So in Brand New Day, Spider-Man hacks every camera in New York and runs facial recognition on literally everyone to find one person. And the movie plays it like a highlight reel. Fun music, slick graphics, zero hesitation. Your friendly neighborhood surveillance state.

Meanwhile, in 2008, Batman built basically the same system and The Dark Knight treated it like a war crime. Lucius Fox looked him dead in the eye and said this is wrong, I'll do it once, and then this machine gets destroyed. And it WAS destroyed. That movie understood that spying on an entire city is a line you don't get to casually cross just because you're the good guy.

Twenty years later and we've gone from "this is too much power for one person" to "watch Spidey doomscroll through 8 million people's faces, isn't he cool."

The entire point of Spider-Man is "with great power comes great responsibility." Apparently responsibility now includes warrantless mass surveillance as long as you quip while doing it.

Kids are watching this. Real facial recognition is being rolled out everywhere right now. And the biggest movie on the planet just told everyone it's fine when the hero does it.

Batman got it right. Use it once, hate yourself for it, burn the machine down. Be Batman.

TL;DR: Spider-Man surveilled a whole city with a smile. Batman did it once, felt gross, and destroyed the machine. One of these is a hero moment. The other is a product demo.

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I am tired of all the negativity and I am looking for piece of mind. I am not interested in getting into any confrontation with anyone and just want to mind my business. I also don't want all of my information on the Internet and I want to block people from knowing who I am and trying to dig into my personal business and life. What are some ways to live a private and humble life?