The rule is it's a taboo word particularly in the US and in English-speaking communities aware of its US history.
In the US, there's an ingroup & outgroup dynamic with the black community where in less formal registers the ingroup may use it
for ingroup disparagement
neutrally
for ingroup solidarity or camaraderie.
However, the ingroup speaks in black vernacular English, so the word sounds different.
You're recognized as a member of the ingroup community if they generally perceive you as such: culture, speech, appearance, other social markers.
Usage by the outgroup is typically treated as insensitive & insulting outside special cases such as quotation & academic discussion.
The euphemism n-word is typically employed to minimize offense.
an individual of the sex that is typically capable of producing small, usually motile gametes (such as sperm or spermatozoa) which fertilize the eggs of a female
a plant having stamens but no pistils
:::
or plainly observe unsolicited speech productions
“What if I would have been armed,” she said. “You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces. Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women? A little bit of mercy. […]"
in singles communities, personals, classifieds, marketplaces (abundant instances)
in book titles & passages containing the word females or males, especially feminist or gender studies literature.
What good cause is advanced by treating nouns female & male as toxic, dirty words?
While OP doesn't appear to be a native English user, this kind of language policing is misguided & exhausting, and we need to police that.
I don't know, man.
I assume they have information they may find in a phonebook; data I voluntarily gave social media & networking such as my school or employment, demographics, relations, peers, & whatever they can glean from peers; my shopping preferences; rough geolocation from my IP address; my ISP, OS, web browser, content I've browsed.
None of this information is particularly valuable to me.
It would take incredible effort for me to code & host a search engine or social media site or the various other free web applications I use.
I value those way more than my junk data that is worthless to me, so the trade-off is obvious.
The government has access to much more sensitive information about me: social security; government issued licenses & registrations; birth, education, tax, property, police, medical, telecommunication, financial records.
Only the law & procedure prevents it from abusing that access.
Without online data brokers, anyone could gather much of the same, less sensitive information about me though plain observation, public surveillance, or interviews: only time & effort discourages them.
Seems like a lack of perspective.
And while I understand that not everything is private, we have laws against gathering public data about people but only if you're just one person.
That's not why.
The reason is nothing you wrote about fits the legal definition of stalking.
A typical legal definition
A person commits the crime of stalking when the person either:
engages in a course of conduct or repeatedly commits acts toward another person, including following the person without proper authority, under circumstances which demonstrate either an intent to place such other person in reasonable fear of bodily injury or to cause substantial emotional distress to such other person; or
engages in a course of conduct or repeatedly communicates to another person under circumstances which demonstrate or communicate either an intent to place such other person in reasonable fear of bodily injury or to cause substantial emotional distress to such other person.
An element of the definition (circumstance) is sorely missing in your claims.
Stalking has less to do with information & more to do with (legal definition of) harassment.
Simply gathering public data about someone isn't a crime.
Expectations of privacy in public are nonexistent.
Your premise is dubious.
Indirect information is not a choice we have offline, either.
So shadow profiles come from either
public information (not private by definition)
information other users shared
information 3rd parties got from each other or the former?
Seems like the problem here is information voluntarily given to someone & shared, ie, 2nd-hand information.
Unless the information is sensitive (government ID, payment information, medical records, etc), can we reasonably expect society not to pick up information about us from our social network?
We can choose not to directly divulge our information, but even offline we never had serious expectations that others won't disclose nonsensitive information they know about us or seen us do.
Unless the information is legally protected offline, we never had a choice to control that offline, so we're not owed that online, either.
Apart from identity theft safeguards, the fuss over data privacy of metadata that was never private and voluntary information (especially information that could be found in a phonebook or gathered from public observation) always seemed overblown & misguided.
I know
the internet wasn't designed for privacy
they have my internet address whenever I connect
they can track my usage of their free service
they have the information I provided
they can coordinate with partners
I'm consenting by using their free service
so why should I act surprised when they do what should be expected to offer that free service?
People who do that strike me as a special kind of stupid: do they think the world just runs on magic?
Free shit in exchange for mostly worthless information & ads I ignore seems like an obvious bargain, but what do I know?
Let's stir everyone into a frenzy to bitch & moan about the ravages of targeted advertising.
You aren’t even right, either. Linux package manager repositories??
Open source gets income through sponsors, profit-earning partners, foundations of profitable interests whose success depends on it.
Their continued earnings & livelihoods incentivize funding it.
No one's success depends on services like lemmy, so there's no compelling incentive for it.
If you can somehow arrange such a dependence for social media (of mostly garbage memes & idiotic opinions) to economically sustain itself, then you're a genius & humanity will owe you a debt.
Depending on the charity of others for a service that doesn't yield some obvious incentive to keep that going seems unsustainable.
It wouldn't surprise me for the system to strain with load & eventually fail.
It already strains in my experience.
Good thinking bailing now: looks like someone knows when they're beat.
It would be incredibly easy to prove me wrong if your claim were true, yet you don't.
Not hard to figure out why.
You basically: just because facts are inconvenient to your argument doesn't mean it's valid to ignore them, pretend they're "propaganda", or evade with irrelevant claims.
So, cool fallacies & evasion, bro.
You're 🤡ing yourself right here.
Credit cards and debit cards can be disabled at a whim. Prone to being fucked up by computer error
That's the beauty
if my card goes missing, I can lock it
unauthorized charges can be reversed
I'm alerted of any charge immediately.
Plus, they extend warranties on purchases & provide purchase protections.
don’t work when the internet is down, or during a disaster with no power.
Unless you carry around a large supply of cash at all times, you'll be in the same bind withdrawing cash: ATMs & account ledgers run on power & networks.
Cash always goes through, though.
That's a problem: anyone can use my cash without authorization.
If they steal it, I have no way to disable it, and it's more difficult to recover.
If I lose it, it's most likely gone.
Cash will always remain king.
Not in terms of security or recovery.
I could withdraw cash & carry it around, but then it won't earn high interest.
Social currency & sanctimonious displays to gain it: also a social construct.