I think when I first thought of starting a blog, I had privacy in my mind. We live in a world of ignorance. Humans are great at denying stuff. Keep us long in a situation and we’ll keep moving ignoring the fact that something wrong even exists. Look at what is going on in Hong Kong at the moment and ask your friends what their opinion of the situation is, and you’ll understand what I mean to say. Link.

Similarly, this whole scenario of Facebook and Google, basically the 5 big companies (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Micrsoft) recording your data and using it, mainly without your permission for their own purposes disturbed me. Sure you don’t have anything to hide but does that mean you will agree to live in a house made of glass where you undress to prying eyes ? Absolutely not. That is the reason why I quit Facebook/Instagram, largely replaced WhatsApp with Telegram and Signal, limited use of Google services, set up NextCloud as my own cloud space replacing Google Drive and OneDrive and moving more and more towards open source software. This blog serves as my own place. I own the data I post.

Frankly, it’s a shame what the internet has come to just in order to sell some ads.

Another thing that fascinates me is going back to the roots of internet. Before the advent of social platforms, we had individual webpages where the person owned a site, posted stuff and people who actually wanted to read, visited the webpage. Everything was done to pass on information without either party thinking of ‘likes’ and ‘hearts’. I want to visit that time again with this website. I want to put my views and have meaningful discussions. Having my own exclusive space eliminates the thought of getting most upvotes and hitting popularity within confines of a virtual ecosystem.

I don’t intend to write huge journalistic articles. That’s not my intention here on the blog. Though I’d be glad if my posts encourage you to dig deeper and uncover facts on your own. I intend to write my thoughts on world and personal events here and what I think of them. After all that’s the point of a personal blog isn’t it ?

Coming back to privacy issues with Facebook, you can start with the links in this post and look up for more on the internet. Take a look here.

Your data is used to train Artificial Intelligence. How ? suppose you Google stuff before exams. Look up some medical terms and procedures. Simple. Harmless searches. Right ? Google is capable of figuring out that there is a surge of similar searches in one particular college. Using it’s machine learning and AI it predicts there is an exam coming up next day. Based on your searches it predicts how intelligent you are. Predicts how much you’ll score. Predicts how successful you’ll eventually be in long term. Which you confirm by posting on Facebook.

So what’s the harm ? Well for one example, they track your political opinions. Track what is it that you complain most about on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. Then compile that data. Share it with political leaders visiting your constituency who use it to highlight issues in their speech to impress the local people. This is just one example. Read more here.

Such data was used in both Indian and US presidential elections.

I might sound a person with a tinfoil hat but consequences are beyond what we presently think of. We just know things when they finally materialise and much of what I’m trying to say here has already been done & dusted. You have access to all the facts on privacy and issues with tech giants widely available on internet. You can decide what to do with it. I have just chosen not to participate. As far as I have understood, people need drastic examples to shake them off their apathy and in present world where you are constantly bombarded with news from all directions, it’s hard to focus on what matters.

What has become easy, is to read and move on.