
The Fantasy of Opting Out - kawera
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-fantasy-of-opting-out/
======
wortelefant
'Obfuscation' \- feeding fake data to privacy-violating apps - is a promising
solution for everyone who does not want to miss out on apps like whatsapp, or
become the digital equivalent of a prepper with only self-compiled OSS or
hobbyist software.

On Android, XPrivacy and the newer version XPrivacyLua use this approach, but
they require the Xposed framework to run. I wish this approach would be more
common:
[https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacyLua/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacyLua/blob/master/README.md)

~~~
dawg-
The problem is that for lots of these services, some of the coolest features
come from them having your real data. I would love to be able to yell across
my house and tell google to re-order toilet paper, or check what's on my
calendar for lunch tomorrow, or remind me to change the guest bathroom
lightbulb when I get home from work today. Seems like overly aggressive
obfuscation would take a lot of features off the table.

I wish there was a way to have the techno-optimist frictionless utopia without
giving up full control over my own personal data. The right to be forgotten in
the EU is a good step towards that, but we need to go a little farther I
think. It just seems like nobody is really sure exactly what that will look
like yet.

~~~
Grangar
A little farther you say? That's not nearly going to cut it. We need radical
change. The only way data will be 'safe' is if it lives on your device and
verifiably only leaves it when intended. Any untransparent store is per
definition prone to abuse.

By now I think it's safe to say the free market has provably failed us. We
should require regulatory bodies to enforce an open standard for this if you
ask me.

------
yummypaint
I see this a political problem rather than a technological one. Obfuscation
certainly helps, but it's still death by 1000 cuts. Even if information is
sufficiently hidden in 2019, it might be retained for many years and
eventually decoded. Modern privacy issues were pretty unforseeable when most
democracies were founded, and seems to be the kind of thing that
constitutional amendments were intended to address. I dont know why there isnt
more political will surrounding this despite the level of discontent. Maybe
people assume that problems arising from tech can only be solved with tech.

