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surveillance is an EXISTENTIAL threat: why we need more strangers

2026-07-29 · 22:12 UTC ·oliSUNvia ·2 min read

Brief

The video essay by oliSUNvia (published 2026-07-29) synthesizes philosopher Lowry Pressly’s case for a legal and moral right to be forgotten with journalism and scholarship on surveillance. Citing Kashmir Hill’s Oct 24, 2024 NYT piece and work on context collapse, it argues pervasive identification destroys the ‘stranger’ conditions needed for an open future, and it assesses legal and political trade-offs.

Why it matters

OliSUNvia’s 2026-07-29 video essay presents Lowry Pressly’s argument (citing Pressly 2015, Feb 2023, and Oct 2024, DOI 10.1086/731431) that people have a right to be forgotten because forgetting preserves moral agency and an ‘open future’ for personhood (timestamps: memory and moral agency 2:08; right to be forgotten 4:07–4:28).

Key details

  • The video uses concrete surveillance evidence — Kashmir Hill’s New York Times report (Oct 24, 2024) that two students built facial-recognition glasses easily — plus scholarship on online context collapse (Frost-Arnold 2021) to show how persistent identification and collapsing contexts erode the capacity to remain a ‘stranger’ (timestamp 7:13).
  • It analyzes democratic trade-offs (timestamps 14:55–16:26), weighing political memory and the public’s right to know against individual agency, concluding that protecting stranger-spaces is essential to prevent long-term damage to personhood and questioning whether legal 'right to be forgotten' remedies are realistic (12:34).
Source evidence

forgetting is usually thought of as a loss. for me, it draws attention to a fleeting existence that cannot be preserved even in my deepest memories. but our digital age creates distinct challenges to personhood that philosopher Lowry Pressly argues grants us a right to be forgotten. we can only build a future when we aren't tied to our past.

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: i'd love to hear what you all have to say :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 intro
2:08 memory and moral agency
4:07 the right to be forgotten
4:28 the internet's context collapse/collision
7:13 the "stranger"
10:04 damage to personhood
12:34 is a 'right to be forgotten' realistic?
14:55 political memory and the right to know
15:40 individual agency vs. public interest
16:26 fanon on negritude

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SOURCES:
Basu, Rima. 2022. "The Importance of Forgetting." https://philpapers.org/rec/BASTIO-17
Frost-Arnold, Karen. May 2021. "The Epistemic Dangers of Context Collapse Online." https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198833659.003.0018
Hill, Kashmir. Oct 2024. "Two Students Created Face Recognition Glasses. It Wasn’t Hard." https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/technology/facial-recognition-glasses-privacy-harvard.html
Lowry, Pressly. Apr 2015a. "Everything Particular Is Irreplaceable." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/everything-particular-irreplaceable/
---- Oct 2024b. "The Right to Be Forgotten and the Value of an Open Future." https://doi.org/10.1086/731431
---- Feb 2023c. "Requiem for the Stranger." https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221128899
Salkin, Wendy. Dec 2024. "'The Right to Be Forgotten and the Value of an Open Future.' With Lowry Pressly and Wendy Salkin." https://peasoupblog.com/2024/12/the-right-to-be-forgotten-and-the-value-of-an-open-future-with-lowry-pressly-and-wendy-salkin/

tags: forgetting, memory loss, political memory, meta, AI, open AI, artificial intelligence, chatGPT, deepfake, google, cloud, apple, mark zuckerberg, sam altman, alex karp, palantir, elon musk, privacy rights, rayban meta glasses, instagram, social media, remember me, belief, epistemology, ethics, philosophy, what to believe, enlightenment, moral philosophy, politics, internet analysis, video essay, analysis video, movie film tv show, tiktok, twitter, shanspeare, jordan theresa, cj the x, tiffany ferg, alice cappelle, philosophy tube, madisyn brown, chad chad, sisyphus 55, tara mooknee, noah samsen, the financial diet, dangelo wallace, according to alina, hank green, michael burns, einzelganger, aperture, pursuit of wonder, big think, jeffrey kaplan, jared henderson, FD signifier, mina le

Channel: oliSUNvia
Published: 2026-07-29
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-dvwvx2Sys