This article is the best answer to people who say that they have “nothing to hide”.

China’s Communist Party is stepping up the use of big data to predict people’s behavior in a bid to identify “social risks” and prevent violent attacks on members of the public in the wake of the car killings in Zhuhai earlier this month.

  • m_f@midwest.social
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    3 days ago

    I wonder if there’s any crossover between the privacy and tankie parts of Lemmy. To me, this is obviously taking advantage of people’s fear to force in authoritarian measures, à la Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse. I mostly wonder because I was just talking about China on Lemmy, saying that they’re not any better than any other country, even if you ignore propaganda/Sinophobia/whatever. Moves like this make that argument obviously true to me.

    • lad@programming.dev
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      3 days ago

      To be an advocate for the devil here, I’d say that it’s a compelling goal to build a safer environment by leveraging technology. My view is that the problem is it usually gets used for other goals like personal power, wealth, influence, removing competitors, etc

      • m_f@midwest.social
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        3 days ago

        Totally. Even if you have good intentions, it will be abused at some point, either by you or someone else with bad intentions.