When I left social media 17 years ago, it was partly due to privacy concerns. I love my privacy, and it’s something I don’t compromise on. This had some negative side effects, like harder to maintain connections with people, less convenience and missing out on things. But at the end, I feel it’s still worth it.
I made a decision that my website will be the source of truth of my identity. It’s my server, my domain, my data, and no-one owns whatever I write or photos I upload but me. Well, until AI came around and billion dollar companies decided they plainly don’t give a shit.
The final straw was the latest app that OpenAI released, which allows any asshole to take someone’s photo and create a shitty, but fairly believable fake videos of anyone they like. Deep fakes in it’s infancy was still an expensive operation and the result was clearly fake, but we’re at the point when that’s not the case anymore (at least as long as VCs are willing to foot the bill).
I believe that having your face, publicly accessible to anyone, is a big security issue. Imagine someone taking your photo, generating video of you asking for money and sending it to your elderly parents? Having no visual identity online is the only way to prevent this.
It sucks, and I wish this problem wouldn’t exist, but the cat is out of the bag. It’s the new reality that we need to adjust to, and I’ll do exactly that.