Sunday’s Schizophrenization #4
Abandon all privacy, ye who enter here.
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SCHIZOHIGHLIGHTS
Semiotic flashes: moments from social networks and personal considerations about stuff.
Abandon all privacy, ye who enter here
The Italian Data Protection Authority has decided to close the circle opened in 2023 with the investigation that led OpenAI to suspend the ChatGPT service for all Italian citizens for a period of time—causing great public uproar during the peak of FOMO for the new digital oracle.
Today, the company faces a €15 million fine, as the Authority has found several violations of the law: "ChatGPT breaches privacy," journalists proclaim.
As a professional in the field, I can't deny this—it could have been better prepared to comply with European regulations before its launch. But as an AI user and self-proclaimed schizo-prophet of the digital, I argue that in this case, no one should really care about privacy.
Generative AI, in the form of assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and so forth, takes shape solely through our interactions. It’s through these exchanges that we share information, feelings, desires, ambitions, and fears with the digital oracle, hoping for satisfying answers.
Personal data—information related to us—is not just a dataset through which AI learns and improves. It also provides context and a sort of harmony to an otherwise fluid, chaotic, and incoherent system. It’s no coincidence that in recent months, all AI assistants have been equipped with features allowing increasingly personalized instructions to the model, even enabling users to configure them differently based on their purpose. For instance, ChatGPT allows users to create compartments (called projects) to tailor interactions based on specific goals.
Anyone using these tools as if they were sophisticated talking encyclopedias clearly doesn't understand the nature of the technology before them: this is a philosophical technology that enables dialogue with oneself (and something more). Hiding is impossible: sharing information is the first step of any dialogue.
But there’s more: soon, these tools will be integrated everywhere and become invisible. It won’t be us using them; instead, they’ll passively analyze us, offering suggestions, options, and actions in real-time. Grok will soon be fully integrated into X. Copilot+ will become central to every Microsoft product, such as Teams—offering even real-time multilingual voice translations.
It will be impossible not to share personal data. It will also be impossible to adequately inform users about everything happening with their data, as the Authority and the law demand. What can be done? It’s all extremely complex, and it will only become more so. But more importantly: does anyone really care? In the coming years, working, studying, and living without interacting with AI will be unthinkable. What’s the point? It would be like attempting to explain, constantly and exhaustively, how the internet works every time we use a web application.
This doesn’t mean abandoning interest in privacy, anonymity, and crypto-anarchy. However, if digital capitalism forced us to choose between privacy and comfort, algorithmic capitalism will confront us with even harder choices. Privacy policies won’t save us from AI—only an understanding of the nature of the tool before us and the world we live in can. At stake is our very humanity, echoing a pact with the Devil.
To quote myself: “Personal initiation becomes essential here—a rite of passage that allows individuals to gain the skills, resilience, and wisdom needed to navigate these dark waters without drowning. The abyss is not a threat but an opportunity for collective evolution. Evolve or die.”
ECHOES
Timeless reflections: philosophical, esoteric, and historical wisdoms that resonate into the present and beyond.
Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν IV, 3
They seek retreats in the countryside, by the sea, in the mountains, and you yourself often long for such places. But there is no better retreat, nor any more tranquil, than that which a man finds within himself, in his own soul. (...) Therefore, grant yourself this refuge often, and renew yourself there (...) And above all, do not let yourself be agitated, do not harbor great desires, but seek to be free and to consider things with strength and clarity—as a man, as a citizen, as a mortal being.
And among the reflections you will make, always keep these two in mind: first, that material things do not touch the soul; they remain outside it and cannot disturb it. All disturbances come solely from within, from the internal idea. The second is that all the things you see are in a state of transformation, and even as you observe them, they are already changing. How many transformations you yourself have witnessed! The world is nothing but change, and life is nothing but perception.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV, 3
RETROWAVE
Visions from the past: excerpts and visions from cypherpunk mailing lists and the writings of the Cybernetics Culture Research Unit. From 1992 to 2003.
The liberating power of technology
From: The Old Bear <oldbear@arctos.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 15:09:58 -0500
To: Digital Commerce Society of Boston <dcsb@ai.mit.edu>
From: The Old Bear <oldbear@arctos.com>
Subject: Peter Huber on the Orwellian Falacy
Mime-Version: 1.0As the Internet makes inroads into information-restrictive nations, such as China, efforts to limit access to only "desirable" ideas are doomed to failure, say experts, The complaint one hears against the Internet isn't that there is too little speech," says Manhattan Institute analyst Peter Huber. "Instead, the argument is that there is too much hateful or pornographic speech.
Stalin manipulated the past, altering photos and just wiping people and events out of the historical record. But today, documents and photos get downloaded and stored in files all over the world. You can make corrupt copies, false copies, but you can't erase real copies now."
Huber, author of the book "Orwell's Revenge," applauds the move by industry to make encryption products widely available: "It means that we can now create a zone of privacy that the government can't penetrate. That's the exact opposite of what Orwell through would happen."
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DIGITAL GRIMOIRE
Digital security tactics: OpSec, Cybersec, OSINT, and AI tools to dominate the Digital Age.
They see you
Image recognition and analysis algorithms are becoming increasingly sophisticated, especially when combined with natural language models. Thus, from an apparently mundane photo, they can extract numerous details that enable the identification and location of almost anyone. An example is the site https://theyseeyourphotos.com/, which allows users to analyze photos and verify what information the AI deduces, even through metadata (which can reveal names and surnames).
To protect yourself from this kind of analysis, minimizing exposure is essential (publishing as few photos online as possible) and, when necessary, carefully removing metadata—which reveals the story behind the photos. In technical terms, this is called "anti-forensics." Several techniques exist, which I explain in detail here, but to summarize:
To remove metadata and EXIF, you can use specialized tools or, before publishing a photo, remove them using features offered by editors like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP, or directly through your operating system—it’s very simple:
Photoshop:
Open the photo
Go to File > Save for Web (Legacy)
Ensure the option to retain metadata is unchecked.GIMP:
Open the photo
Go to File > Export As > Advanced Options
Uncheck Save EXIF data.Windows:
Right-click on the photo and select Properties
Go to the Details tab
Click Remove Properties and Personal Information
Choose to create a copy without metadata or remove them from the original.iOS:
Open the photo in Preview
Go to Tools > Show Inspector
Review and manually remove any metadata.
SYMBOLS
Memes: visual symbols that decode the schizophrenia of the Digital Age.
SUBNET
Emerging voices: articles and contents handpicked by me to inspire and connect.
Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and the Age of Breach, by
. The article describes the murder of the CEO by Luigi Mangione as a breaking point and embodiment of collective anger against irresponsible elites in the age of techno-feudalism. It analyzes how corporate power is dehumanized and faceless, pushing toward a reaction that restores responsibility to a human and corporeal dimension. The author reflects, however, on the failure of violent revolutions and proposes a counterculture based on the quality of human experience, opposing the mere quantification of value.It’s an article whose ideas I share, having personally discussed digital neo-feudalism and the events surrounding Mangione as a violent reaction to algo-capitalism (here).
Did you read the latest on Cyber Hermetica?
Return next week for another schizotechnic rendezvous.
getting a little jaded on substack sometimes, I'm a new follower, was excited to see you piece drop - see a lot of pieces drop but not many excite me - the whole adapation to AI world is very fascinating
Super important and helpful how-to about the photos. I recently had the impulse to delete all my profile pictures substituting them with images of flowers and cats.
It’s a brave new world and we need a new guide book- “How to be in the world but not of the world.” (With a whole chapter of the magic of Pi and salvation thru the promise of irregularity).