#data exploitation

[zomb13s]

I’m getting abused

This academic paper will explore the socio-economic impact and the loss of freedoms resulting from systemic exploitation and subjugation following the solicitation for the Vice President of the Council of State in the Netherlands. The paper will critically analyze how those in power, benefiting from the status quo, manipulate societal dynamics to maintain their authority, while others striving…

[starrypawz]

I know I'm shouting into a void of many voices but just this latest AO3 scrape incident is just I don't even know

Like I'm just so fed up of this like relentless implementation of AI in the most unethical ways possible like my fics have been harvested but then it's also like chances are it is to freaking late and so many aspects of my existence have been harvested for AI and I'm just fucking tired of this shit.

[queen-mabs-revenge]

communist generative ai boosters on this website truly like

[wisteriaclaw]

GODDDDDD just realized data went thru gaining sentience and learning how to navigate the world without anyone there to help him... GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH *head in hands fingers gripping at disheveled hair*

[beescake]

on a casual note i don't see why anybody on tumblr would want their posts getting sucked into the ai stream

so please tick 'prevent third-party sharing' for each of your blogs, and remind each other to do so as well

[raffaellopalandri]

Book of the Day - Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

Today’s Book of the Day is Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis, written in 2023 and published by Vintage Publishing. Yanis Varoufakis is an economist, politician, and activist, former finance minister in Greece during the 2015 debt crisis. He has an academic background rooted in political economy and game theory. His work is filled with moral clarity, often absent in…

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

This isn't surprising.

[omegaphilosophia]

The Social Consequences of Marketing

Marketing, while essential for businesses and economies, has also been criticized for causing harm to society in various ways. Here are some significant ways in which marketing has negatively impacted society:

1. Promotion of Consumerism

Excessive consumption: Marketing often encourages the idea that happiness and success are linked to material goods, promoting a culture of consumerism. This has led to excessive consumption, debt, and environmental damage, as people are driven to buy more than they need.

Planned obsolescence: Companies sometimes design products with limited lifespans, encouraging consumers to buy new versions frequently. This practice contributes to waste, depletion of resources, and increased consumer spending.

2. Exploitation of Insecurities

Body image and self-esteem: Advertising in industries like fashion, beauty, and fitness often exploits people's insecurities by promoting unrealistic beauty standards. This can lead to mental health issues such as low self-esteem, anxiety, body dysmorphia, and even eating disorders.

Fear-based marketing: Some marketing strategies use fear to sell products, such as insurance, security systems, or health products, by making consumers feel unsafe or inadequate without them.

3. Targeting Vulnerable Populations

Children: Marketing often targets children, who are particularly susceptible to persuasive messages. This leads to the commercialization of childhood, with kids exposed to unhealthy food, consumerist values, and a materialistic mindset from an early age.

Low-income groups: Companies sometimes market harmful products, such as payday loans or unhealthy foods, more aggressively to low-income populations, exacerbating financial hardship or health problems.

4. Perpetuation of Stereotypes and Social Divides

Gender roles: Marketing often reinforces gender stereotypes, portraying women as caregivers or men as breadwinners, thereby perpetuating outdated norms that limit gender equality and diversity.

Cultural appropriation and tokenism: Some brands use cultural symbols or minority groups in marketing campaigns without understanding their significance, which can lead to cultural appropriation and tokenism, alienating and misrepresenting marginalized communities.

5. Environmental Damage

Overemphasis on fast fashion and disposable goods: Marketing has contributed to the rise of fast fashion and a throwaway culture, promoting short-term use of cheap, disposable products. This has serious environmental consequences, including pollution, resource depletion, and the generation of vast amounts of waste.

Greenwashing: Some companies falsely market products as "environmentally friendly" or "sustainable" in an attempt to capitalize on consumers' eco-consciousness, misleading the public and delaying genuine action on environmental issues.

6. Manipulation and Misinformation

False advertising: Companies sometimes make exaggerated or false claims about their products, misleading consumers and creating false expectations. This can be particularly harmful when it comes to health products, pharmaceuticals, or weight-loss treatments.

Addictive design: Marketing techniques are increasingly used to promote addictive behaviors, particularly in the context of social media, video games, or gambling. Companies manipulate users through behavioral nudges and psychological triggers that keep them hooked.

7. Invasion of Privacy

Data mining and surveillance: With the rise of digital marketing, companies have gained unprecedented access to consumers’ personal data. Many firms engage in data mining and targeted advertising based on individuals' online behavior, often without full transparency or consent, leading to concerns about privacy and data security.

Personalization and manipulation: Highly personalized marketing can lead to manipulation, as companies can target individuals with ads tailored to their specific vulnerabilities, making it harder for consumers to make objective decisions.

8. Promotion of Unhealthy Lifestyles

Junk food advertising: Aggressive marketing of unhealthy foods, particularly to children, has been linked to rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases.

Alcohol and tobacco marketing: Despite restrictions in some countries, marketing of alcohol, tobacco, and vaping products continues to glamorize these potentially harmful substances, leading to addiction and public health crises.

9. Contributing to Financial Instability

Credit and debt marketing: Marketing of credit cards, loans, and other financial products often promotes spending beyond one's means, contributing to personal debt and financial instability. Predatory lending practices, such as payday loans, are frequently marketed to those already in financial difficulty.

10. Reduction of Authenticity and Creativity

Commercialization of art and culture: Marketing can sometimes reduce art, culture, and creativity to mere products to be sold, stripping them of their authenticity. This can lead to the commodification of creative expression and a focus on profit over substance.

Trend exploitation: By constantly pushing new trends, marketing fosters a culture of superficiality and short-term thinking, where value is placed on what is fashionable or trending rather than what is meaningful or lasting.

While marketing plays a critical role in the economy by connecting consumers with products, it also has significant social, psychological, and environmental consequences. From promoting overconsumption and exploiting insecurities to targeting vulnerable groups and contributing to environmental degradation, marketing practices have often prioritized profit over societal well-being. Reforming marketing to be more ethical and socially responsible is essential for creating a healthier, more sustainable society.

[kidfluencingadvocate]

Happy data privacy week! Here's some pointers and reminders on posting your children online!

-most content on CP websites was posted by the parents first. Just because you think the photo you posted was innocuous, doesn't mean it doesn't exist somewhere on a malicious website.

- teaching your kids about internet privacy and forbidding them from posting on social media, getting a phone etc. Does NOTHING for them if you're not following those rules yourself. ESPECIALLY if you're going around posting images of your children.

-set boundaries with your family members about not reposting or sharing content of your children outside of a group chat.

-a pictures worth a thousand words yadda yadda BUT- physical pictures are worth a gazillion. And they minimize the risk of people stealing images of your children.

[nando161mando]

It has nothing to do about "protecting" privacy, but rather gatekeeping your data for only the corporations that bribe your politicians.

[malaloba]

Just read the phrase "which I really doubt that you're running something that's pre-2003" in my networking security lecture and I'm just

-stares in The Magnus Protocol-

[wisteriaclaw]

anyways, i refuse to assimilate the movies into my interpretation of canon. data and geordi are living on earth with a horde of cats, and they have one or more adult daughters. they are life partners, something akin to a qpr but they have never labeled it.

data has that streak of grey in his hair. he is a teacher. he has accepted his preexisting reactions to stimuli as his own form of emotions. he has abandoned his quest to become more human, abandoned starfleet, and found that he is still himself regardless

he never sacrifices himself for humans who have taken so so so much from him. never.

never.

[istan-idraw]

This just shows that people have no idea what AI actually is. It sounds fancy and all but it's just another computer/code that does work based on what a human tells it to.

For example:

You press buttons on an elevator to tell it what floor you want it to take you

You tell an AI machine to create a video and it does that based on data it already has/has been given to it

AI CANNOT THINK YOU FOOLS

AI IS JUST AS INTELLIGENT AS THE DATA YOU FEED IT

So in this case the victim did not talk to the killer from beyond the grave or any shit through whatever video you made

It wasn't even the victim who did that

It was the person who made the video. That video was their thoughts. Unless there's a way you can talk to the dead or maybe heard the victim say 'I FORGIVE THE KILLER' as he was being killed.

ALSO THE VICTIM FORGAVE THE KILLER?

You want me to believe that someone forgave their killer and not that this entire stunt was just another sign of people misusing AI? If i kill someone and then present an AI VIDEO of that person forgiving me, is it acceptable to forgive me? FUCK NO I COMMITTED A CRIME AND NO AMOUNT OF FORGIVING CAN OR SHOULD SAVE ME FROM PUNISHMENT.

Also feeding a dead person's pictures to an AI machine is just diabolical to me

We live in actual hell

[collapseofindustrialcivilization]

Empire Of Extraction: AI, Capitalism, And The Unraveling Of The Biosphere

A Brave New AI World The 21st century is witnessing a convergence of crises unprecedented in both scale and complexity. At the forefront is the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence (AI), a technology whose development and deployment have become emblematic of broader shifts in global power, economic extraction, and environmental destabilization. AI’s rise is not occurring in a vacuum; it…

[jcmarchi]

Telegram and xAI forge Grok AI deal

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/telegram-and-xai-forge-grok-ai-deal/

Telegram and xAI forge Grok AI deal

Telegram has forged a deal with Elon Musk’s xAI to weave Grok AI into the fabric of the encrypted messaging platform.

This isn’t just a friendly collaboration; xAI is putting serious money on the table – a cool $300 million, a mix of hard cash and equity. And for Telegram, they’ll pocket 50% of any subscription money Grok pulls in through their app.

This leap into the world of AI couldn’t come at a more interesting time for Telegram. While CEO Pavel Durov is wrestling with some pretty serious legal headaches, and governments in certain corners of the globe are giving the platform the side-eye, the company’s bank balance is looking healthy.

In fact, Telegram is gearing up to raise at least $1.5 billion by issuing five-year bonds. With a rather tempting 9% yield, these bonds are also designed to help buy back some of the debt from their 2021 bond issue. It seems big-name investors like BlackRock, Mubadala, and Citadel are still keen, suggesting they see a bright future for the messaging service.

And the numbers do tell a story of a significant comeback. Cast your mind back to 2023, and Telegram was nursing a $173 million loss. Fast forward to 2024, and they’d flipped that on its head, banking a $540 million profit from $1.4 billion in revenue. They’re not stopping there either, with optimistic forecasts for 2025 pointing to profits north of $700 million from a $2 billion revenue pot.

So, what will Grok actually do for Telegram users? The hope is that xAI’s conversational AI will bring a whole new layer of smarts to the platform. This includes supercharged information searching, help with drafting messages, and all sorts of automated tricks. It’s a play that could help Telegram unlock fresh monetisation opportunities and compete with Meta bringing Llama-powered smarts to WhatsApp.

🔥 This summer, Telegram users will gain access to the best AI technology on the market. @elonmusk and I have agreed to a 1-year partnership to bring xAI’s @grok to our billion+ users and integrate it across all Telegram apps 🤝

💪 This also strengthens Telegram’s financial… pic.twitter.com/ZPK550AyRV

— Pavel Durov (@durov) May 28, 2025

However, Telegram’s integration of AI is all happening against a pretty dramatic backdrop. Pavel Durov, the man at the company’s helm, has found himself in hot water.

Back in August 2024, Durov was arrested in France and later indicted on a dozen charges. These aren’t minor infringements either; they include serious accusations like complicity in spreading child exploitation material and drug trafficking, all linked to claims that Telegram wasn’t doing enough to police its content.

Durov was initially stuck in France, but by March 2025, he was given the nod to leave the country, at least for a while. What happens next with these legal battles is anyone’s guess, but it’s a massive cloud hanging over the company.

And it’s not just personal legal woes for Durov. Entire governments are starting to lose patience. Vietnam, for instance, has had its Ministry of Science and Technology order internet providers to pull the plug on Telegram. Their reasoning? They say the platform has become a hotbed for crime. 

Vietnamese officials reckon 68% of Telegram channels and groups in the country are up to no good, involved in everything from fraud to drug deals. Telegram, for its part, said it was taken aback by the move, insisting it had always tried to play ball with legal requests from Vietnam.

Back to the xAI partnership, it’s a clear signal of Telegram looking to the future and seeing AI as a core pillar of it. The money involved and the promise of shared revenues show just how much potential both sides see in getting Grok into the hands of Telegram’s millions of users.

The next twelve months will be a real test for Telegram. Can the company innovate its way forward while also showing it can be a responsible player on the global stage?

(Photo from Unsplash)

See also: Mistral Agents API: Transforming complex AI workflows

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[nando161mando]

Morocco’s social security data breach exposes wage theft and worker exploitation

https://ponderwall.com/index.php/2025/05/17/morocco-cnss-breach/