Comment by api

Dystopian: the surveillance potential, both from a big surveillance (corporate / government / political) and an individual surveillance (stalkers) perspective.

Not dystopian: the crime solving potential, the research potential, the historical narrative reconstruction potential, etc.

It's a pattern I keep seeing over and over again. There seem to be a lot of values that we can obtain, individually or collectively, by bartering privacy in exchange for them.

If we had a sane world with sane, reliable, competent leadership, this would be less of a concern. But unfortunately we seem to have abdicated leadership globally to a political class that is increasingly incompetent and unhinged. My hypothesis on this is that sane, reasonable people are repelled from politics due to the emotional and social toxicity of that sector, leaving the sector to narcissists and delusional ideologues.

Unfortunately if we're going to abdicate our political sphere to narcissists and delusional ideologues, sacrificing privacy at the same time is a recipe for any number of really bad outcomes.