F#&% instagram-- why is the community publishing security sensitive material to instagram

A brief list of the reasons instagram sucks-

I just tried to look at bodhi’s plant more seeds instagram, only to find that they have added a login wall to prevent non users from accessing posts older than 1 year since I last looked at it earlier this week.

My friend has an apple watch and was telling me that the instagram app is spying on him for targeted advertising. To illustrate his point, he opened the instagram app, and then clicked the home button to leave it running in the background. He held up his apple watch, turned to me and said, “gee, wouldn’t it be fun to go out and buy some Birkenstocks right now?”
He then reopened the intagram app, which immediately showed an ad for Birkenstocks.

none of this should come as a surprise, because in late 2016 facebook filed this patent.


The language in this patent looks like it’s tailor made for the constantly active microphones in modern cell phones and smart watches, as well as facebooks own video telecommunications device which was released this year.

and finally,
we know they are scraping all of the text, metadata, and records of other people’s interactions with your posts, all so they can build up a better data set to profile you with.

At this point, the technology is supposedly used only internally for targeted advertising, but we know from the cambridge analytica scandal that they are already selling this utility to big data mining companies and pr firms that use it to target users on an individual basis.

So I ask you all, how long do we expect this to go on before the data ends up in the hands of those whom would use it maliciously?
is it really worth the risk to gain access to the broader commercial cannabis market, especially when purpose built services like this forum are much safer and readily available for our use?

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I’m old school and don’t waste my time with those garbage social networks, never have and never will.

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No FB or IG for me. I may pop in on a link or something. I’m seriously feeling about over with this internet thing. It’s filled with nothing but greed now.

I’ve always been a forum guy for this reason. All my favorite old apps or sites are now too bloated to visit. News sites are the same. Eveytime I swipe the article I’m reading I’m taken to another site because everything is a baited link.

I almost can’t stand using it anymore except for forums. If we did the same shit as IG or FB we would go to jail.

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IG is much more active than any current forum, though I still prefer forums.

I live in a legal state and I’m not inclined to paranoia.

If someone’s watching you specifically, you have way bigger problems.

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I’m also in a legal state, but don’t use instagram.
My real concern is for the people who use instagram for commerce. At a national and international level, you have people buying and selling seeds and clones which we all know is not ok federally.
And on a local level, you have black market street dealers publishing their info permanently to try and make sales in the short term.

I think these are the people who are really vulnerable in that system. Instagram seed and clone selling is practically becoming a standard business model for people trying to break into the cannabis industry.

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@vernal think of it like this. from the perspective of a consumer/ user, instagram is a social networking service for publishing photos.

for the owners of the company, it is a tool for big data acquisition, storage, aggregation, and resale.

even if you are not at risk legally, do you want your personal data to become a commodity?

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the concern isn’t surveillance on an individual basis, but rather big data gathering at a massive scale to create predictive algorithms that profile a certain community.
check out this article- https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/how-cambridge-analyticas-facebook-targeting-model-really-worked/

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Who’s been busted selling seeds since Emery? There’s a hundred USA seedbanks now. Clones are a different story, I am wary of it until the plant is 50 state legal.

And yeah, only a fool would push actual black market product openly on social media.

We live in new and different times.

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the concern isn’t surveillance on an individual basis, but rather big data gathering at a massive scale to create predictive algorithms that profile a certain community.
check out this article- https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/how-cambridge-analyticas-facebook-targeting-model-really-worked/

Big data aggregation and analysis tools like this plus algorithmicaly targeted advertising could really allow a single large corporation like monsanto or marlboro to completely control the industry.
It would be a snap for them to use this toolset for a combination of targeted advertising and pigeon-holing users so they don’t see any competitors or grass-roots alternatives.

Look at any other commercial market segment that advertises on instagram and you will see this trend, from supplements, cosmetics and beauty tratments, to prescription pharmaceuticals.

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It’s taking people too long to understand that the concepts and concerns of individual surveillance no longer apply in this era. the concern isn’t government interference, the concern is that these tools give powerful corporations the ability to create an instant monopoly in any targeted market segment.

all they have to do is analyze the behavior patterns of the most successful social media users within a particular market, analyze the interaction of customers with these groups, and then deploy algorithms to replicate these behaviors on a massive scale while using targeted advertising to guarantee exposure to their desired demographic while ensuring said demographic does not have access to competing products and or services.

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I still use my grandmothers rotary phone with a 50 foot cord and I also use my dick Tracy watch that I won in a box of crackerjacks.
No one spying on me!

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What monopoly? We live in the most diverse marketplace that has ever existed. I remember when there were just 2 kinds of mustard at the grocery store.

No one forces anyone to use social media. I only use IG, not facebook or snapchat or anything. Internet and brick and mortar stores aren’t going anywhere.

Advertising is only going to get better and smarter, we’ll adjust as we always do.

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that’s exactly how I feel as well. everything commercial is moving towards a monthly fee service model instead of a product/ ownership model, and everything free is switching to a business model that increases ad revenue though a combination of targeted ads and clickbait.

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I think the best example so far would be the Washington State legal market. Their legal cannabis market is less regulated than most other states, which gives more power to corporations. The market is largely controlled by several corporations which own multiple subsidiaries, and this is only 4 years since legalization took place.

with their large initial investments and ad budgets and, they were able to scale up and achieve market saturation very quickly while the mom and pop companies were still trying to establish their farms. The lucky ones were bought out.
Many people who had been in the cannabis industry (medical or black market) for years lost their newly established businesses which they had built up with their own savings, not venture capital investments.

This has been bad for consumers as well, and commercial bud contaminated with mold and pest control chemicals is now common in Washington.

I’m in another PNW state, and there has been a lot of discussion at a government level about how to avoid this outcome for our own legal system.

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I get YouTube adds for nextlight garden systems because my search history implies I’m a professional grower, which I’m not.

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If they decide to watch us later and have access to all this historical and meta analytic data we will have way bigger problems… But short of not using phones and not associating with people who do, I am not sure there is much to be done. I have disabled the FB app (which is in my phone’s firmware) but I use the browser version. I look, but am not active on Instagram.

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How long? It was over before it even started. ALL data gets sent to China.

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EVERYBODY has much bigger problems. Fact is everything including TOR and protonmail are comp’d. This shit is old news thanks to Wikileaks vault 7 drop

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Who da fuq sees ads on anyting? Use these addons on Firefox:

uBlock Origin
Ghostery
NoScript

Aint never see ads again on ne platform. Nobody trackin u.

Also use VPN n Tor Browser.

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:thinking:

:evergreen_tree:

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