The surveillance state: Obsessed with the Coldplay kiss cam story?

[cbabe]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/22/coldplay-kiss-cam-ceo-hr-story-sinister-truth

Obsessed with the Coldplay kiss cam story? I was too, until I realised the sinister truth at the heart of it

Arwa Mahdawi

Nobody should expect to go to a huge concert and expect privacy, but the incident is a jarring reminder of the reach of the surveillance state and the internet’s insatiable appetite for public shaming

Tue 22 Jul 2025 08.03 EDT

…

No one should go to a concert where there are more than 50,000 people, each with a recording device in hand, expecting privacy. But the way this story has developed is a jarring reminder of the reach of the surveillance state and the internet’s insatiable appetite for public shaming. Not only were the pair’s identities discovered immediately; people identified the CEO’s spouse and bombarded her Facebook page with cruel comments. Meanwhile, rumours swirled that a woman sitting next to the Coldplay couple was another employee who was helping to cover up the supposed affair. Astronomer put out a statement denying this, but that poor woman probably also got flooded with unsolicited messages. (Social media smearing an innocent person is hardly new, of course. Several blameless people were wrongly accused of being Boston marathon bombing suspects in 2013.)

…

I suppose that, in a roundabout way, many of us consented to this. We clicked “accept” on 90,000-word privacy agreements that we didn’t read, signing away all our data in exchange for convenience and dopamine hits. We handed over our personal information to Mark Zuckerberg, a man who called his users “dumb fucks” for trusting him. We carry tracking devices in our pockets and watch “smart” TVs that watch us right back. We sold our privacy cheaply, creating surveillance billionaires in the process.

And those billionaires, of course, guard their own privacy fiercely. Zuckerberg, for example, is spending an estimated $300m on a secretive apocalypse bunker in Hawaii. The workers reportedly have to sign non-disclosure agreements, so few people know exactly what is going on, other than the fact Zuck keeps building more mysterious buildings with blast-resistant doors. In a recent piece analysing the compound, a Wired reporter snapped a photo of a guard’s shack and was immediately reprimanded. “Don’t do that,” the guard said. “They don’t like that. They’re very private.” It seems privacy isn’t totally dead – it’s just very expensive.

//

Prescient: we now have police watching every move we make

https://m.

[Skittles]

1. glad I'm not one of the "DUMB FUCKS" who handed their info to Zuckerberg

NOPE