Comment by kordlessagain
1 day ago
Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace, leaked deeply sensitive health information and pregnancy status, domestic abuse disclosures, and prescription drug use to LinkedIn via embedded ad trackers.
It’s a pattern we’ve seen across government and private sectors: infrastructure designed for care is being exploited for behavioral targeting through advertising motions. The public doesn’t expect their health decisions to be fed into social ad networks, but the platforms already assume ownership of that data trail.
And of course, it’s all connected. The same companies monetizing behavioral profiling at scale are now running the most powerful generative AI systems. Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, is also the key infrastructure partner of OpenAI. Meta's ad tools were present on these health sites too. Google’s trackers are everywhere else.
When you strip away the techno-mystique, what’s driving the AI and data arms race isn’t wisdom. It’s ego, power consolidation, and a pathological fear of being second.
And Sam Altman? He’s not stupid. But brilliance without wisdom is just charisma in a predator suit. Why do you think all these services tie directly into AI?
Would we be surprised to learn of 10x this level of leakage to Facebook? Based on the social tracking I've casually observed via browser tools when signing up to a variety of services, I'd be surprised if it's not. The weird thing here is that it's LinkedIn getting the data, not that it's being sent.
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What we call "power" is not a property of a person, but a function of networks of relationships. A king is only "powerful" insofar as his authority is recognized. The moment his perceived authority is lost, the moment no one or few recognize it, is the moment he no longer has "power".
In other words, it only works if there is enough social support for it. It requires our complicity.
Most people with ASPD (what you call sociopathy) are not able to build these sorts of networks. They're impulsive. They are over-represented among the homeless. They are poor at planning or foreseeing the consequences of their actions. These are not exactly conducive to building these social networks. A sociopath is more the street thug or the gangbanger and less the CEO of a corporation.
It's the idea that class warfare will get us anywhere good that's brutally naive at this point.
What do you define as “class warfare?” Do you agree that the current status-quo hyper-consolidation of wealth our economy has fostered since act least 1972 is already an ongoing type of class warfare?
And finally, why do you think class warfare can’t get us anywhere?
Class warfare is already happening from the top down.
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I love it when enforcing laws and fairness is perceived as "class warfare."
I think class warfare will get the working class further than whatever is being done at the moment honestly.
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I think publicly leveling accusations against other commenters downgrades the quality of the conversation—and it's against the forum rules too.
You can email the mods if it's something that can be moderated, but please keep it private! It makes things worse if this kind of accusation happens to be wrong. (Also makes things worse if it's right). Often it's singling out an actual, real person for unpleasant scrutiny they didn't expect or want.
"Remember the human."
Which rule did I break, exactly? I just stated a fact.
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>And Sam Altman? He’s not stupid. But brilliance without wisdom is just charisma in a predator suit. Why do you think all these services tie directly into AI?
I don't think AI would come up with this line
Funnily enough, that's the line that made me suspicious it was AI. I've seen that structure and that sort of metaphor many times from ChatGPT. And it's not like GPT shies away from criticizing Altman (https://chatgpt.com/share/682623aa-eac0-8000-9fa3-d039580a01...). The rest of the comment doesn't set off any alarm bells for me.
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