AI Intrusion and Digital Privacy

Hey x

I've been quiet for a while, this last 6 months or so I've just not really been in a mentally good place. I don't know if it's the time of year or something else, but as much as I felt like I needed time for 'me', I just couldn't muster the effort needed to engage with this side of my life in any way, at least until recently anyway.

For my first post of 2026 I was going to write about a few nights out I've been on since my last post, something light and fun, but instead I think I need to write about something that's really been bothering me lately. AI and digital privacy. At this stage I'm finding myself more and more angrily politicised but equally I feel completely powerless to do anything about what is going on.

I feel like a conspiracy theorist sometimes when I write about this in other places, but I'm really really worried about where we're heading, and what that means for those of us who are in a minority group or want to do something about what's going on.

I can't stand AI, I'm ethically opposed to it and I hate it with a passion. It's data centres destroys communities, it's stealing from artists seemingly without any repurcussions, and it's taking jobs. I completely fail to understand how the CEO's and their companies can have such a lack of humanity or care for the consequence of their actions as their products are wreaking havoc on society, it's insane to me.

And then we have the attack on digital privacy worldwide. The online safety act and age verification system does nothing but mean companies will know exactly who is doing what at all times online, and use that data against us. While also making us less safe by creating ID databases which will be a prime target for hackers. And then the governments plans to be able to scan phones... It will start with nudes but at some point will start be used against protesters, minorities that are the victim of moral panics, or whoever our eventual next far right government wants to scapegoat.

Add this to the facial recognition cameras being rolled out by the police without privacy safeguards and our governments trend of locking up protesters for years...

We are on the cusp of fascist governments rising around the world but this time they will have the tools to find, track and lock up whoever they choose for whatever they decide to criminalise at that moment. The technology we have will imprison us in our own homes. I am honestly scared about where we're headed and feel powerless to do anything about it.

I certainly won't be providing ID to these companies so in the next few months I'm expecting to lose access to all my social media accounts, or to be able to use it meaningfully. I'm thinking I might have to delete this blog and close my Google accounts to stop them being fed into whatever AI training nonsense they've decided they can use my data for. I'm also thinking i'll need to install Graphene on my phone but will that cause problems later on down the line, I read one age verification company is sending details to the police when it finds phones that use this, would other companies/services do the same?

I feel like if I don't submit I'm going to end up as some kind of digital pariah, cut off from the world because I don't want the government in my pocket, or to be used to train the AI models that are fucking us over.

Is this worrying anyone else? Have you thought about what you're going to do? Or have I got this all wrong and am I overreacting?