The tech world and its hold on us
Well, let me tell you a story, I recently opened my Snapchat (which I rarely use) and I saw these interesting AI pictures of myself (not bad looking), so I sent them to a friend. And I remarked that I didn’t consent, but I did agree to their privacy policy without reading (is this a legally binding statement?), so they probably have my permission to create those photos.
The non-existent disagree option
And this had me thinking, when last have I seen a disagree with privacy policy button? I know that recently I have been rejecting cookies ( I never receive them anyway), but where can you reject terms and conditions? Does that mean that if you disagree, you should just leave the app? And following the criticism of the tech industry, if we read the policies, we would be shocked by the things that we agree to! But if you have seen how lengthy these terms of use are, you too would and probably “agree and continue” without fully reading or understanding. This ties back to the rewards anyway, what’s an ad or two for endless hours of free scrolling? I say this relating to the fact that most social media apps are free to use. According to Dima Yarovinsky, who made an art exhibition that showed the length of these policies in 2018, the word count of Instagram’s terms of use was 17161. Yes, a whole five-digit number! No wonder less than 10% of users read this through.
What happens when you let someone else think for you?
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Our eyes deceive us
These policies are like a door, and the key to unlocking these services is to agree, not that I have seen an option that explicitly says “disagree”. Privacy is becoming a widely discussed issue. I recently saw a video about these weird “Polaroid pictures with celebrities”. The ones created with/by AI. This raises concerns about consent, but also about truth in a sense. Think about it, we can no longer believe what we see. You know the reference “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see,”? But what do we believe?
We are living in interesting times. If you could get through this article, that will not even be halfway through Instagram’s terms of use, unfortunately.
