Just listened to Naomi Brockwell talk about how AI is basically the perfect surveillance tool now.

Her take is very interesting: what if we could actually use AI against that?

Like instead of trying to stay hidden (which honestly feels impossible these days), what if AI could generate tons of fake, realistic data about us? Flood the system with so much artificial nonsense that our real profiles basically disappear in the noise.

Imagine thousands of AI versions of me browsing random sites, faking interests, triggering ads, making fake patterns. Wouldn’t that mess with the profiling systems?

How could this be achieved?

  • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
    201·
    1 month ago

    Obscuration is what you’re thinking and it works with things like adnauseun (firefox add on that will click all ads in the background to obscure preference data). It’s a nice way to smear the data and probably better to do sooner (while the data collection is in infancy) rather than later (where the companies may be able to filter obscuration attempts).

    I like it. I am really not a fan of being profiled, collected, and categorized. I agree with others, I hate this time line. It’s so uncanny.

    • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      I still don’t really understand adnauseum. What is the difference in privacy compared to clicking on none of the ads?

      • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 month ago

        Whatever data profile they already have on your can be obscured to make it useless vs them probably trickling in data.

        Think of it like um…

        Having a picture of you with a moderate amount of notes that are accurate, vs having a picture of you with so much irrelevant/inaccurate data that you can’t be certain of anything.

        • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
          4·
          1 month ago

          But the picture of me they have is: doesn’t click ads like all the other adblocker people (which is accurate)

          Why would I want to change it to: clicks ALL the ads like all the other adnauseum people (which is also accurate)

          • JustinTheGM@ttrpg.networkEnglish
            2·
            1 month ago

            They build this picture from many other sources besides ad clicks, so the point is to obscure that. Problem is, if you’re only obscuring your ad click behavior, it should be relatively easy to filter out of the model.

            • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
              2·
              1 month ago

              You are just moving the problem one step further, but that doesn’t change anything (if I am wrong please correct me).

              You say it is ad behaviour + other data points.

              So the picture of me they have is: [other data] + doesn’t click ads like all the other adblocker people (which is accurate)

              Why would I want to change it to: [other data] + clicks ALL the ads like all the other adnauseum people (which is also accurate)

              How does adnauseum or not matter? I genuinely don’t get it. It’s the same [other data] in both cases. Whether you click on none of the ads or all of the ads can be detected.

              As a bonus, if adnauseum would click just a couple random ads, they would have a wrong assumption of my ad clicking behaviour.

              But if I click none of the ads they have no accurate assumption of my ad clicking behaviour either.

              Judging by incidents like the cambridge analytica scandal, the algorithms that analyze the data are sophisticated enough to differentiate your true interests, which are collected via other browsing behavious from your ad clicking behaviour if they contradict each other or when one of the two seems random.