Yes, I have 100% doubt anyone is spying on anyone. I think most of it is paranoia.

I also think this kind of paranoia is detrimental to our evolution as a species.

We should be sharing more, not hiding in our caves.

"Yes, I have 100% doubt anyone is spying on anyone."

You can not possibly examine the evidence and claim 100% that there is no interest in spying on anyone.

Doubt that this particular case has that as the core issue? Sure. But be utterly convinced that literally no one, in any intelligence agency, against any target that might be near some sort of microphone-enabled device, has ever had the thought cross their mind that these things might be useful? No intelligence agency has ever looked at one of these companies hoovering up all the data they can get and installing all this stuff everywhere they can and stroked their chin for a moment?

You're basically claiming the NSA, CIA, Mossad, KGB, MI5, and all other such things have never existed, do not exist, and will not exist. The evidence for this is pretty poor.

I'm not asking you to wake up tomorrow and worry about whether your toaster is secretly sending all your thoughts to the alien overlords, but come on. Live in the world a bit. We're 7-ish billion people here on Planet Earth and they are not anywhere near all to a person nice, wholesome people who wish you all the best and would never even dream of exploiting you even a tiny little bit while they joyously enable you on your life journey of exploration and wonder. You're begging for exploitation.

" they are not anywhere near all to a person nice, wholesome people who wish you all the best" that is exactly how most people are. working and travelling around the world taught me as much.

> We should be sharing more, not hiding in our caves.

I suggest you start, your profile here is even slimmer than mine.

More seriously: while there surely is some paranoia going on, recent events have made me more careful, not less.

you could build a whole internet persona of myself just from the few bits i have written on these forums.

Good point, that has occured to me as well : )

I probably should make a new account every year.

>We should be sharing more, not hiding in our caves.

Ironic coming from a non-eponymous account, and in an era when we share two orders of magnitude more stuff than any other, even pictures of what food we had at diner...

A better version of humanity wouldn't be risking anything by sharing excessively and would get all the benefits of transparency. The humanity of reality is still plagued with bad actors who would throw away everyone's future, throw away civility, seek out despotic rule, etc. We have an elaborate system of incentives and disincentives we rely on to maintain good faith participation in society, and despite our best efforts that system is flawed and also fragile enough that it could worsen dramatically. The way we are centralizing wealth, data, knowledge and power right now is really dangerous in my opinion.

thank you for this high quality comment.

i agree with you in spirit.

>Yes, I have 100% doubt anyone is spying on anyone.

Really? Did you ever hear of a guy named Snowden? Do you understand that our government spends tens of billions of dollars annual to spy on people? Do you understand that Google, Facebook and every other search, advertising and social media company have billion-dollar business models based almost entirely on surveillance and information hashing? I hope you are being sarcastic here.

this is exactly what i was writing about: the paranoia. what does Snowden and the billions of dollars spent on spying have to do with what i buy and what i consume? nothing. no one is coming for us. we're way too unimportant.

Tell it to the Chinese and rapidly expanding system of total surveillance and social credit scores. On the contrary, they are coming for all of us, only here we are opening the door and inviting them in.

coincidentally, i am a BIG fan of that system and fully support any company that brings it over here.

>We should be sharing more...

Why? And what else should we be sharing?

everything. anonymity via transparency.

> We should be sharing more...

The Spanish Inquisition would certainly agree.