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Comment by GenericDev | Hacker News Reader

I have been ranting and raving that surveillance capitalism is the worst thing to happen in the modern world. It's not just personal privacy it ruins, but also community privacy it ruins.

My community is nothing but ring cameras and it drives me nuts because it means I'm always being monitored. I hate it so much.

People just aren't free to be people in private anymore.

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> I have been ranting and raving that surveillance capitalism is the worst thing to happen in the modern world

Seconded.

Our defence is the GDPR. It makes gathering personal data a liability, not an asset.

It's amusing how many HN'ers (based in the US) will rant against the GDPR in an effort to defend their own scummy surveillance capitalism business models.

Surveillance capitalism is hardly just an American phenomenon, and though I don't defend it at all, or many other aspects of how things are in the U.S. corporate state, you're deluded if you think the EU is somehow greatly better. Many on HN go full holy roller on GDPR as if it were some sort of divine intervention while at the same time apparently blatantly ignoring how the EU's own laws are grossly intrusive in so many ways and without at least some of the minimal protections offered in the U.S. by its Bill of Rights. To name one good example, at least on this side of the pond free expression is more firmly defended, even if other things aren't so much.

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