the internet is mass surveillance

or, how fun!

Began getting this error about a week ago whenever someone would send me something from twitter and I’d click the link.

Seems pretty bad!

I did some digging and there seems to be a reason.

Essentially, because I turn off all tracking on my browser and have extensions that enforce this, twitter no longer functions.

Which is a potent reminder that the free and open internet we all believed in growing up has been dead longer than it was really alive. I mean, yes, the internet was around for decades before any of this, but the widespread internet that has been using by billions of people was only very briefly free from massive surveillance operations.

It’s been a decade since Edward Snowden revealed how the government spies upon all of us, but an often forgotten part of those revelations was that most of this surveillance happens through companies like facebook and google and twitter. They monitor everything we do and then create a marketing profile for us that they sell to advertisers.

You’d think that such a thing should have been made illegal the same day it was discovered, yet here we are.

Anyway, have a good long weekend.

Here’s a teaser for an upcoming post that’s actually related to this.