What an absolutely devastating year it’s been for digital sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The worlds governments seem to be hell bent on stripping every bit of freedom and anonymity that’s left when using the internet. Social media bans for teens, mandatory ID checks for everyone. Anything deemed to be adult content locked behind an ID gate. Supposedly the governments are now considering making ID checks mandatory to use a VPN as they’ve clocked that people are using these to bypass the systems. We’ve also had the UK government pressuring big tech (not that they’d take much persuasion) to mandate age verification at the OS level on smartphones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bots, the shills and the naive will get behind the rhetoric of “it’s for the children”. It’s never been about the children. Many of the “elites” pushing these agendas don’t have the best track record with children. Epstein files anyone? They could not care less about the welfare of children. This is just an excuse to demonise anyone trying to push back at their draconian surveillance obsession. The mega rich, and the nations they use as puppets, despise the free speech without consequence that comes from an anonymous internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The peer to peer event coverage of things that main media is forbidden to broadcast, the collaboration of knowledge that exposes agendas, the pressure a collective of individuals can apply to big corporations, it all undermines the absolute control of the average person that they desire so badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coupled with this we’ve got entire forests in the US being destroyed to make way for water guzzling data centres. Who asked for all these monolithic buildings? Certainly not the layman. In my social and professional circle I’d estimate that 10% use “AI” in some capacity, even then not to the level that would demand anything other than a small local LLM. Aside from artificially inflating (hey, maybe that’s a better meaning for “AI”; Artificial Inflation!)the stock markets I have an inkling that in time these data centres will become a key part in the mass surveillance engine. “AI” facial recognition, raw data collation, pattern recognition, identifying individuals through their writing patterns, possibly even decrypting encrypted communications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When businesses finally realise they’re not getting any ROI on their “AI” spend, I wouldn’t be surprised if these “AI” companies turn to governments offering the above services alongside the already concerning military applications the US are exploring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It all seems a bit bleak, doesn’t it? What can an individual person possibly do to fight against this? Simple, resist at every opportunity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If greeted with an ID checkpoint online, leave the service. If you have no other choice, upload a fake document. Ideally close your account with the company and make your reason known if given the chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don’t use “AI” for personal applications. Even though you may find it convenient by using it you’re accelerating the progression by training the models, potentially funding with a paid subscription or inflating their user counts. No matter the service you are also completely sacrificing your privacy by interacting with it in any capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If your employer mandates its usage, maliciously comply. Ensure you run up token usage as high as possible with poor quality prompts. Don’t check the outputs too carefully, “AI” is always right remember… Make sure any hallucinations get submitted as work. Also consider reminding your employer of any data protection and legislation that could be applied to it’s usage. If you’re in the UK or EU the UK GDPR, data protection act and the EU AI Act would be a good place to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Minimise your smartphone dependency on your smartphone. Consolidating all of your digital life onto one device that you carry on your person at all times might seem convenient, but it’s an absolute nightmare for privacy. With as many sensors as a smartphone has, and the priveledged access Google and Apple give themselves you are literally giving them everything. Geofencing, unauthorised Microphone access, contact association, health information, even your sexual preferences. You name it, your smartphone is collecting it. There are ways to minimise this; run a “degoogled” phone (ideally grapheneOS), use a “dumbphone” that doesn’t have the ability to collect said data. The most realistic solution for the average person though is just keep the data off your smartphone in the first place. Turn sensors like GPS, bluetooth, NFC, WiFi\/bluetooth scanning off when you’re not using them. Don’t give it your ID, don’t sign into your banking, don’t keep any sensitive data\/pictures\/videos on there. (I’ll go into how I minimise my smartphone risk in a seperate post)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This may all sound a little extreme but this could well be a pivotal time in human history. When we’ve all lost access to the free internet, are monitored through every second of our days and have to fight over minimum wage jobs to feed our families, would you rather be on the side that did their best to stop it or at least slow it down, or the side that embraced it with open arms? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I always like the analogy of the trees voting the axe because the handle was made out of wood. None of this is in our best interests. Shareholders demand profits, governments demand control. Right now those things go hand in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obviously what I’m writing here is my individual take on current events without sources. Please don’t take my word for anything, do your own research and form your own opinions. All I am trying to do is make people more aware of the potential dystopia we’re nonchalantly slipping into.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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