I once saw a barmaid singing along to a popular song, and jump onto a table while singing. The whole bar joined in, singing and dancing. Moments after the song ended, my friends came back into the room, where everything was back to normal, and they didn’t believe that anything had happened!

You think this is funny? Well, this picture says otherwise.

Ummm…

Except that doesn’t work when you have memory issues that mean you have to see the thing to remember it

That’s part of my point. For most people, giving Google their data means things like their travel info. The majority of people don’t understand that tracking data is different, or what it means. When you tell them not to give their data to big corporations, they think you mean any data, and don’t know that they can get data that you might not want shared

The thing is though, that most people don’t know why that’s a problem, and privacy advocates seem to think that ‘you’ve got a door on your bathroom’ is a gotcha.

If someone is giving Google their home address and work address, and planning the route to get traffic data, they’re not going to be concerned when Google Maps suggests their work address as a destination through the week. Same for their shopping data. ‘Of course Amazon knows what I like, I do my shopping there!’

We need better ways to explain it to people who don’t understand it, and who are not interested in it or the tech behind it. We have a big problem on Lemmy where we tend to assume that everyone understands the same issues as us, just not as well.

At least two people in my friends list have posted the ‘It’s not Happy Holidays, it’s Merry Christmas’ meme on Facebook. Unsurprisingly, they’re both white guys in their 60s with bald / shaved heads. Both decent guys who help their friends and community, but are sliding more and more into this bullshit.

It’s fucking depressing

Put 50p on the table in front of him, put your hand gently on his shoulder, and with the most sympathetic expression you can manage, say ‘This is towards the cost of some headphones. I hope your situation improves soon.’