1. Request your data. Email idv-privacy@withpersona.com or privacy@withpersona.com. Under GDPR, they have 30 days to respond.
2. Request deletion. The verification is done. LinkedIn already has the result. There is no reason for Persona to keep your passport scan and facial geometry on their servers. Ask them to delete it.
3. Contact their DPO. dpo@withpersona.com — that’s their Data Protection Officer. If you want to object to them using your documents as AI training data under “legitimate interests,” this is where you do it.
4. Think twice before verifying. That blue badge might not be worth what you’re trading for it. A checkmark is cosmetic. Biometric data is forever.
hbcondo714•Feb 24, 2026
As heavily discussed here 3 days ago (Persona is the same company LinkedIn uses for their ID verification process):
I verified my LinkedIn identity. Here's what I handed over
Organize in your country and advocate for data deletion jubilees, organize in your country to champion new taxes against US digital services, organize in your country to advocate for homegrown solutions over US tech.
If you aren't actively organizing you aren't going to accomplish anything.
Remember that people power trumps monetary power, but you have to commit for people power to work.
giancarlostoro•Feb 24, 2026
> advocate for homegrown solutions over US tech.
Some sweet irony about this btw.
shimman•Feb 24, 2026
Why? Every country on Earth is capable of creating and maintaining software. There is nothing unique about America or Silicon Valley (outside of the massive amounts of corporate welfare), devs can be found anywhere and who better to write software for local citizens than the local citizens themselves?
We know how useful open source software is, there's no reason why this can't be replicated across the planet.
giancarlostoro•Feb 24, 2026
Not because they cannot do it, but because why they're doing it, which in turn becomes what they're doing. America is being perceived as isolationist, so countries solve that by becoming isolationist about what software they use, whether its open source or not is kind of irrelevant, though in several cases the software will primarily be focused on the countries own language.
The better alternative in my eyes is to contribute to existing open source, and only if the US becomes hostile against this, fork said code and move on.
ArchieScrivener•Feb 24, 2026
Why the myspace music?
OneDeuxTriSeiGo•Feb 24, 2026
whimsy
cloverich•Feb 24, 2026
Going to copy paste my comment from today's other thread[3] that linked to this:
Note also there's a direct response from Persona's security team here[1], and a lot of back and forth from Rick on Twitter[2].
It seems like at every technological step, we're sold the dream and delivered the meme. We always end up with the worst possible combination of players, ideas and outcomes; with the promise of what the said technology delivers in terms of additional freedom or free time never realised. How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?
ferguess_k•Feb 24, 2026
From my understanding, we are pretty close to a Dystopian world where all elites of a certain group collaborate to run a Super Leviathan. We still gotta choose our flavors, which may not be feasible in maybe 5-10 years when those leviathans clash into each other.
measurablefunc•Feb 24, 2026
Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp covers it pretty well I think.
ferguess_k•Feb 24, 2026
Thanks for the recommendation.
dylan604•Feb 24, 2026
It's not like this is surprising, there have been plenty of sci-fi books/movies that have predicted this very thing. How many movies have the haves lived above ground/off planet, while the have nots have lived underground or stuck on a apocalyptic planet.
This is just furthering the previous history. Currently, the lords have just been able to keep the serfs appeased to a longer extent. Every time in history or in sci-fi, the serfs reach a breaking point and rise up.
measurablefunc•Feb 24, 2026
This time is different. The global system is not going to fall apart like isolated kingdoms in the past.
dylan604•Feb 24, 2026
You seem very confident. This seems to imply you feel the haves will know when to leave enough on the table for the have nots to still feel like they are a part of the haves. I'm not so confident in that.
measurablefunc•Feb 24, 2026
People in technologically advanced societies have more than enough & the people who are not as advanced can not do anything that will have any effect on the people who own the fighter jets, missiles, robot factories, & "internet" satellites. The current system has no historical precedent. It is very close to an almost perfect panopticon w/ an associated media & police apparatus to keep everyone docile & complacent. Like I said, this time is different.
atmavatar•Feb 24, 2026
Far more likely is that we head back to a feudal era where data mining tech is used to identify and eliminate potential rabble-rousers. Once enough production is automated, all remaining have-nots are exterminated.
neuralRiot•Feb 24, 2026
The weak link is that for “the haves” to have, the “have -nots” are needed. To have or to not is just a comparison, a millionaire needs the poor to be rich and to feel special otherwise when everyone is special nobody is.
neuralRiot•Feb 24, 2026
“ Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting – Haruki Murakami”
ferguess_k•Feb 24, 2026
I don't think they are going to rise up this time. Maybe laying down flat is more realistic.
mistrial9•Feb 24, 2026
> Every time in history or in sci-fi, the serfs reach a breaking point and rise up.
this is a completely "WEIRD" outlook.. more than half of humanity has no illusions about "proletarians" they do not even discuss it that way
source: born and raised WEIRD
whynotmaybe•Feb 24, 2026
Ever read 1984?
Who wins at the end?
ramuel•Feb 24, 2026
Winston, obviously. He left behind his free-thinking and became unwavering to Big Brother. Truly a winner
dylan604•Feb 24, 2026
Why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill?
nehal3m•Feb 24, 2026
All these memes are burning through our natural reserves at an ever increasing rate so it will crumble when the bread baskets fail anyway.
dlenski•Feb 24, 2026
It's "socializing the losses and privatizing the gains"… but now alarmingly supercharged well beyond purely financial realms, and into really basic and fundamental matters of individual physical autonomy and liberty.
xg15•Feb 24, 2026
> How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?
Having any kind of agency in those things would be a start.
If <FAANG bigcorp of your choice> announces with great fanfare "We're building this totally awesome new technology that will make everything better! And the best thing? You won't have to do anything, we will auto-update all your devices/accounts/etc with it for free! Trust us!", then whether you personally believe their enthusiastic predictions or not doesn't really matter a lot - you will get it anyway, unless you spend a lot of energy to deliberately avoid the new technology.
ctoth•Feb 24, 2026
The story here is that a FedRAMP-authorized system had 53MB of Vite dev source maps exposed on a production government endpoint. That's not "sold the dream, delivered the meme," that's a specific auditable compliance failure. Meanwhile a fintech engineer explaining that this is all standard legally-mandated KYC infrastructure got flagged to death. The interesting question isn't whether technology betrays us, it's why US law requires this surveillance apparatus in the first place and why the security assessment apparently missed checking for /vite-dev/ on a government system.
Also every technological step? Ever? Really? This wouldn't happen to be typed on a computer from a climate-controlled room on a nice global network or anything?
cthalupa•Feb 24, 2026
Except it wasn't a production endpoint and there's no actual security risk in having source maps available. It's more annoying to read source code that has been minified, but if a security professional tells you that minifying source code is something that increases security, you should be wondering what other bullshit they've pedaled you.
I'm not a fan of persona and have gone out of my way to not provide my details to them even before this, and I really dislike Thiel, but... let's be honest about the stuff we're complaining about.
storus•Feb 24, 2026
I think that's a natural outcome of a model where sociopaths climb to the top, with a layer of sycophants beneath them that shield normal workers from perceiving the amount of depravity going on at the top which would make them unable to continue and tank the business. AI might remove the reliance on regular folks and give sociopaths direct execution of all ideas they have without any moral opposition, and that would explain a lot of the rush for AI everywhere we see nowadays.
nemooperans•Feb 24, 2026
This is the part that doesn't get enough attention. The historical check on concentrated power wasn't just democracy or law — it was that executing any large-scale agenda required thousands of people who could refuse, drag their feet, or leak. AI doesn't just automate tasks — it removes the human friction that was always an informal veto on the worst ideas.
The surveillance apparatus isn't new. What's new is that you need fewer people with moral objections in the loop to operate it.
asdfman123•Feb 24, 2026
I would be careful with this kind of reasoning, because it suggests corruption within a corporate model is inevitable, giving it implicit permission to continue existing. It's not inevitable.
vpShane•Feb 24, 2026
Birds of a flock crap on everybody together.
> How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?
I wouldn't call this much of a society if people's eyes are open.
What's that song name, they don't care about us?
asdfman123•Feb 24, 2026
It's already crumbling. That's why we have AI-powered fascism in the first place. Society destabilizes and a significant fraction of the population says "perhaps authoritarianism is a good thing." It's never worth it, though.
FarmerPotato•Feb 24, 2026
Is this whole unreadable article just the output from an AI prompt describing a techno-thriller?
random3•Feb 24, 2026
likely not. Being able to read and understand is a matter of skill though. There are many technical terms there that may make it unreadable for non-technical audience. But you can solve that by having an AI explain it to you.
FarmerPotato•Feb 24, 2026
It's not my skills. I could decipher it if I spent enough time (and had plain text).
the presentation is bad.
verbosity.
it takes many words for the writer to make a point.
that darn cat.
sebastianconcpt•Feb 24, 2026
Quite some time ago I said and now repeat:
Convenience is to humans, what bulb lights at night are to bugs.
esafak•Feb 24, 2026
No pain, no gain.
themafia•Feb 24, 2026
Ridiculous.
Stand in a hospital and say that credibly. I recommend the maternity ward.
Our consumer markets are a wreck. We have no federal watch dog exercising any authority. We have unchecked intelligence agencies actively trying to enslave the world. Our desire for convenience is not the problem, the people taking advantage of it are.
moffkalast•Feb 24, 2026
Why a hospital? There's very little convenience at play when it's a life and death situation.
It is what drives the market quite a bit at least. It's why we've produced over 2 billion cars and use them every day to pollute our own air so we don't have to walk two blocks. Most home appliances are convenience personified, the dishwasher, the microwave, the clothes dryer. It's why we have supply chains up the wazoo to bring products from all corners of the globe to everyone's nearby supermarket, a large amount of it getting thrown away when it's expired unsold. We fly across countries for something as pointless as a business meeting. Hell people now even order a taxi for their food, so they don't have to go out to get it.
Modern life is like at least 60% wastefulness in the name of convenience. Of course people with the option to do so will exploit the one thing that's easily exploitable, that's like water flowing downhill.
Ancalagon•Feb 24, 2026
Why do so many engineers willingly build things bad for society?
mikestew•Feb 24, 2026
Because it generally pays well. I'd wax philosophically, but you can come to your own conclusions from that little nugget.
popalchemist•Feb 24, 2026
Enough said. Since the "death of God" (per Nietzsche - the collapse of the metaphysics underpinning our morals and therefore cultural norms and behaviors) the modus operandi has been the utilitarian "get what's yours."
Reprehensible.
Additionally, people are typically only "gifted" on one domain -- if one's gifted enough in the domain of intellect to become a SWE, they're typically lacking elsewhere, whether that be in moral scruples or the ability to discern social things such as when they're working for sociopaths.
Ancalagon•Feb 24, 2026
You'd think empathy would just be enough, its very sad.
asdfman123•Feb 24, 2026
Every accusation is a confession
bigyabai•Feb 24, 2026
"Oh boy! I've always wanted to work at [microsoft, apple, google, etc.]!"
mikestew•Feb 24, 2026
Those aren't the companies OP is necessarily talking about. "I've always wanted to work at Persona!", said no one, ever.
bigyabai•Feb 24, 2026
All of them are complicit. You only need ~50 greedy sociopaths to work at Persona, and 10,000 dumb-as-rocks engineers hyped to work at Microsoft/OpenAI and "stop the bad guys" or whatever the boogeyman du-jour is.
We saw it with Bitlocker, we saw it with Client Side Scanning, we see it with Salt Typhoon. Most people that work on weaponized surveillance systems are entirely apathetic, or see themselves as righteous. Even when the system is known to be bugged, obviously flawed, or outright controlled by a foreign adversary.
globalnode•Feb 24, 2026
oh thats a good point, kind of like the military or how propaganda demonizes the enemy during a war, its us vs them.
bombdailer•Feb 24, 2026
Because the highest values of our society are non-values.
konart•Feb 24, 2026
Because they do not believe it is bad?
Because they believe that it's going to be build anyone by someone else?
Because they are not entirely aware of what they are building?
Ancalagon•Feb 24, 2026
All these bright engineers can’t figure out the bigger picture of what they’re building?
“Hey boss man, why does this database ‘tracked_individuals’ have columns for license plate numbers, home addresses, and political affiliations?”
Give me a break
bigyabai•Feb 24, 2026
Yes, many of them don't. They're fed convincing cover-stories like "we need this to stop CSAM" or "this prevents terrorism", and then put on a security theater about E2EE and military-grade cryptography. They sleep like a baby because most of them genuinely think they're the good guys, hell, even people on HN appear to buy the obvious lie whenever Client Side Scanning or Flock is brought up.
You can hire sociopaths to work the ~1% of jobs that require a complete understanding of your moral bankruptcy. Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Larry Ellison, none of these people ever apologized for their ethical flexibility because it's precisely what qualifies them for such a lucrative job. Persona can be a shell org with 20 evil engineers while their partners absentmindedly do the integration work.
Immoral boot-licking human engineers are indistinguishable from LLMs.
Ancalagon•Feb 24, 2026
What's crazy is I know engineers like this in real life - and they're good engineers! So I know they do exist, but their existence to serve their company or CEO no matter what is completely foreign to me. Like, you're smart enough to understand that large codebase and generally function as a member of society, but you've completely given up your higher level decision making for someone or something that would throw you away in an instant.
FrustratedMonky•Feb 24, 2026
Evil pays more.
A common theme in a lot of movies, books, et..
GorbachevyChase•Feb 24, 2026
The tribe won’t eat their own… probably.
biophysboy•Feb 24, 2026
Many tech execs operate under the thesis that china & the democratic party are existential threats that warrant a surveillance/military/police ramp up. Meanwhile, many tech employees are credulous and frequently adopt self-serving geopolitical narratives. The current macro trends don't help (huge defense budgets, bad labor market power, China is in fact more powerful)
Edit:forgot the most obvious... money
ej88•Feb 24, 2026
surprised nobody responded with the most straightforward, occams razor explanation
they think what they're doing is actually good for society
not everyone is in the hackerspace libertarian / socialist sphere
i used to work for a place that used persona despite it adding extra friction to signups (literally resulting in less paying customers to the dismay of PMs) because it was worth it to combat fraud. theres a tradeoff in everything
globalnode•Feb 24, 2026
also theyre subject to the same anonymity many other internet users have and so dont feel any consequences for their actions.
4midori•Feb 24, 2026
In response to a data request, Persona says:
Hi there,
Thank you for reaching out to Persona.
Please note that Persona primarily operates as a "service provider" or "processor" for its customers. We act as a "business" or "controller" only for specific services, such as identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, and Reusable Persona. To learn more about how Persona manages your personal data, please refer to our privacy notices, which can be accessed through the following link: https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-notices
If you wish to exercise your privacy rights related to services where Persona is a "service provider" or "processor," please contact the entity using our service, as they are the "controller" of the data. We will assist the relevant customer to fulfill your data subject rights, but we do not handle such requests directly on their behalf.
For any privacy rights request related to services where Persona acts as a "business" or "controller," including identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, Reusable Persona, and personal data related to our sales, marketing activities, or website browsing on withpersona.com, please use our Data Subject Request (DSAR) available at the following link: https://withpersona.com/dsar
For all other inquiries, we will respond as soon as possible.
###
TL;DR we're not responsible, go talk to LinkedIn.
plagiarist•Feb 24, 2026
This is the same complete bullshit trying to remove oneself from political donation emails. "Oh, okay, we will remove you from that one." Days later it's a "different campaign." Sometimes it's the exact same people from weeks ago who have just renamed their campaign and started sending again.
We need far stronger laws for all of it, which will never happen because the rot and corruption has fully metastasized.
The right wing went full censorship and surveillance after the Charlie Kirk assassination. It is probably not a coincidence that they targeted Discord first, because the suspect was in a Discord group.
They promised freedom of speech and liberty and this is what we get.
hactually•Feb 24, 2026
nothing to do with left or right. the UK is left and has the most Orwellian surveillance state outside of China
jcranmer•Feb 24, 2026
The right wing went full censorship and surveillance long before the Charlie Kirk assassination. Anyone who believed that the right wing (or the left wing, for that matter; let's not pretend that censorious dipshittery is not bipartisan) was honestly promising freedom of speech as opposed to merely freedom of speech they like and censorship of speech they don't like was at best willfully blinding themselves to the actual actions of politicians.
exceptione•Feb 24, 2026
> long before the Charlie Kirk assassination.
True. The free speech narratives are mere tools against opposition by promoting the most childish and stupidly rigid interpretations thereof, not something they really believe in. The whole conservative project is doomed from the start as it has to confront science and progress like the emancipation by women, lgbt people and certain ethnicities.
> or the left wing, for that matter;
Both sides is uncalled for. Far left and the horse shoe, sure, but a) far left is very fringe, and b) lets not equate them with a well funded actual insurrection of oligarch and white nationalists with a paramilitary.
sfink•Feb 24, 2026
> > or the left wing, for that matter;
> Both sides is uncalled for. Far left and the horse shoe, sure
How so? Leftist censorship became quite popular on college campuses. The ACLU supported that, and got cold feet about promoting free expression more generally when it involves organizations or causes it doesn't like.
I'm a lefty, but I absolutely believe that both the left and right are deep in the "ends justify the means" weeds with respect to censorship and free expression. I blame partisanship. People used to have respect for someone taking a principled stand that didn't necessarily align with their overall political position. Now, that's just seen as a weak maneuver in the all-important "my team vs your team" culture war.
> The whole conservative project is doomed from the start as it has to confront science and progress like the emancipation by women, lgbt people and certain ethnicities.
I have no idea what you're talking about. There is no scientific or natural law that says that every human should have equal rights. You can totally make a stable society that discriminates on color of skin or possession of certain documents or account balance. It's been done many times. Science does not tell you whether votes should be extended all the way to ducks but not chickens, nor whether unauthorized presence in a country should enable arbitrary search and seizure. Plus, "conservative" covers a lot of ground and someone can legitimately be extremely conservative and completely opposed to (eg) white nationalism at the same time.
Sure, conservatism is always going to drag its heels to recognize and accommodate the sorts of progress in science and other understanding that I'm guessing you're thinking of, but progressives can just as easily go too far too fast and be blind to the tradeoffs and principles involved. The "conservative project" can't be doomed; it will always be a different point on a continuum from the "progressive project", and we'll always be able to argue over where the right point is.
Well, at least until we're all dead or so infantilized by our technology that we stop even asking the questions.
exceptione•Feb 24, 2026
> The right wing went full censorship and surveillance after the Charlie Kirk assassination.
No, earlier. US tech is mostly surveillance tech, with Thiel being sponsor and broker for authoritarian right. The doge operation started around day 1, and was a breach into the government to steal data that was yet out of reach for certain plotters.
This is a hilarious personal website! Love it. Even better that it's paired with quality content.
spacebacon•Feb 24, 2026
I felt alive again as I used my physical volume button down to focus on the text.
int32_64•Feb 24, 2026
Based on the Anthropic distillation news yesterday I wonder if the AI companies are going to get much tighter with KYC.
disgruntledphd2•Feb 24, 2026
I get the KYC concerns for API access, but I'm sortof baffled at why they'd need all of the AML stuff, given that they're not payment processors/financial institutions.
Or does Persona provide that by default? Don't know much about their service...
yoyohello13•Feb 24, 2026
This website really is incredible!
dylan604•Feb 24, 2026
"what is Fivecast ONYX? an AI-powered surveillance platform purchased by ICE for $4.2 million and CBP for additional license costs. according to Fivecast’s own documentation and EFF’s reporting, they do automated collection of multimedia data from social media and dark web, build “digital footprints” from biographical data, tracks shifts in sentiment and emotion, assigns risk scores, searches across 300+ platforms and 28+ billion data points, identifies people with “violent tendencies”"
Glad to know that my tinfoil hat wasn't too tight when social media came to be and this obvious use was predicted. How quickly will not having social media accounts become a crime?
varenc•Feb 24, 2026
According to Persona's damage control article[0], the subdomain had "onyx" in its name because that's the internal code name for the project, and it's named after the pokémon Onyx. No connection to Fivecast ONYX.
I don't really understand why ICE would have a Persona OPenAI connection...?
pseudosaid•Feb 24, 2026
Really? Sounds like they are a customer.
a_victorp•Feb 24, 2026
It's already frowned upon when crossing the border
tamimio•Feb 24, 2026
We need a list of these 300+ platforms
baddash•Feb 24, 2026
thank god there's an annoying fucking cat in the way of what i'm trying to read
noutella•Feb 24, 2026
Move your mouse and the cat will follow
righthand•Feb 24, 2026
On mobile the cat sits in the middle of the screen and does not respond to touch input. The author has been told about the distracting elements and refused to acknowledge it.
testycool•Feb 24, 2026
If I tap somewhere else the cat goes there. I like the website, even though some design choices don't follow UX best practices.
cedws•Feb 24, 2026
Governments in Europe should be seriously scrutinising this with the background conversation of departing American tech going on. Discord users globally were being coerced into handing over their ID to this American surveillance tech. Are we just going to let this go on?
This is the most important section, as the above ones any privacy-conscious person would assume most anyway. I did mention before that we need an open-source platform that tracks the people who work and build such systems. Those are the enablers who have no morals or ethics - a greedy corporation is always greedy, but when the average employee is willing to work full time on building such systems, they need to be exposed publicly, just as they are working relentlessly on violating private people's privacy. It isn't about public humiliation; it's about basic human decency and maintaining a minimum ethical code to abide by. These individuals shouldn't be hired or dealt with, not even a simple connection on LinkedIn.
These individuals are dangerous. They are like rats among us and should be exposed, and I bet some of them are reading this as well.
gslepak•Feb 24, 2026
Does someone have a version that doesn't force you to listen to unwanted music?
Havoc•Feb 24, 2026
In FF you can click on a tab on left side to mute it not sure other browsers
Havoc•Feb 24, 2026
Wonder how many lists I'm on for the unholy sin of saying the glorious american leader is a moron
oth001•Feb 24, 2026
Or for saying Israel shouldn't be committing a genocide.
standardly•Feb 24, 2026
Author was doing such a good write-up, until I saw repeated AI syntax "its not x, but y" and "a is b. b is c. and, c is the final thing in this series of short, punchy sentences". Really tired of this. Why is it so hard to just write naturally? Maybe I'm just easily triggered
firegodjr•Feb 24, 2026
That was writing naturally until AI stole it from us.
Kiboneu•Feb 24, 2026
> OpenAI’s disclosures reference biometric data stored “up to a year.” the source > code shows face list retention capped at 3 years. government IDs retained
> “permanently” per Persona’s practices. which is it?
I keep saying this. This is the playbook -- everything is moving to standardize Sam Altman's biometric authentication cryptocurrency company to use internet services. This has been a slow moving strategy for /years/ and every new step over that period only get closer, not further from this goal.
23 Comments
1. Request your data. Email idv-privacy@withpersona.com or privacy@withpersona.com. Under GDPR, they have 30 days to respond.
2. Request deletion. The verification is done. LinkedIn already has the result. There is no reason for Persona to keep your passport scan and facial geometry on their servers. Ask them to delete it.
3. Contact their DPO. dpo@withpersona.com — that’s their Data Protection Officer. If you want to object to them using your documents as AI training data under “legitimate interests,” this is where you do it.
4. Think twice before verifying. That blue badge might not be worth what you’re trading for it. A checkmark is cosmetic. Biometric data is forever.
I verified my LinkedIn identity. Here's what I handed over
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098245
1.4K+ points, 490+ comments
If you aren't actively organizing you aren't going to accomplish anything.
Remember that people power trumps monetary power, but you have to commit for people power to work.
Some sweet irony about this btw.
We know how useful open source software is, there's no reason why this can't be replicated across the planet.
The better alternative in my eyes is to contribute to existing open source, and only if the US becomes hostile against this, fork said code and move on.
Note also there's a direct response from Persona's security team here[1], and a lot of back and forth from Rick on Twitter[2].
[1]: https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...
[2]: https://x.com/Persona_IDV/status/2025048195773198385?s=20
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136036
This is just furthering the previous history. Currently, the lords have just been able to keep the serfs appeased to a longer extent. Every time in history or in sci-fi, the serfs reach a breaking point and rise up.
this is a completely "WEIRD" outlook.. more than half of humanity has no illusions about "proletarians" they do not even discuss it that way
source: born and raised WEIRD
Who wins at the end?
Having any kind of agency in those things would be a start.
If <FAANG bigcorp of your choice> announces with great fanfare "We're building this totally awesome new technology that will make everything better! And the best thing? You won't have to do anything, we will auto-update all your devices/accounts/etc with it for free! Trust us!", then whether you personally believe their enthusiastic predictions or not doesn't really matter a lot - you will get it anyway, unless you spend a lot of energy to deliberately avoid the new technology.
Also every technological step? Ever? Really? This wouldn't happen to be typed on a computer from a climate-controlled room on a nice global network or anything?
I'm not a fan of persona and have gone out of my way to not provide my details to them even before this, and I really dislike Thiel, but... let's be honest about the stuff we're complaining about.
The surveillance apparatus isn't new. What's new is that you need fewer people with moral objections in the loop to operate it.
> How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?
I wouldn't call this much of a society if people's eyes are open.
What's that song name, they don't care about us?
the presentation is bad.
verbosity.
it takes many words for the writer to make a point.
that darn cat.
Convenience is to humans, what bulb lights at night are to bugs.
Stand in a hospital and say that credibly. I recommend the maternity ward.
Our consumer markets are a wreck. We have no federal watch dog exercising any authority. We have unchecked intelligence agencies actively trying to enslave the world. Our desire for convenience is not the problem, the people taking advantage of it are.
It is what drives the market quite a bit at least. It's why we've produced over 2 billion cars and use them every day to pollute our own air so we don't have to walk two blocks. Most home appliances are convenience personified, the dishwasher, the microwave, the clothes dryer. It's why we have supply chains up the wazoo to bring products from all corners of the globe to everyone's nearby supermarket, a large amount of it getting thrown away when it's expired unsold. We fly across countries for something as pointless as a business meeting. Hell people now even order a taxi for their food, so they don't have to go out to get it.
Modern life is like at least 60% wastefulness in the name of convenience. Of course people with the option to do so will exploit the one thing that's easily exploitable, that's like water flowing downhill.
Reprehensible.
Additionally, people are typically only "gifted" on one domain -- if one's gifted enough in the domain of intellect to become a SWE, they're typically lacking elsewhere, whether that be in moral scruples or the ability to discern social things such as when they're working for sociopaths.
We saw it with Bitlocker, we saw it with Client Side Scanning, we see it with Salt Typhoon. Most people that work on weaponized surveillance systems are entirely apathetic, or see themselves as righteous. Even when the system is known to be bugged, obviously flawed, or outright controlled by a foreign adversary.
Because they believe that it's going to be build anyone by someone else?
Because they are not entirely aware of what they are building?
“Hey boss man, why does this database ‘tracked_individuals’ have columns for license plate numbers, home addresses, and political affiliations?”
Give me a break
You can hire sociopaths to work the ~1% of jobs that require a complete understanding of your moral bankruptcy. Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Larry Ellison, none of these people ever apologized for their ethical flexibility because it's precisely what qualifies them for such a lucrative job. Persona can be a shell org with 20 evil engineers while their partners absentmindedly do the integration work.
Hope this helps.
Immoral boot-licking human engineers are indistinguishable from LLMs.
A common theme in a lot of movies, books, et..
Edit:forgot the most obvious... money
they think what they're doing is actually good for society
not everyone is in the hackerspace libertarian / socialist sphere
i used to work for a place that used persona despite it adding extra friction to signups (literally resulting in less paying customers to the dismay of PMs) because it was worth it to combat fraud. theres a tradeoff in everything
Hi there,
Thank you for reaching out to Persona.
Please note that Persona primarily operates as a "service provider" or "processor" for its customers. We act as a "business" or "controller" only for specific services, such as identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, and Reusable Persona. To learn more about how Persona manages your personal data, please refer to our privacy notices, which can be accessed through the following link: https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-notices
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For any privacy rights request related to services where Persona acts as a "business" or "controller," including identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, Reusable Persona, and personal data related to our sales, marketing activities, or website browsing on withpersona.com, please use our Data Subject Request (DSAR) available at the following link: https://withpersona.com/dsar
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###
TL;DR we're not responsible, go talk to LinkedIn.
We need far stronger laws for all of it, which will never happen because the rot and corruption has fully metastasized.
Persona's side of the story.
They promised freedom of speech and liberty and this is what we get.
How so? Leftist censorship became quite popular on college campuses. The ACLU supported that, and got cold feet about promoting free expression more generally when it involves organizations or causes it doesn't like.
I'm a lefty, but I absolutely believe that both the left and right are deep in the "ends justify the means" weeds with respect to censorship and free expression. I blame partisanship. People used to have respect for someone taking a principled stand that didn't necessarily align with their overall political position. Now, that's just seen as a weak maneuver in the all-important "my team vs your team" culture war.
> The whole conservative project is doomed from the start as it has to confront science and progress like the emancipation by women, lgbt people and certain ethnicities.
I have no idea what you're talking about. There is no scientific or natural law that says that every human should have equal rights. You can totally make a stable society that discriminates on color of skin or possession of certain documents or account balance. It's been done many times. Science does not tell you whether votes should be extended all the way to ducks but not chickens, nor whether unauthorized presence in a country should enable arbitrary search and seizure. Plus, "conservative" covers a lot of ground and someone can legitimately be extremely conservative and completely opposed to (eg) white nationalism at the same time.
Sure, conservatism is always going to drag its heels to recognize and accommodate the sorts of progress in science and other understanding that I'm guessing you're thinking of, but progressives can just as easily go too far too fast and be blind to the tradeoffs and principles involved. The "conservative project" can't be doomed; it will always be a different point on a continuum from the "progressive project", and we'll always be able to argue over where the right point is.
Well, at least until we're all dead or so infantilized by our technology that we stop even asking the questions.
Or does Persona provide that by default? Don't know much about their service...
Glad to know that my tinfoil hat wasn't too tight when social media came to be and this obvious use was predicted. How quickly will not having social media accounts become a crime?
[0] https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...
This is the most important section, as the above ones any privacy-conscious person would assume most anyway. I did mention before that we need an open-source platform that tracks the people who work and build such systems. Those are the enablers who have no morals or ethics - a greedy corporation is always greedy, but when the average employee is willing to work full time on building such systems, they need to be exposed publicly, just as they are working relentlessly on violating private people's privacy. It isn't about public humiliation; it's about basic human decency and maintaining a minimum ethical code to abide by. These individuals shouldn't be hired or dealt with, not even a simple connection on LinkedIn.
These individuals are dangerous. They are like rats among us and should be exposed, and I bet some of them are reading this as well.
I keep saying this. This is the playbook -- everything is moving to standardize Sam Altman's biometric authentication cryptocurrency company to use internet services. This has been a slow moving strategy for /years/ and every new step over that period only get closer, not further from this goal.