Google, my Intrusive Robot Overlords
Oct. 5th, 2016 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2dRAldh:
Oh Google. You know everything about me, and I’ve more or less happily collaborated with that– I leave Location on, and carry my phone everywhere. I check in at restaurants, I leave reviews, I post photos in public places, I never log out, I never go incognito, I sign in with my real name everywhere, I’m super cooperative. I’m a stool pigeon for you and I don’t care. I just don’t care, it’s fine. You’re going to have the data anyway, I might as well keep it as accurate and up-to-date as possible. (I like to go back through my Timeline and see where I’ve been. I have a terrible memory, it’s kind of comforting.)
The problem is, I can’t actually talk to you. You listen to everything I say, you mine my data in astonishing ways I’d never before considered, but I can’t actually tell you anything about it.
So I’m just going to blog about it.
Today’s observation:
Please stop popping up to ask me to upload photos of my workplace every time I take a photo with my phone near my workplace. Think about this for one moment. You know this is my workplace; you know everything, and plus I probably told you. Like I said, I’m extremely cooperative in your agenda of universal data-mining.
What kind of photos do people take in their workplace, on their personal phone?
9 times out of 10, I am taking a photo of my outfit or my hair or my shoes or my manicure or my socks, to either upload to my friends on social media because I look cute, or to look at to make sure my skirt’s not tucked into my tights or something. Very occasionally, it is a covert photo of my cute undergarments to send to my romantic partner to give them a little thrill. I feel like this is sort of what people use camera phones for; I am not ashamed of this and not particularly worried about what anyone thinks of me for doing this, but I am also not eager to publicly show off that I do this quite so much?
That last 1 time out of 10, it is either “can you believe no one changed the toilet roll”, “this mess is unbelievably fucked-up what kind of animals work here”, “this customer is legit wearing a satin jacket entirely bedazzled with cat silhouettes i am astounded and jealous”, “okay this machine is really really definitely broken for real”, or “can you believe what fucked-up thing the construction workers are doing to our building now!”
IN WHAT UNIVERSE would anyone sane wish to upload ANY ONE OF THOSE PHOTOS to a public-facing page associated with the business where they work???
I have NEVER ONE TIME taken a photo in my workplace for work purposes on my phone. I have MANY TIMES taken photos in my workplace for work purposes on some sort of business-owned device to upload via more formal venues for business reasons. This may be because I work in a camera store and do product photography, but I honestly feel that this would apply for many businesses. There would be a more formal process to making a social media post advertising some thing than “take five photos, upload every single one to Google Maps”.
I don’t think I’m atypical in this. So stop interrupting my bathroom-mirror selfies, will you?? Good lord. I live in abject terror that one of these times I’m going to absently click “yes”, and my place of work’s Google Maps page will be festooned with an inappropriate personal photo of mine and I won’t know how to take it down. Like, I have nightmares about this, I’m not making that up. STOP IT.
Oh Google. You know everything about me, and I’ve more or less happily collaborated with that– I leave Location on, and carry my phone everywhere. I check in at restaurants, I leave reviews, I post photos in public places, I never log out, I never go incognito, I sign in with my real name everywhere, I’m super cooperative. I’m a stool pigeon for you and I don’t care. I just don’t care, it’s fine. You’re going to have the data anyway, I might as well keep it as accurate and up-to-date as possible. (I like to go back through my Timeline and see where I’ve been. I have a terrible memory, it’s kind of comforting.)
The problem is, I can’t actually talk to you. You listen to everything I say, you mine my data in astonishing ways I’d never before considered, but I can’t actually tell you anything about it.
So I’m just going to blog about it.
Today’s observation:
Please stop popping up to ask me to upload photos of my workplace every time I take a photo with my phone near my workplace. Think about this for one moment. You know this is my workplace; you know everything, and plus I probably told you. Like I said, I’m extremely cooperative in your agenda of universal data-mining.
What kind of photos do people take in their workplace, on their personal phone?
9 times out of 10, I am taking a photo of my outfit or my hair or my shoes or my manicure or my socks, to either upload to my friends on social media because I look cute, or to look at to make sure my skirt’s not tucked into my tights or something. Very occasionally, it is a covert photo of my cute undergarments to send to my romantic partner to give them a little thrill. I feel like this is sort of what people use camera phones for; I am not ashamed of this and not particularly worried about what anyone thinks of me for doing this, but I am also not eager to publicly show off that I do this quite so much?
That last 1 time out of 10, it is either “can you believe no one changed the toilet roll”, “this mess is unbelievably fucked-up what kind of animals work here”, “this customer is legit wearing a satin jacket entirely bedazzled with cat silhouettes i am astounded and jealous”, “okay this machine is really really definitely broken for real”, or “can you believe what fucked-up thing the construction workers are doing to our building now!”
IN WHAT UNIVERSE would anyone sane wish to upload ANY ONE OF THOSE PHOTOS to a public-facing page associated with the business where they work???
I have NEVER ONE TIME taken a photo in my workplace for work purposes on my phone. I have MANY TIMES taken photos in my workplace for work purposes on some sort of business-owned device to upload via more formal venues for business reasons. This may be because I work in a camera store and do product photography, but I honestly feel that this would apply for many businesses. There would be a more formal process to making a social media post advertising some thing than “take five photos, upload every single one to Google Maps”.
I don’t think I’m atypical in this. So stop interrupting my bathroom-mirror selfies, will you?? Good lord. I live in abject terror that one of these times I’m going to absently click “yes”, and my place of work’s Google Maps page will be festooned with an inappropriate personal photo of mine and I won’t know how to take it down. Like, I have nightmares about this, I’m not making that up. STOP IT.
