[FRIAM] How I made my own VPN server in 15 minutes | TechCrunch

[glen ☣]

On 04/13/2017 10:44 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> That I'm a likely person to pay two bucks to watch episode-by-episode of Expanse?    Or to want a Tesla?   Not sure who "we" is?

Maybe I'm too dense to grok the subtle criticism.

Walking back up a few branches, Vladimyr made a comment about (I think) flocking, mob rules, tribalism, etc.  My response was that the _essentialist_ concepts he (many of us, actually) would _like_ to see governing people's behavior don't really exist.  What does exist is the trace, the behavior, the artifacts.  Do I really care why someone voted for Trump?  No.  Do I care about the deeply held secrets that someone thinks (because they believe in rationality) ultimately cause their behavior?  No.  What I do care about is how likely you are to pay by episode vs. by subscription, whether you're more likely to pirate than buy, whether you're an early adopter, etc.  And for that, all we need is fashion.  We don't need essentialist things like intellect and morality, even if I'm wrong and they exist.

Walking back further, this whole section of the tree branched off of your comment that "it depends on what you want to accomplish".  I suspect 99% of the targeted ads can be avoided with a slow (yearly?, quarterly?) cycle of temporary VPNs running in the cloud (ephemeral IP addresses).  Perhaps 90% of it can be avoided just by using HTTPS-Everywhere.  But I'd like something a bit deeper, as would most people, I think, even if _only_ to avoid being pigeonholed into stereotypes.  Yes, I'm a former libertarian who's become a (much hated these days) neoliberal and who's teetering on the edge of social democrat (despite knowing democratic socialism is more coherent).  I have a similar problem with atheism and other people labeling me that way ... even the labels and categorizations others use feels totally inadequate to me ... like Nick's unfair condemnation of post-modernism.  I want to avoid all these exogenous and fictitious categorizations entirely.  Hence, strong privacy maps directly to autotelism and self-governance.

Hopefully that helps.  "We" are the optimizing exploiters who want to sell you things/ideas you don't need, while limiting the amount of effort required to extract the maximum amount from your wallet.  If we have to coercively brainwash you in order to do that, then that brainwashing is just a business expense, no more no less.

On a personal note, I have a friend who (as part of his start-up) monitors twitter data for sentiment.  In lieu of interpersonal contact, he also uses those tools to keep track of his (distal) friends.  As much as my narcissist homunculus likes the idea of being microcosmically influential in that way, and as much as my dork homunculus likes the idea of such a network monitoring ability, the whole idea kinda sickens me ... in the same way Facebook sickens me.  Is it dehumanizing to define a person based on their online ephemeris?  Or am I just a hyper-sensitive, delicate snowflake?

-- 
☣ glen