I posted this in general at the request of one of our esteemed chat members.
It was requested that I detail what I presented to a religious congregation. These are some notes from one such talk. This may become a living document as more talks are had and I stumble on more resources on counter propagandizing the normies into valuing their privacy.
Sevens presentation sources
PS. I am leaving out the theological bits like prophecy, to avoid holy wars in chat.
Surveillance capitalism
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff | Goodreads
- Harvard professor says surveillance capitalism is undermining democracy — Harvard Gazette
- Lost In The Scroll: The Hidden Impact Of The Attention Economy
- Paying Attention: The Attention Economy – Berkeley Economic Review
Porn addiction
- Pornography addiction: A neuroscience perspective - PMC
- The Psychological Impacts of Internet Pornography Addiction on Adolescents | Humaniora
Dark Patterns
Totalitarianism
5GW
Systematic Censorship and Narrative Shaping
- Twitter Files
- Covid
Examples Given in presentation
- Say youre 15 years old, you have the latest iPhone, an assortment of mobile games, TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube. You also have an xbox.
- Advertizing records from Youtube show you have watched 4 hours of videos this week on CS;GO skins gambling.
- Apple’s advertizing records show that 3 of the games installed on your phone have been associated with a proclivity towards gambling
- Microsoft advertizing records show that you play fortnite consistently when you come home from school. Chat records show you associate with players with similar proclivities.
- Tiktok records show you spend 30% more time watching clips containing elements of random chance games compared to baseline.
- Google’s records of your search history indicate you were looking up tutorials for buying the fortnite in-game currency.
A data broker will have access to this and far more. At a glance you can see a pattern. Now every company with an interest can target you where youre weakest.
- Steam and the xbox store will push games with an association with gambling to the forefront of the home page.
- Youtube will promote more of the same types of videos with a concentration on gambling
- Iphone game developers will introduce lootbox mechanics with a requirement for in-game currency be purchased
- You’ll be influenced to ask your parents for vbucks cards from family and relatives, to be used on this gambling mechanis,
- Tiktok will attempt to start feeding you content and advertisements on legitimate gambling like poker, and betting platforms for esports.
- Search results will have gambling links in the sponsored area of the google search.
- You’re organised part of a cohort of students from your geographical area with similar interests. Your friend buys a new product that is likely to make you jealous. Advertisers may advertise to you to prime you to want to buy that item yourself.
Specific talking points I liked
1971, Psychologist and economist Herbert A. Simon wrote about attention scarcity.
Info overload leads to a poverty of attention.
“Obtaining attention is obtaining a kind of enduring wealth, a form of wealth that puts you in a preferred position to get anything this new economy offers.”
In 2014, Shoshana Zuboff coined the term Surveillance Capitalism
I define surveillance capitalism as the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data.
In 2023 alone, $853 billion in advertizing revenue generated.
Similarly, in 2023 the types of content in which we ought not be watching as an industry was valued at $1.1 Billion up from $976 Million the previous year.
Everything you do, online and offline, is constantly surveilled with very little exceptions. A record of your entire life is created and mined for useful datapoints. The phone in your pocket is the main culprit.
I also related dark patterns to things like fortnite vbucks buying screens and phone games that make it super easy to buy stuff and not even realize you did it. Especially for young kids
You kind of get the idea
I purposefully switched to gambling from porn to make the audience less uncomfortable in the examples section. Easy enough to drag and drop a different scenario like onlyfans or whatever
As for recommendations
- If you can do it from the computer, do it from the computer
- install an adblocker, nextdns or adguard can do content blocking, ublock origin is a good option too
- use a password manager, privacy begins with decent security
- uninstall apps you dont need
- Try to divorce yourself from social media as much as possible.
I didn’t get too technical due to the time constraint.
I also recommended the site I found here thanks to one of you. https://digital-defense.io/
As for theological aspects, its known well enough that in abrahamic religions, nearish to the end of times things get whacky with mind games and trickery and one ought to be solid and not expose onesself too much to the psyop