Last night today
What a week, eh? "But captain, it's Monday!" Shit.
I was watching Last Week Tonight with John Oliver yesterday, and, while it was cool to see a shoutout to the Fediverse, the whole thing wrapped up weirdly: John Oliver told people to go to a website and follow some instructions to "make yourself less valuable to Meta", which is a nice sentiment, I suppose. But here's the thing:
Oh, before I forget: why didn't you buy another domain name, John Oliver? Why recycle the domain you acquired to procure rat erotica? Domains are dirt cheap these days, man. And johnoliverwantsyourraterotica.com is just unwieldy.
Anyway, while the sentiment is lovely, this doesn't work. In fact, it may actually backfire. Let's start with the obvious problem here: it's not that simple. As Dr. Kate Crawford wrote in Atlas of AI, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Telling a business to not do their business while patronizing said business is very silly if you think about it. And Meta's business VERY MUCH consists of tracking you to serve you ads. That's what they do. It's like deliberately walking into a restaurant and opting out of being waited on and served food.
Even if you do what the website says, who can categorically state that Meta will even honor your opt-outs? And even if they do, they can track you in other ways. And even if they don't, everyone else is. It might feel good to voice your opinion by clicking a couple of buttons, but it won't make a fucking dent. Even worse: it distracts from the actual issue that is the lack of strong data protection laws.
Clicking a couple of buttons is easier than calling your representatives and demanding strong data protection and privacy laws. But, if we've learned anything these past couple of months, doing nothing and thinking you're doing a lot is very much the norm.
You cannot expect John Oliver and comedy writers to do the legwork for you. At some point, you'll need to put your money where your mouth is. At some point, you'll need to take action. Otherwise, you're just full of shit. Want to really make yourself less valuable to Meta? Delete your account. Meta can only profit from spying on you if you're there to be spied on and there to be served ads. But that's just too hard, right? You'd rather just click a couple of buttons that Meta pinky swore will do what you think they do.
If your habits don't change, nothing is going to change. No matter what John Oliver says. Or the EFF. And the EFF is having a real hard time figuring out where they stand. So, it's very good that John Oliver is hellbent on bringing attention to the problem, but the man cannot do all the work.
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