Trakt through eternity

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I’ve made no effort to hide how much I’ve come to really love this website over the years, nor do I see any reason to start now. To the contrary, performing my annual online credentials audit has been an unparalleled reminder of precisely how ephemeral almost everything on the internet really is, unless those who care about it take explicit, thoughtful care to prevent it from simply fading away right before our eyes.

As someone who also possesses at least a poor man’s grasp of data science, I suspect that a sufficiently skilled researcher might discover some insightful truths about the way we consume media and how it affects us, given the opportunity to play God and look down at all those data points from on high. I’m curious to learn if there’s ever been any discussion of anonymizing the data stored on Trakt by all of us and making it available to people with the interest and skills to do just that? What would be everyone’s thoughts on such a thing taking place? Please share your thoughts, if you have any, be they supportive or critical.

The other question I have is if there’s any system in place already to release the fundamental codebase of the site to those who would like to learn how it was made after that accursed but inevitable day that there’s nobody left with enough belief in its utility as a service or economic engine to bear the costs of operating it? I’ve said many times that this place is often the first or second example I provide when asked for the list of best UI designs, and I bet when I’m eben older and grayer than I am now, there’ll still be enough codemonkey in me to want to take a few days unpacking exactly how it is this grand communal salon actually works. I honestly hope there is, and if not that we can provide for there to be. It seems inevitable that the things our generations will cherish most as we grow old won’t be classic cars or cottages in the woods but online spaces where we spent or time and shared the passing of the seasons. I know this place will have a place of honor in any such liat I make, and I selfishly hope I’m far from the only one.

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Your first question is incredibly complex and difficult to answer. However, I appreciate your question because it is a subject matter I think about everyday. I almost didn’t sign up for TRAKT because of it. Before TRAKT I went through I phase where I didn’t want to sign up for anything. When I realized just how much data Facebook & Twitter are collecting from us, I disconnected my FB from all my applications, including my Spotify, Scrobbler, and all blogs and websites I used. Having the ease of use, not having to login, or manually register just by using FB, was a heavy price our privacy pays. No one needs to see that I’ve played Celine Dion 19x in the last two hours (not to mention the judgements behind it). The fact that more people aren’t seriously thinking about this, only illustrates just how technically ignorant most of us are. And because we’re so ignorant as a whole, we continue to give them power to do what they do.

However, please consider that there are indeed two sides to every story. Sometimes we can’t ever be fully anonymous. Not even when using Bitcoin (not even if you use a VPN). By the time people understand the value of our privacy, the authorities already would be knocking at our door, because our ISP showed the cops a browsing history of someone who innocently clicked on a p0rn site. People must understand, it’s not just about privacy, but what they can potentially do with that data. It used to be our IP addresses represented our house address. Now, our cellphone literally replaces the actual you! Companies are literally building a profile of you, via your self phone, and people are too lazy to burn a brain cell to understand what that means.

The only reason I signed up with TRAKT was because the service itself is valuable to me as a movie lover. Second, out of all the companies that are collecting more data than they should be, I don’t see TRAKT on the same level as a Google, FB, YT, or a Twitter. Those are Titans that we need to be worried about.

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