the state is less omniscient and significantly more incompetent than you’d think. overextend their resources at every possible opportunity.  make them cry wolf repeatedly. run their data analysis agents fucking ragged.  and strike. attack.

YES

i’m a postgrad statistics researcher and i can tell you that the state honestly has NO IDEA what to do with the data it collects, it has an obsession with big data but it’s almost impossible to work with in practice. the traditional statistical approaches that are used can’t be scaled up, the adapted approaches are substantially weakened, and the machine learning approaches have the same problems and often tell them nothing. data scientists are only just coming around to these issues too, most still just push on with it anyway - incompetence is the word.

above all this though, like you say, the biggest issue for the state is at the point of data collection. they will NEVER get anything useful if they’re collecting shitty messy data. they will eventually figure out that the real solution is working how to collect accurate and meaningful data, we should make it as difficult as possible for them to do that

This makes me think that we need WAAAY more apps that generate junk data

Apps that generate junk data? tell me moooore.

Ooh I know this one!

Ad Nauseum is an adblocker that stores the ads it blocks and continuously generates fake clicks, fucking with analytics and costing the ad companies money

TrackMeNot automatically does randomly generated searches on a variety of search engines to obscure your real searches and fuck with analytics, and you can set it up to work with anything that has a search bar (including facebook, twitter, amazon, youtube, etc)

WhatCampaign replaces analytics parameters in links with the string “FuckOff”. I thought there was a similar extension that used random strings, but I can’t seem to find it

Privacy Possum is a fork of Privacy Badger with a focus on costing tracking companies as much money as possible, and idk if my limited tech knowledge is enough to understand what it does but the description does say it falsifies some data so that’s good enough for me

@afraidofamericans

Boy it SURE would be a SHAME if this were SPREAD AROUND for everyone TO SEE

The upside of this is getting some buckwild user surveys from the goog.

“In the last seven days, have you searched for Himalayan salsa recipes?”

“… sure.”

ohoK I’ll take a fish then*puts fish in mouth*

(continued)

Common Grackle, 7/10

La Famiglia does not suffer you to stop in our neighborhood long, and I trust their judgement in this manner. You have the look of a guilty bird.

Tennessee Warbler, 2/10

You keep to yourselves, and I respect that. I get the sense that you could defend yourselves if it came to it, though.

Brown-Headed Cowbird, 3/10

You're not a crow, and eventually they ARE going to figure it out, kiddo.

Gray Catbird, 5/10

Would you. Respectfully. Would you shut the FUCK UP.

Eurasian Collared-Dove, 0/10

You're doing great, sweetie, everyone loves you.

Red-Breasted Nuthatch, 4/10

A comedian. A little jester of a bird. You're so silly. Sure sometimes you incite violence in others but, really, is that your fault? If it is, we forgive you.

Blue Jay, 12/10

If you could learn any human behavior you wanted, it would be how to build a bomb.

Honorable mention:

Turkey Vulture, 5/10

You weren't in my backyard, but you WERE eating roadkill in the street in my neighborhood. I know the animal was already dead when you got there, but you get violence points for frightening the small children that walked past you. Incredible work.

obama in college

stop

once my sister left the dining table to go to the bathroom and I told the nearest child she’s actually a superhero (don’t tell anyone) and had to go save someone (a cat in a tree), he was like nooooo superhero’s aren’t real but then I convinced him and elbowed her real hard when she came back like ‘remember?? you were out saving that kitten?? cause you’re a superhero??’ and this kid started asking her what color the cat was

(he ended up believing us, you’re life is now more magical kid, you’re welcome)

Fuck his dad

Just putting this here for the sake of completion

you behave like a beast and you'll be put down like one