Comment by embedding-shape
15 hours ago
> Watching me use my computer in my house or office is spying.
I agree, but once you cross the borders out to the internet, I'd say you need to stop seeing that as "Me sitting at my computer at home", because you're actually "on someone else's property" at that point essentially. And I say this as someone who care greatly about preserving personal privacy.
I deeply hate that this attitude took over even among “hackers”.
Watching people move their mouse and click stuff on “your webpage” is fucking spying. It’s in my browser. On my machine. Not running on your hardware.
Tracking what I do on my own computer doesn’t stop being spying because the program I’m doing stuff in can make network requests. WTF.
> Watching people move their mouse and click stuff on “your webpage” is fucking spying. It’s in my browser. On my machine. Not running on your hardware.
Well, I was mainly talking about network requests, which are quite literally served by "my hardware" when your client reaches out to my servers, and they agree to serve your client. I do agree that it sucks that browser viewports now also are considered "mine" from the perspective of servers, but you do have a choice to execute that code or not, you can always say no.
I don't think it's as much "this attitude took over", people saying that the internet is the wild west and warning you "browse at your own peril" has been around for as long as I can remember.
Yeah server logs don’t bother me. I’m requesting a resource, you unavoidably see that happen.
The attitude that’s changed is that in the 90s and 00s a program that sent information about what you’re doing that wasn’t necessary and expected for how it operates would have been instantly, popularly, and unequivocally labeled spyware by a programmer crowd. Now it’s normal and you get a bunch of folks claiming it’s ok.