Data Poisoning: The Fatal Flaw in Mass Surveillance
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How to use data poisoning to trick the algorithm that’s profiling you (and why “personalization” is more fragile than you think)Note: For education and defen...

Why do this? Because surveillance capitalism wants you to be less free. It wants you to be glued to the screen. It wants you to buy whatever advertisers want you to buy. But you can fight back by deliberately poisoning your data.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    2 months ago

    She’s saying that when you use social media, only like, read, etc., stuff that you want to learn from or you like listening to. Scroll past the flight or flight stuff, that’s the story they want for you. Your feed will quickly be a nice place to hang out and it will poison their data.

    Data poisoning can go a lot further than this. There are fascinating (and hilarious) videos by people who poison their music with inaudible (to humans) noise which, when it’s stolen by an AI company and used to train a model, will cause the model to output unintelligible garbage. Images can also be manipulated this way so that the model sees a completely different image than the human. Then there are the Nepenthes traps for AI data trawlers which trap the trawlers in an inescapable web of nested webpages of nonsense. The future is bright.

  • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    2 months ago

    I wonder if you could make a self-hostable data poisoning automation utility. Put in a bunch of credentials for various social media sites, and it creates unintelligible usage patterns associated with your online identities. Not so much for poisoning training of generative AI, but for destroying any internal profiles any party might attempt to build on you by correlating your online behaviour.

    • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      2 months ago

      Sounds like that alternative to Ublock that I can’t think of the name of right now that not only blocks ads but also gives a click-through input to every single one, poisoning any ad metrics for the ads as well as any targeted ad profiling on you.

  • EaterOfLentils@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    YouTube keeps showing me ads for surrogacy (as in, being a surrogate), which could not be more the opposite of what I want to do in life. Obviously they know I am a woman of childbearing age, but somewhere the algorithm got me very wrong. I just let the ads play though, to let them think the idea doesn’t repulse me beyond anything I can imagine.

  • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    2 months ago

    “fight back against surveillance capitalism and malicious advertisers by watching this youtube video”

    Get a load of this! Can’t make this stuff up…

    • Hazor@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      You gotta meet the people where they’re at to get them informed. If this information was hidden away in some privacy/security-centered blog, a fraction as many people would see it.

      • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        2 months ago

        I wish the fediverse would get a wider user base, like loops and peertube. The more people use it, the more viable it will be as an alternative.

    • bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      2 months ago

      Don’t engage with algorithms, especially ones trying to sell things, like major corporate social media.

      Pretend to be something you’re not, especially vulnerable targeted populations. This lowers their ability easily target minorities.

      • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        So the fact that I occasionally get ads in Spanish, despite being a native English speaker in a mainly English-speaking country, means I’m doing something right?

        • bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          0·
          2 months ago

          I would say so. You can also intermittently make a new profile, and seed it initially with wildly different personal info and interests.

          It is a good practice to restart independent accounts and not reuse them on multiple devices.

          You can also silo types of information, like location, personal stats, email, browsing history, web searches, chat services, calls, etc.

      • faythofdragons@slrpnk.netEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Pretend to be something you’re not

        In my life, I was Noel Gruber who worked at Taco Bell in Uranium City, Saskatchewan. But in my dreams I played a different role. I was Monique Gibeau in post-war France! A hooker, with a heart of black charcoal.