@pojntfx 100%.

we built a multi-variate experimentation platform once while i was at nilenso. seeing how a (relatively innocent e-commerce) website sees users was enlightening.

we are rarely aggregate. most of the time, one is seen by corporations and governments as their race, language, purchases, decisions, history, behaviour, ip addresses, device ids, and identity markers. targeting is emergent and (because statistics) unintuitive.

i struggle to explain to even my most hardcore privacy nerd friends that no one gives a shit about their actual identity. each of us is stalked, manipulated, and harmed as hundreds of variables.

the one thing my privacy nerd friends do grok in that equation (that the general public doesn’t) is that if any entity has access to one variable, we should assume they all do.

i wish there were better, cartoonier explanations of this. maybe benn jordan or kzurgizagt will make one.