, a dating app for gay men. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/politics/grindr-china-...

Eh... in some parts of the US there is still a stigma against being LGBT. Grindr being foreign owned means opening up the possibility of people (who aren't ready to come out) being blackmailed. And that's clearly a national security threat and different from wanting data profiles on everyone.

In some ways it is kinda funny in a dark way, as our inability to accept people for how they are is a national security threat :).

Americans, especially the ones a foreign power would be interested in blackmailing, also travel. In some ~70 countries, homosexuality is a crime.

> that's clearly a national security threat and different from wanting data profiles on everyone.

What's the threat model here? Certainly ousting LGBT people is scummy, but I'm not sure I understand how it jeopardizes the security of the nation.

You could argue that the ability to blackmail government officials compromises national security, but lots of things in that "data profile" could be used for blackmail. I don't see a reason to break this issue out separately.

I would imagine that if someone is hiding some use of the Grindr app from their S/O, they can be blackmailed. It would be particularly evident due to the location and photo-based tenants of the service. That is exactly why they ask the questions they do on the counterintelligence polygraph

Right, but certainly the same applies for any app someone might use to cheat (Tinder, Facebook, etc). I don't understand why Grindr is in a class of its own.

Because it’s use implies Homosexuality, which may or may not be known by the SO. Most SO would forgive cheating with the opposite sex before cheating with the same sex I’d imagine. It’s an extra layer of uncertainty.

>> that's clearly a national security threat and different from wanting data profiles on everyone. > What's the threat model here? Certainly ousting LGBT people is scummy, but I'm not sure I understand how it jeopardizes the security of the nation.

Any kind of blackmail can be valuable, but one that is still illegal in many parts of the world is super valuable.

* Gay government employee travels on official business to one of the ~70 countries where homosexuality is illegal

* Chinese military operative threatens to turn them in to authorities if they don't cooperate

You could infer the sexuality of a large number of people on Reddit / Instagram / Facebook if you had their data, so the same risk is present there.

Or maybe one day people will realize that there is a life beyond the friggin' social networks. They have their uses but the degree to which people depend on them is not very healthy.

Sounds like a new Cold War that is becoming truer every day, where the proxy countries are instead companies.

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