Just listened to Naomi Brockwell talk about how AI is basically the perfect surveillance tool now.

Her take is very interesting: what if we could actually use AI against that?

Like instead of trying to stay hidden (which honestly feels impossible these days), what if AI could generate tons of fake, realistic data about us? Flood the system with so much artificial nonsense that our real profiles basically disappear in the noise.

Imagine thousands of AI versions of me browsing random sites, faking interests, triggering ads, making fake patterns. Wouldn’t that mess with the profiling systems?

How could this be achieved?

  • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    It’s an interesting concept, but I’m not sure the payoff justifies the effort.

    Even with AI-generated noise, you’re still being tracked through logins, device fingerprints, and other signals. And in the process, you would probably end up degrading your own experience; getting irrelevant ads, broken recommendations, or tripping security systems.

    There’s also the environmental cost to consider. If enough people ran decoy traffic 24/7, the energy use could become significant. All for a strategy that platforms would likely adapt to pretty quickly.

    I get the appeal, but I wonder if the practical downsides outweigh the potential privacy gains.