Dirty Data

A messy counter to surveillance capitalism.

Many of the world's richest people make their money by watching us. What they find out (where you go, what you buy, what porn you watch) is used to restrain us, to prove our guilt if ever necessary, and to sell us shoes.

The usual approach to internet privacy is to hide data. A less common and more lo-fi approach is to fill our data with sh*t.

Dirty Data is a simple app that opens a tab and makes thousands of fake searches.

Creating fake data makes our individual data hard to understand and sell. The real data gets lost among a pile of realistic-looking searches. It also makes big tech's AIs less effective, making everyone's data less valuable.

Of course, with cat and mouse games in internet privacy, these rich people could figure out the patterns behind the realistic searches. Our feeling though, is that they can't be bothered. For all big tech is lauded as super smart, a lot of the time they don't need to be so they aren't.

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