Unrepentant Dragon of Darkness

Francesca Hong

by the way. Fox News misspelled her name and I haven't seen anyone correct it yet.

Like Mamdani, she identifies her political stance as a democratic socialist. She's polling ahead of every other Democrat nominee, as well as Republican nominees, for governor which is huge given how purple Wisconsin is as a state.

She's the only Democrat candidate who has supported moratoriums on building AI centers. She has a plan to legalize marijuana in Wisconsin and use the tax revenue to fund rural broadband (high speed internet for rural communities, like farmland which is abundant in Wisconsin). She's staunchly pro-LGBTQ+, pro immigration, and supports abolishing ICE. She would also be not only the first woman governor of Wisconsin, she'd be the first Hmong governor in the United States at all.

This is her campaign website if anyone wants to see what she's all about.

Francesca Hong

by the way. Fox News misspelled her name and I haven't seen anyone correct it yet.

Like Mamdani, she identifies her political stance as a democratic socialist. She's polling ahead of every other Democrat nominee, as well as Republican nominees, for governor which is huge given how purple Wisconsin is as a state.

She's the only Democrat candidate who has supported moratoriums on building AI centers. She has a plan to legalize marijuana in Wisconsin and use the tax revenue to fund rural broadband (high speed internet for rural communities, like farmland which is abundant in Wisconsin). She's staunchly pro-LGBTQ+, pro immigration, and supports abolishing ICE. She would also be not only the first woman governor of Wisconsin, she'd be the first Hmong governor in the United States at all.

This is her campaign website if anyone wants to see what she's all about.

I’m back from a week at my mom’s house and now I’m getting ads for her toothpaste brand, the brand I’ve been putting in my mouth for a week. We never talked about this brand or googled it or anything like that.

As a privacy tech worker, let me explain why this is happening. (spool of thread emoji)

First of all, your social media apps are not listening to you. This is a conspiracy theory. It’s been debunked over and over again.

But frankly they don’t need to because everything else you give them unthinkingly is way cheaper and way more powerful.

Your apps collect a ton of data from your -phone. Your unique device ID. Your location. Your demographics. Weknowdis.

Data aggregators pay to pull in data from EVERYWHERE. When I use my discount card at the grocery store? Every purchase? That’s a dataset for sale.

They can match my Harris Teeter purchases to my Twitter account because I gave both those companies my email address and phone number and I agreed to all that data-sharing when I accepted those terms of service and the privacy policy.

Here’s where it gets truly nuts, though.

If my phone is regularly in the same GPS location as another phone, they take note of that. They start reconstructing the web of people I’m in regular contact with.

The advertisers can cross-reference my interests and browsing history and purchase history to those around me. It starts showing ME different ads based on the people AROUND me.

Family. Friends. Coworkers.

It will serve me ads for things I DON’T WANT, but it knows that someone I’m in regular contact with might want.

To subliminally get me to start a conversation about, I don’t know, fucking toothpaste.

It never needed to listen to me for this. It’s just comparing aggregated metadata.

So. They know my mom’s toothpaste. They know I was at my mom’s. They know my Twitter. Now I get Twitter ads for mom’s toothpaste.

Your data isn’t just about you. It’s about how it can be used against every person you know, and people you don’t. To shape behavior unconsciously.

Apple’s latest updates let you block apps’ tracking and Facebook is MAD. They’re BEGGING you to just press accept and go back to business as usual.