Let’s say you Open Facebook and see a warning. You click, and it’s horrifying when you see someone posted a really bad photo and Tagged Friend. That tag is nefarious, because it means that whenever anyone searches the internet about you or anyone else tagged in that photo or for any matter related to the event you are attend, that remarkable image will display. It sticks to your identity and gets dragged along, like a piece of toilet paper on a shoe.
The misery we inflict on others through digital machines, often without realizing it, is just the most obvious pain. The more pervasive abuses are designed to go away on their own. And this auto-poison is progressing at such a furious rate that science fiction just a few years ago now reads like news today. Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel, Super Sad True Love Story, for example, depicts a future world in which open data is completely the norm and shameful possibilities lurk in every nook and cranny. Credits appear on the public display when characters pass by a “credits column” in the vicinity. Advanced mobile phones, or äppäräts, can scan the net worth and financial history of each passerby. If someone in a bar tells an unsuccessful joke, their “hotness” and “personality” scores will plummet in real time.
Abuses like this have been widespread, especially in China, where state surveillance runs without the slightest restraint. There are government-recognized social credit scores, some of which rate a certain person if surveillance cameras catch them lighting up in a no-smoking area or playing too many video games. Others use AI-equipped cameras that can identify individuals based on a combination of facial features, posture, and gait. So if someone is at work and is caught walking, the smart camera can tag the name and personal information of the violator and project it through a digital billboard. Or similarly, you could be punished for littering the subway or smearing the ruling party online. Your various violations may also be published, by name, on Weibo or WeChat, the internet giants in China.
No matter where we live, some of us judge much better than others in our relationship with the expansive network that links data to shame and stigma. Those most vulnerable to exploitation tend to be the most desperate, those who lack money, knowledge or spare time are more likely to reach for their digital baggage, or simply those who are not. has a tradition of being treated badly. These are the people who are disproportionately poor or marginalized and have the least control over their identity. Their lives can be defined and poisoned by shame machines: the diet industry, drug dealers, for-profit prisons, welfare regulators, the list goes on. continue. Those machines attacked them relentlessly.
But shame has a second life in the data economy. Evacuations, conversations with child protective services or the law, trips to casinos — all leave a rich stream of information, creating a nuisance for many organizations. Shameful data providers. These extend beyond social networks to the official economy of credit rating agencies, mortgage brokers, and parole boards, as well as the plethora of scammers and scammers. The most embarrassing episodes are digitized, systematized, and then processed using hundreds or thousands of different algorithms to scale up the people involved, monetize them, and often permanently strip them away. their chance.
