You are absolutely correct, which is why this and even your comment is a distraction. Regardless of how much we dislike the sophisticated surveillance regime you can’t deny material reality: it exists.

The correct thing to do is to materially destroy it. Its current existence is the threat, not a theoretical oh, it might be compelled to do something to me. The actual fact it could do something to you now is the issue. It is doing things to you right now. Every user of these commercial entities labours freely for these trillion-dollar companies.

E.g.: A Google android phone provides data to Google which they use in their commercial mapping-software, which they sell access to. “Oh, but I get free-access to Google maps; if my mobile-computer spies on me to improve Google maps then it’s beneficial to be spied on.” Such reasoning is trotted out ceaselessly, but it ignores the commercial nature of Google: other companies (& governments) are required to pay a license to use it. You’re a rube labouring for free. You are an employee of Google, only you don’t realise it; neither does the law. You materially impoverish yourself whilst enriching a capitalist corporation. The data you’re giving away has value. Even if you want to deny that value consider the following: you pay for the hardware, the data connection and the electricity that enables the extraction of that data. !Socialise the losses privatise the profits! Free access to Google maps isn’t charitable. It’s a requirement to extract labour from you that improves Google maps. (EDIT 3: this is an important point that I wish to impress upon the reader: that improvement allows Google to demand higher prices from other commercial entities [& governments]. If the product stagnates then the price does too. To prevent this you are required to purchase increasingly sophisticated mobile-computers to extract increasingly sophisticated data sets.

Have any of you used commercial software recently? Consumer computers are fucking super-computers, yet Microsoft windows and Adobe’s PDF reader lags like a motherfucker dancing in molasses under the ocean in a pit of sand–just wtf!)

You might as well praise your employer for providing shelter whilst at work. How charitable of them. Gee golly, I sure am pleased my employer lets my use a building whilst I labour for the owners. Gee golly, they’re so charitable that they’re not demanding a rent. (Satire.)

I will reiterate: it exists now. Ask yourself what can you do now to weaken what it is you’re fighting. This cartoon distracts from the fact that Apple is a private surveillance-corporation. Don’t use Apple controlled computers. That is the correct line.

Yes, your data will be inadvertently collected by rubes, but this cartoon says nothing about that fact. This cartoon is just a distraction. It shouldn’t be applauded by those who want privacy. It should be critiqued for what it is: a distraction.

EDIT: Apple would love this cartoon. Apple do not want to share their power with any government. This cartoon creates social-pressure to ease governmental oversight of their private, for profit fiefdom. This cartoon only aids Apple. Critique this cartoon.

EDIT2: just look at the fucking cartoon: Apple’s mobile-computer is on the left, brightly light. It’s white like virgin snow. It’s painted as a good thing. Apple’s mobile-computer is a private prison. It’s anything but good.

FINAL EDIT: on the topic of Google maps. I was shocked to learn that a store’s manager refused to comply with Google’s terms for being listed on Google’s maps. The shock was not from their refusal, but the requirements Google were demanding. They wanted a video that showed how to access the store (located within a larger commercial building) and privileged information. This was dressed up as attestation that they were in fact an employee of the store and therefore the data was valid and correct. However the privileged information they wanted was absurd: passwords to store safes and company logins.

That was what I was told by the manager. For those who work within businesses do these requirements sound familiar? Is Google actually demanding such information as a requirement for new listings?

I never said it was AI slop but that’s an etymologically interesting thing you’ve got going on there, if I was a scientist I’d look into it