It seems like at every technological step, we're sold the dream and delivered the meme. We always end up with the worst possible combination of players, ideas and outcomes; with the promise of what the said technology delivers in terms of additional freedom or free time never realised. How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?
It's "socializing the losses and privatizing the gains"… but now alarmingly supercharged well beyond purely financial realms, and into really basic and fundamental matters of individual physical autonomy and liberty.
> How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?
Having any kind of agency in those things would be a start.
If <FAANG bigcorp of your choice> announces with great fanfare "We're building this totally awesome new technology that will make everything better! And the best thing? You won't have to do anything, we will auto-update all your devices/accounts/etc with it for free! Trust us!", then whether you personally believe their enthusiastic predictions or not doesn't really matter a lot - you will get it anyway, unless you spend a lot of energy to deliberately avoid the new technology.
From my understanding, we are pretty close to a Dystopian world where all elites of a certain group collaborate to run a Super Leviathan. We still gotta choose our flavors, which may not be feasible in maybe 5-10 years when those leviathans clash into each other.
Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp covers it pretty well I think.
Thanks for the recommendation.
It's not like this is surprising, there have been plenty of sci-fi books/movies that have predicted this very thing. How many movies have the haves lived above ground/off planet, while the have nots have lived underground or stuck on a apocalyptic planet.
This is just furthering the previous history. Currently, the lords have just been able to keep the serfs appeased to a longer extent. Every time in history or in sci-fi, the serfs reach a breaking point and rise up.
I don't think they are going to rise up this time. Maybe laying down flat is more realistic.
> Every time in history or in sci-fi, the serfs reach a breaking point and rise up.
this is a completely "WEIRD" outlook.. more than half of humanity has no illusions about "proletarians" they do not even discuss it that way
source: born and raised WEIRD
This time is different. The global system is not going to fall apart like isolated kingdoms in the past.
You seem very confident. This seems to imply you feel the haves will know when to leave enough on the table for the have nots to still feel like they are a part of the haves. I'm not so confident in that.
People in technologically advanced societies have more than enough & the people who are not as advanced can not do anything that will have any effect on the people who own the fighter jets, missiles, robot factories, & "internet" satellites. The current system has no historical precedent. It is very close to an almost perfect panopticon w/ an associated media & police apparatus to keep everyone docile & complacent. Like I said, this time is different.
Ever read 1984?
Who wins at the end?
Winston, obviously. He left behind his free-thinking and became unwavering to Big Brother. Truly a winner
Why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill?
All these memes are burning through our natural reserves at an ever increasing rate so it will crumble when the bread baskets fail anyway.
Going to copy paste my comment from today's other thread[3] that linked to this:
Note also there's a direct response from Persona's security team here[1], and a lot of back and forth from Rick on Twitter[2].
[1]: https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...
[2]: https://x.com/Persona_IDV/status/2025048195773198385?s=20
The withpersona.com URL seems to return 404.
fixed ty
They did good damage control with that post
Quite some time ago I said and now repeat:
Convenience is to humans, what bulb lights at night are to bugs.
No pain, no gain.
"what is Fivecast ONYX? an AI-powered surveillance platform purchased by ICE for $4.2 million and CBP for additional license costs. according to Fivecast’s own documentation and EFF’s reporting, they do automated collection of multimedia data from social media and dark web, build “digital footprints” from biographical data, tracks shifts in sentiment and emotion, assigns risk scores, searches across 300+ platforms and 28+ billion data points, identifies people with “violent tendencies”"
Glad to know that my tinfoil hat wasn't too tight when social media came to be and this obvious use was predicted. How quickly will not having social media accounts become a crime?
According to Persona's damage control article[0], the subdomain had "onyx" in its name because that's the internal code name for the project, and it's named after the pokémon Onyx. No connection to Fivecast ONYX.
[0] https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...
I don't really understand why ICE would have a Persona OPenAI connection...?
It's already frowned upon when crossing the border
We need a list of these 300+ platforms
What can those do from a separate country, who unfortunately had their identity verified through Persona (LinkedIn in my case).
Organize in your country and advocate for data deletion jubilees, organize in your country to champion new taxes against US digital services, organize in your country to advocate for homegrown solutions over US tech.
If you aren't actively organizing you aren't going to accomplish anything.
Remember that people power trumps monetary power, but you have to commit for people power to work.
> advocate for homegrown solutions over US tech.
Some sweet irony about this btw.
Why? Every country on Earth is capable of creating and maintaining software. There is nothing unique about America or Silicon Valley (outside of the massive amounts of corporate welfare), devs can be found anywhere and who better to write software for local citizens than the local citizens themselves?
We know how useful open source software is, there's no reason why this can't be replicated across the planet.
From the blog post I've recently read; https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verificatio...
1. Request your data. Email idv-privacy@withpersona.com or privacy@withpersona.com. Under GDPR, they have 30 days to respond.
2. Request deletion. The verification is done. LinkedIn already has the result. There is no reason for Persona to keep your passport scan and facial geometry on their servers. Ask them to delete it.
3. Contact their DPO. dpo@withpersona.com — that’s their Data Protection Officer. If you want to object to them using your documents as AI training data under “legitimate interests,” this is where you do it.
4. Think twice before verifying. That blue badge might not be worth what you’re trading for it. A checkmark is cosmetic. Biometric data is forever.
As heavily discussed here 3 days ago (Persona is the same company LinkedIn uses for their ID verification process):
I verified my LinkedIn identity. Here's what I handed over
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098245
1.4K+ points, 490+ comments
https://withpersona.com/customers/openai
Persona's side of the story.
In response to a data request, Persona says:
Hi there,
Thank you for reaching out to Persona.
Please note that Persona primarily operates as a "service provider" or "processor" for its customers. We act as a "business" or "controller" only for specific services, such as identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, and Reusable Persona. To learn more about how Persona manages your personal data, please refer to our privacy notices, which can be accessed through the following link: https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-notices
If you wish to exercise your privacy rights related to services where Persona is a "service provider" or "processor," please contact the entity using our service, as they are the "controller" of the data. We will assist the relevant customer to fulfill your data subject rights, but we do not handle such requests directly on their behalf.
For any privacy rights request related to services where Persona acts as a "business" or "controller," including identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, Reusable Persona, and personal data related to our sales, marketing activities, or website browsing on withpersona.com, please use our Data Subject Request (DSAR) available at the following link: https://withpersona.com/dsar
For all other inquiries, we will respond as soon as possible.
###
TL;DR we're not responsible, go talk to LinkedIn.
This is the same complete bullshit trying to remove oneself from political donation emails. "Oh, okay, we will remove you from that one." Days later it's a "different campaign." Sometimes it's the exact same people from weeks ago who have just renamed their campaign and started sending again.
We need far stronger laws for all of it, which will never happen because the rot and corruption has fully metastasized.
Does someone have a version that doesn't force you to listen to unwanted music?
In FF you can click on a tab on left side to mute it not sure other browsers
This is a hilarious personal website! Love it. Even better that it's paired with quality content.
Governments in Europe should be seriously scrutinising this with the background conversation of departing American tech going on. Discord users globally were being coerced into handing over their ID to this American surveillance tech. Are we just going to let this go on?
Why do so many engineers willingly build things bad for society?
Because it generally pays well. I'd wax philosophically, but you can come to your own conclusions from that little nugget.
Enough said. Since the "death of God" (per Nietzsche - the collapse of the metaphysics underpinning our morals and therefore cultural norms and behaviors) the modus operandi has been the utilitarian "get what's yours."
Reprehensible.
Additionally, people are typically only "gifted" on one domain -- if one's gifted enough in the domain of intellect to become a SWE, they're typically lacking elsewhere, whether that be in moral scruples or the ability to discern social things such as when they're working for sociopaths.
You'd think empathy would just be enough, its very sad.
Many tech execs operate under the thesis that china & the democratic party are existential threats that warrant a surveillance/military/police ramp up. Meanwhile, many tech employees are credulous and frequently adopt self-serving geopolitical narratives. The current macro trends don't help (huge defense budgets, bad labor market power, China is in fact more powerful)
Edit:forgot the most obvious... money
Because they do not believe it is bad?
Because they believe that it's going to be build anyone by someone else?
Because they are not entirely aware of what they are building?
Money can be exchanged for services.
Hope this helps.
All these bright engineers can’t figure out the bigger picture of what they’re building?
“Hey boss man, why does this database ‘tracked_individuals’ have columns for license plate numbers, home addresses, and political affiliations?”
Give me a break
Because they're paid enough to retire at 30.
Evil pays more.
A common theme in a lot of movies, books, et..
Because the highest values of our society are non-values.
The tribe won’t eat their own… probably.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_apples
Immoral boot-licking human engineers are indistinguishable from LLMs.
What's crazy is I know engineers like this in real life - and they're good engineers! So I know they do exist, but their existence to serve their company or CEO no matter what is completely foreign to me. Like, you're smart enough to understand that large codebase and generally function as a member of society, but you've completely given up your higher level decision making for someone or something that would throw you away in an instant.
surprised nobody responded with the most straightforward, occams razor explanation
they think what they're doing is actually good for society
not everyone is in the hackerspace libertarian / socialist sphere
i used to work for a place that used persona despite it adding extra friction to signups (literally resulting in less paying customers to the dismay of PMs) because it was worth it to combat fraud. theres a tradeoff in everything
"Oh boy! I've always wanted to work at [microsoft, apple, google, etc.]!"
Those aren't the companies OP is necessarily talking about. "I've always wanted to work at Persona!", said no one, ever.
Based on the Anthropic distillation news yesterday I wonder if the AI companies are going to get much tighter with KYC.
I get the KYC concerns for API access, but I'm sortof baffled at why they'd need all of the AML stuff, given that they're not payment processors/financial institutions.
Or does Persona provide that by default? Don't know much about their service...
This website really is incredible!
Why the myspace music?
whimsy
> 0x18 - betrayal
This is the most important section, as the above ones any privacy-conscious person would assume most anyway. I did mention before that we need an open-source platform that tracks the people who work and build such systems. Those are the enablers who have no morals or ethics - a greedy corporation is always greedy, but when the average employee is willing to work full time on building such systems, they need to be exposed publicly, just as they are working relentlessly on violating private people's privacy. It isn't about public humiliation; it's about basic human decency and maintaining a minimum ethical code to abide by. These individuals shouldn't be hired or dealt with, not even a simple connection on LinkedIn.
These individuals are dangerous. They are like rats among us and should be exposed, and I bet some of them are reading this as well.
Is this whole unreadable article just the output from an AI prompt describing a techno-thriller?
likely not. Being able to read and understand is a matter of skill though. There are many technical terms there that may make it unreadable for non-technical audience. But you can solve that by having an AI explain it to you.
The right wing went full censorship and surveillance after the Charlie Kirk assassination. It is probably not a coincidence that they targeted Discord first, because the suspect was in a Discord group.
They promised freedom of speech and liberty and this is what we get.
> The right wing went full censorship and surveillance after the Charlie Kirk assassination.
No, earlier. US tech is mostly surveillance tech, with Thiel being sponsor and broker for authoritarian right. The doge operation started around day 1, and was a breach into the government to steal data that was yet out of reach for certain plotters.
The right wing went full censorship and surveillance long before the Charlie Kirk assassination. Anyone who believed that the right wing (or the left wing, for that matter; let's not pretend that censorious dipshittery is not bipartisan) was honestly promising freedom of speech as opposed to merely freedom of speech they like and censorship of speech they don't like was at best willfully blinding themselves to the actual actions of politicians.
nothing to do with left or right. the UK is left and has the most Orwellian surveillance state outside of China
thank god there's an annoying fucking cat in the way of what i'm trying to read
Move your mouse and the cat will follow
On mobile the cat sits in the middle of the screen and does not respond to touch input. The author has been told about the distracting elements and refused to acknowledge it.
The US government, that consists of a congress where 98% of congress members have received donations from AIPAC and Persona which is backed by Peter Thiel who also backs the surveillance company Palantir and strongly supports Israel and Zionism. OpenAI is also lead by a staunch Zionist, Sam Altman. It's not difficult to understand where this surveillance machine is originating from. Also happens to thematically run adjacent to certain prophecies contained in the Bible specifically the Book of Revelation.
I love it when names of things match their characteristics.
Except everything I said was factual, and nothing was conspiratorial. If you disagree, please point out where I was factually incorrect. Otherwise, you should probably change your username to ignoramus or denierofreality or something similar. Unless you want to be viewed as a hypocrite that is.
Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140632.
Is this the mark of the beast?
Well if you will turn your attention to my Straussian reading of the most popular comic books and anime, you may find that...
Yes
No
They rhyme
No, the mark of the beast is everyone in the Epstein files
So, less a mark and more an abyss to stare into?
What do the people in the Epstein files have to do with a mark that people need to receive in order to participate in society? I'm confused.