Hello from London, where I attended a fascinating panel, AI: Utopia or Dystopia, at the Institute of Physics last night. I was encouraged by the line up, which featured not a single white tech bro, and by hearing panelists speak on the importance of artists, farming, privacy, critical thinking and basic human emotional intelligence as we face a future run by machines.
I’ve been obsessed with the intersection of technology and privacy since I was a kid and my father casually mentioned a man on death row who wrote him letters. Google maps didn’t exist back then, so finding home addresses required more detective work. By the time I was sixteen, I’d experienced a few stalkers of my own, so I saw everything, including the advent of early social media platforms like Facebook, through a lens of safety. When I founded The Sex Ed in 2017, I built into our privacy policy that we wouldn’t collect user data for the purpose of selling to advertisers. This made for many years of investor tech bros trying to convince me that I could really “sell out” if only I would sell out our community. But when it comes to topics as sensitive as sexuality and consciousness, I am all about protecting your (and my) peace.
My mom once read my diary when I was 13 and then punished me for what was inside. She’s never since apologized, and if you asked her, (she’s reading this and is likely mortified I am bringing it up,) she would say it was because she needed to know what I was up to. Which, from 13-15, was a lot of drugs and hanging out with bad boys.
I burned a couple decades of my diaries when I turned in the final draft of my last book, Sex, Health & Consciousness (you can read about it here, and see a video of the entity/spirit that was captured on video floating above my head as the pages burned to a crisp.) However, I held onto that first journal my mother read, as I find it so hilarious and fucked up, that I am lucky I made it out relatively unscathed.
For example: (names are changed to protect identities)
Sept 7…The last few weeks/days/hours have been so crazy. I haven’t been home before 5 in the morning in a while. I started hanging out with this guy Shiloh—he’s so cool. he’s been hooking me & Lola up with blow for the past week. Every day we go through @ $30 worth. But besides that he’s really cool. he lends me his punk records, pays for everything—is the nicest, sweetest guy around. he just got out of jail a couple months ago for attempted murder but we haven’t gotten the full story yet.
After the diary incident, I became even more paranoid about privacy. I shred every document, clear my search history constantly, create aliases for all apps including Uber and food delivery, (ladies/non binary/queer/trans folks, I urge you all to do as well this for your own safety.) I also have befriended every cybersecurity expert that comes my way.
Early summer 2020, during the height of the pandemic, I made an Instagram video about cybersecurity, as we frequently covered this subject on The Sex Ed. Within 12 hours, our website was hacked. Fun! Turns out that telling people about the dangers of not reading privacy policies on heavily used apps; COVID19 location tracking as a way for the US government to get away with ignoring cyber privacy laws; and why you should delete the astrology app Co-Star from your phone, immediately,* are topics that will get you flagged.
*PSA: when you say “omg! my co-star (or other personalized astrology app) knows me so well it’s crazy!” It’s because you’ve given them permission (by not reading through their privacy policy but just clicking “accept”) to access your calendar, text messages, etc etc. This is why I do not share personal information over DM on Instagram. Meta updated their privacy policy during the pandemic to give themselves access to any information you share via their app, even that which you think is “private.”
Also can we just talk about ChatGPT for a minute? When you treat it like a therapist/search engine/ lawyer/what have you, you are literally FEEDING A MACHINE DATA ABOUT YOU. This is technology that even the people who built AI have concerns over. And we all know what happens when a bunch of straight white bros who have never had to deal with safety or trust issues online build products, right? That always turns out so well. Ahem, Zuckerberg, cough cough, bullying, stalking, spying, doxxing, etc etc.
With fascism on the rise and whatnot, I’ve amped up moving like a ninja. Or, as much as a modern woman on the go can. I deleted Instagram from my phone and mostly stopped engaging there back in January, pre inauguration, besides the occasional post and ghost. Whenever I log on to check my DMs, the few legitimate work/ friend messages are buried between hundreds of unsolicited notes from weirdos, stalkers and creeps.
Call me neurotic, but I’ve experienced too many weird things by now to not take privacy seriously. I grew up in Hollywood, remember? If you want to know about the dark side of fame, it’s not the illuminati. It’s people digging through trash, breaking into an actress or pop star’s house, convincing themselves they are in a relationship with someone they’ve never even met, imagining that a celebrity is “speaking” to them through coded messages on their social media. Recently my Hawaiian hānai (informally “adopted”) nephew, La’akea, was visiting me on a work trip to LA and, after seeing some of my world outside of Hawaii, and its’ proximity to celebrity, he remarked that he would hate to be famous because it put you in a place of danger. Bingo.
Not to be all alarmist but let’s be real, especially if you are navigating resisting the rise of fascism in America and abroad as a concerned human—you are being watched. I say this is not from delusions of paranoia but grounded in policies that have already been instated, at least in the US. I do love an EU data privacy policy, even if it takes me longer to access websites by sorting through endless “reject all” buttons.
Anyways, though j’adore writing you all here over the interwebs, I am going to log off, pack up a Neneh Cherry biography recently purchased at my fave bookstore here, and go find some grass to touch with bare feet.
Til soon…
xLiz
Ps. I made this one free, as I feel strongly about cybersecurity, but it would be lovely if you decided to become a paid subscriber.
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Add me to the mom read my diary crew, except mine had no boys or blow. Just general teenage angst about not fitting in.
Came here to say MY mom read my diary too! Little but older but definitely some wild years…thank goodness she didn’t page far enough to read about my only (short-lived) lesbian fling 🤣What IS it with moms? Fantastic advice thanks for sharing!