There are downsides with downloading their app just to input bad data, but it’s a fun thought.
edit: While we’re at it we might as well offer an alternative app to people.
I posted in !opensource@programming.dev to collect recommendations for better apps
The post: https://lemmy.ca/post/32877620
Leading Recommendation from the comments
The leading recommendation seems to be Drip (bloodyhealth.gitlab.io)
Summarizing what people shared:
- accessible: it is on F-droid, Google Play, & iOS App Store
- does not allow any third-party tracking
- the project got support from “PrototypeFund & Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Superrr Lab and Mozilla”
- Listed features:
- “Your data, your choice: Everything you enter stays on your device”
- “Not another cute, pink app: drip is designed with gender inclusivity in mind.”
- “Your body is not a black box: drip is transparent in its calculations and encourages you to think for yourself.”
- “Track what you like: Just your period, or detect your fertility using the symptothermal method.”
Their Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@dripapp
it’s quite silly imo. unlikely to accomplish much or anything at all. teaching people about free software like drip is way more likely to actually help people. it’s free, open source, and completely local.
edit: they even have a mastodon!
Not to mention that downloading that flow app will help them boost thier numbers, I doubt they’d care if men are using it as long as they can sell the data…
Would a bunch of users entering garbage data, with not all of them being totally obvious, make it harder to sell that data? Possibly.
It might take a while for thier customers to notice that the data is garbage, or they might develop a way to figure out what data is garbage and still sell other data gathered from the OS/sensors etc from users trying to poison the data.
Because moving people off Facebook messenger and over to Signal or WIRE instead has been so very effective.
You are right. We here know it. But we are a teeny tiny percentage compared to 340million.
Remember, inertia is a major driving force of humanity.
eh, I’d argue this is very different than signal. for signal to work everyone needs to use it. if you want to use drip you don’t need to make your friends use it too. it’s as simple as installing it from the play store and using it like any other app.
Really hard to help people who refuse to help themselves.
Drip seems to be the leading recommendation. I’ve edited the post with it so people seeing the meme also get the recommendation :)
awesome, thanks!
I don’t want to victim blame but if using an app is optional and it could get you in trouble with the law (regardless of how bad the law is), you should not use it.
Having said that, as a dev, please pollute data as much as possible.
Management needs to learn how valuable good data is and good data comes with proper consent (most people wouldn’t share their data if they could opt out).
These apps are very helpful for people who have irregular cycles or who are family planning. I relied heavily on a similar app in high school, because my monthlies weren’t monthly. I was able to share that data with my doctors to help better understand my body.
This really indicates a need for self-hosted solutions.
Absolute worst case you could always keep track of it as a raw text/markdown/excel/Libre calc/whatever your preference is. You’re not going to get any predictions or useful data out.
But it would at least provide a record for your doctor if need be. And as long as you encrypt the device you store it on, or the directory its stored in, it’s relatively safe to do so.
How does this work with non technical people?
This is a legitimate concern.
A teenage girl who is looking to track her cycle is likely not educated on data security - as someone who works with teens, Gen Alpha is shockingly tech illiterate. They are going to go into the App Store, type “period tracker” and download the first thing that pops up.
Non technical people are not raccoons, they can use a text file.
The number of people I deal with at work that have no idea what a file is…
And forget about folders.
I CAN’T FIND MY DOCUMENT!!!
Okay, where did you save it?
I DON’T KNOW, I JUST CLICK SAVE LIKE ALWAYS!!!
*remotes into workstation and clicks save only to find the file was saved in their temp directory*
I had that conversation hundreds of times when I was doing desktop support…
Why would you blame them if they have all those “conveniences” like the default save location, file managers focusing on pics to click and and not directory structure, and so on. Of course they don’t know, they don’t know they have to know and thus don’t think they could choose or something.
These things were not invented for computer-literate people. The way they were being made in year 1999 they were usable for common folk.
Blaming normies as people who can’t do things is delusional. Modern UI\UX, which is plain stupid and unprofessional, is the problem. Normies are fine. They can be taught to navigate a paper book, right? Then they can do this.
By the way, I still remember my fury when auto-complete suggestions, AJAX search on webpages, default locations for saving files and other such things started becoming the only considered way to do anything. Because I knew where this all leads. It’s not hard to imagine how a person who’ve never had anything else will form their habits.
And not only these “simplifications” are everywhere, but also they UI\UX has become more cluttered everywhere! It’s an unusable mess, and it being that is justified by having some “convenience” magic that makes it even bigger mess.
This is why Windows should have remained a shell for DOS. On Unix-like systems the competition between various desktops slows down this degeneracy. That’s what they are trying to solve with Wayland, so that people could only use Gnome, KDE and a couple of half-functional compositors with too long config files to set up with my ADHD.
I teach community IT.
They really can’t.
Most probably cannot, especially in an organized way
Sometimes I feel like they are, or maybe I’m the raccoon but yes
They don’t know what a text file is.
They don’t know what a file is, but they can use an app store, to download an app, create an account, log in, and interface with the UI to load data.
Got it
I did specify a text file. And yes, they’ve been doing the second one since they were 5. Not all tech skills are transferable.
Yes, actually. Downloading apps, making an account, logging in, and using an app are all things they have done before. Opening up Notepad on their computer (if they have one) and saving a text file then navigating back to it later and opening that file is something they probably have never done before.
Write it down on paper or put it in a word document or excel spreadsheet (or FOSS equivalent if you don’t have Office 365).
From a medical perspective, a handwritten journal with dates and notes about the amount/consistency of the flow as well as associated symptoms would be the most useful. Having irregular periods that last for 3 days with very heavy bleeding would have a very different diagnostic approach than irregular periods that last 3 to 5 days with normal bleeding and horrible cramps.
A potentially good option if you’re on Android is putting it in your secure folder. It’s basically just a sub directory for all your files, notes, and pictures, but it an encrypted form.
So if you’re technical enough to understand jow to enter a password (most people), then you have an easy to use option. Just don’t forget your password, and don’t set it to something easy to crack. It’s the same rules for any other password.
I’m sure there are similar options for windows/mac/ios
But if you’re a more technical user, by all means it is in your interest to encrypt the whole thing.
Legit only comment so far to not just say “PAPER EXISTS1!1!1!1!” So props for that.
Can I ask how polluting the data will help? Most apps that don’t care about privacy can probably identify people with zero issues. I bet people are giving these apps location data etc.
I don’t know what you mean by good data comes with proper consent. Like, ideally all data was offered with proper consent, but how does that make data better or worse? If anything, data given without consent is likely to be more wholistic/unedited since they were not given time to redact/remove info. If someone stole my phone and took all my data, they would have “better data” than had I been informed this would happen and given time to wipe my phone.
Can I ask how polluting the data will help?
It makes data less reliable.
How do we know if a certain profile is genuine vs someone dicking around. Or mostly genuine and the person didn’t do some malicious compliance for certain parts of the app they don’t care about.
If it becomes a social trend and someone gets caught, it would be easier to say they lied cause they wanted to do a tick tock challenge.
I don’t know what you mean by good data comes with proper consent.
When someone wants to help the data collectors then they would do more proper hygiene to their profile, keep things up to date and give honest feedback. Whereas someone like me never gives consent for data without being forced, so I always try to give as little and lie as much as I can.
I guess the assumption I made was that practically everyone knows apps and websites track them in some shape or form (even the least tech savvy person knows websites get total amount of visits), so “acting like no one is tracking you” isn’t ever true to begin with. Especially given this context for a period tracking app.
Appreciate the reply. I guess I see how conceptually that makes sense, but in practice I don’t see it helping someone actually accused of anything. If a woman in a red state is brought up on charges and her app data backs that up and the excuse given is “I was lying when I added that I was pregnant” I don’t see that really making a difference. I guess it technically makes it more plausible, but I’m not sure it’s moving the needle as much as would be needed in that case.
If my doc asked me what my diet was like I would try to give accurate info but if I needed to input my latest meal every time I sent a text, my phone would think I only ate ice cream. I guess I struggle to think of an app where I would give accurate data if given the option so I just assumed people would lie if asked honestly for it. I still am not sure most apps would do better if they were more transparent, but that probably speaks more to the scamminess and predatory nature of apps than anything else. There would be more paid only apps for sure.
Period tracking is a very good tool for understanding your health. Issues may be spotted very early in some cases.
If it’s required for preventative healthcare, the blame is solely on the exploitative app operators for any data safety concerns.
That’s not great advice for people who weren’t afraid of law enforcement in the past and are now feeling exposed due to data they already gave away.
Not to mention: a lot of people don’t really understand how technology works. They just use the app without even thinking where that data goes. Like yeah, it would probably behoove those people to educate themselves on the technology they’re using, but I certainly don’t want them to face unjust legal repercussions just because Republicans hate anyone with a vagina.
Most data already provided won’t be useful if they stop providing the data. Generally the concern is for miscarriages/abortions, so just change the data to indicate you were having a regular period and then request a data deletion/account close/stop using the app is actually pretty much as good as it’s gonna get.
So I just installed this right now after seeing this, and man this app has a lengthy initial startup process with dark patterns and everything. Now apparently I’m ovulating in two days. 🤭
I’m going to learn how to orgasm!
I’m “abnormal” 🫨
So it’s not normal to have a 55 day cycle? Oh snap!
Is it FOSS? Or does it collect tons of data?
Oop, read the post better. Nevermind hahaha
So I fucking hate that this is where my brain went, but my kneejerk reaction to this was: “If I do this, could it be used as evidence to charge my wife with the death of a nonexistent fetus?”
I live in the cousin-fuckingly-deep south where women are incubators and a long list of stereotypes. I could definitely see it argued in court - successfully - that an app like that was only used on my phone to try to conceal my wife’s data, and the data points to one of the ways we’ve criminalized pregnancy.
…and that’s thinking about what could happen here and now. Once Trump has had his way with our country, we’d probably just get deported to one of daddy Putin’s gulags or some shit.
I really fucking hate it here.
not to mention the reason why you’re only supposed to say the word “lawyer” to cops is they literally tell you: “ANYTHING you say CAN and WILL be used AGAINST YOU in a court of law.” That doesn’t mean “might or maybe” or “to help you.”
Track your nightly flatulence on a piece of paper too, and keep the same data on it that you put in the app. If it makes it to court claim the app was just a convient way to track other things, and let the courts discuss your farts.
Yeah, I would only do this if I lived alone or only with other males and had no SO/post-puberty daughters/close female friends.
You would think it wouldn’t be this easy, but given the incredible disconnect from reality on reporting late term abortion statistics, this could scramble data.
For those who don’t know, the raw statistic of late term abortions comes down to late term terminations via a procedure used in pre 20week months to end a pregnancy. There’s little difference in logging the data. Babies can die inside, even as you’re trying to attend your own baby shower, like with that young girl who recently tried to get help from 3 Texas emergency rooms, but instead died due to the late term corpse rotting in her uterus.
The procedure used to expel a stillbirth in the late term is an abortion. That is what pregnancy termination by procedure is: abortion. But the context of corpse removal is lost on political alarmists who don’t bother to do their own research on how/when the procedure is used in late term pregnancy, in favor of uneducated hysteria and the demonizing of women.
My point is, given how resolutely people have not delved into the context of this data regarding stillbirths, messing with menstrual trackers can and probably will work, provided you don’t limit yourself to Flo.
I don’t think this is likely to work tbh. I’m sure the app has enough device data to link the user with a broader data profile that would easily eliminate data from people that don’t actually have periods.
The data profiles people build on citizens aren’t limited to one data source, and emails/phone numbers/browser fingerprints/device details are all things that can be keyed between data sets to relate identities.
Fascist law enforcement can and would do this kind of thing to chase individuals. This kind of noise seems easy to filter out.
Talk to your state reps and governor, ask them to codify HIPAA at the state level. This is the federal law that guards medical privacy. It is on the chopping block in Project 2025.
It doesn’t guard data buying and selling though. There’s an add on over in WA that does that, to expand on hipaa, but I don’t think many others have done so.
Will it work if I do this from Canada? I haven’t had a period in over 4 years (help, I’ve been pregnant for 4 years!) But I want to help y’all too!
Calling an app that tracks menstrual cycle “Drip” is peak comedy
Menstrual cycles are so last millennium, I was told there would be menstrual hovercraft by now.
Fellas, fellas! I’m preggers! 🥳
I fear it might not last the weekend tho.
I’m doing my part!
These symptoms might actually be related to the 12k mountain trail run I did yesterday after work, and I’m pretty sure the bleeding is because I got scratched by a spiky bush, but you cannot be too careful fellas
Day 1065: still feeling fatigue. Poor sleep habits or longest period ever?
I ask my body this every morning.
As with anything involving the complex bundles of systems in the human body, other issues can overlap and mask symptoms of a menstrual cycle, impending or otherwise.
Yes
Post text:
Dear men I need you to go download an app called “Flo” and start using it chaotically. Don’t ask anyone how to use it. Just use it. The more, the better. Let’s Christmas tree that data.
As a software developer who loves to screw the data and a person who will do ANYTHING can to protect women for the next 4 years, I am so excited to begin tracking my manstrual cycle
Good bot
Why in the world do we even need apps for this stuff? There is no reason to give your data to these companies at all.
Here’s a crazy thought: get a journal. And write in it.
I don’t know if you’re someone who’s not had to deal with menstrual cycles, but that’s not really helpful advice. Apps provide a lot of useful information and often integrate with other health data to offer better predictions and general insights. Many cycles are not “oh, it’s the 15th, here we go”. Many can be affected or predicted by mood/diet/symptoms. That’s a lot for a person to keep track of. My app will sometimes predict up to a 3 day shift and be completely accurate. I have looked at the graphs and sometimes you can point to a specific symptom and say, oh that must be what it used for that prediction, but sometimes you can’t. Get stressed every year around the holidays to the point where it changes your cycle? Your app will remember that. One less thing for your stressed mind to worry about. Additionally, even if they were super regular to the day, having an app to send a reminder, “hey! Get ready tomorrow” can be helpful to make sure you have any supplies you may need.
Also, we use apps for things we don’t need to all the time. And generally, it’s for the same reason: apps are easier and more accessible. Since you mentioned a journal, there are plenty of apps out there that replace journals themselves. They are used for several reasons, but one would imagine using an app is easier because it’s not an extra item you have to have on you and can potentially lose or forget to bring, it’s always on you so the resistance barrier is smaller, it might even have search functionality.
Do I think people should be randomly downloading these apps? No, it really doesn’t do anything at all. But blaming people for using conveniences because the government is trying to take away their rights is really missing the mark. It might be good opsec, but it’s dismissive at the least and not really solving the actual problem.
What a goddamn comment. Informative, thoughtful, and an amazing rebuttal without being condescending. Is best of a thing on here?
Provided I’m not missing sarcasm here, that’s nice of you to say, but honestly I certainly hope it wouldn’t be relevant in a best of. Lemmy is full of really helpful people in niche communities sharing their expertise, so I’d hope explaining why people use apps would be seen as out of place in a best of lol. Thank you regardless.
Not sarcasm!
The absolute madlad
Based
people will do anything but search for an alternative
…how do you mean?
Obviously we’re not going to get everyone to download a FOSS period tracker, as nice as that would be – they’re already invested in the ones they’re using, and no doubt it will have features and usability improvements the FOSS one doesn’t, usually thanks to some network service that is fundamentally incompatible with the FOSS philosophy. That’s almost always how these things go.
We should definitely be telling more people about F-Droid, but let’s not get our hopes up. Socialism is about protecting everyone, even people who don’t share your views, even if those views are objectively correct.
We should definitely be telling more people about F-Droid, but let’s not get our hopes up
Accessibility (not being on FDroid only) was one of the things I was looking for when looking for recommendations. Thankfully the leading recommendation is on Google Play & iOS App Store :) I have edited the post above with more details
“Socialism is about leading horses to water whether they fucking drink or not.”
I mean… yes. More horses will drink if they know there is water, and even if they don’t, they’re still safer than they otherwise would have been.
I mean, they dont like the APP because it collects data, but refuse to do one web search for an app that doesn’t, then complain on fucking twitter about privacy concerns??? seriously??
What’s the point of spamming one specific menstrual tracker / women’s health app? Lack of better hobbies? Or is there some controversy around the company behind it? Or just general state of freedom and surveillance in the USA?
The idea is that they’ll be used to track pregnancy and hurt people in certain states. Chaos will help the situation.
Computer databases are kind of purpose-built to organize a lot of (arbitrary) information. I seriously doubt this kind of chaos is going to make even the slightest difference. It’s probably just giving people some false sense of security while any information that’s stored in any cloud can still be retrieved. And effortlessly be matched to whomever they like to oppress. At least if it’s associated with some account, email or specific phone.
“A bunch of new accounts posting obviously worthless data joined about the same time. Disregard them.”
So you’re saying if a woman made an account during this time, and threw garbage data in, they’d disregard it and then a month later she could use it for real?
(Also you guys are hilarious about how quickly you can just ‘do that’ because I’ve never worked at any software company where the devs who made the initial code are even still at the company a year or two later.)
This is data analysis, not development. Yes you can just exclude the problem month, average the previous and next months, and her real data starts to contribute again. And yes you can do that regardless of who is writing code. Or even that the code was written by your company and not some other company you bought or seized data from.
probably won’t be hard to spot all the accounts that sign up en masse, send 3 data points then stop forever because they got bored or forgot.
Alright, sure. The company will rigorously dig through the data to exactly remove exactly the specific accounts that aren’t real and deftly deal with it, and it won’t be some intern with a weeks training in paper docs from three years ago. No, it’ll be people who will know to do exactly those things. And the data you’re scraping to sell, well, no-one will mind you splicing out data you claim isn’t real and was fake, no they’ll be fine with that. Then when that intern is gone–and they didn’t log anything because they were never taught to–and the new intern arrives, they’ll know to continue exactly where they should, and at no point will anyone fuck up the dates, times, or additions from previous months. At each and every stage exactly what has to happen will happen, and no code changes, updates, or manager-directives will change any of these parts in any way. The addition of anywhere from dozens to hundreds to even tens of thousands of new accounts will be easy to deal with, because this has all been prepared ahead of time, and will immediately be dealt with. It won’t take weeks of meetings on how to tackle it, by whom, and what to push back - because they use waterfall/agile, and it’s a foolproof system where you don’t just punt things forward, you deliberately and delicately lay out each and every change that will now take place mixed with the 2 years that have already been planned out.
Absolutely everything will be covered and not a single thing will get through, and they’ll carefully and easily parse through the data with zero issues on the demand of a very competent government that doesn’t show any signs of issue whatsoever.
Nah they’ll just say “weird. Guys, exclude November, it’s an outlier”.
I’m willing to bet it uses something resembling an SQL database on the back end, so ignoring or deleting data or entire user accounts that signed up in November 2024 should be a matter of a query or two.
I would also like to point out that, much like the Republicans, you’re painting your enemy as both dangerously competent and hilariously inept, whichever is most convenient at the moment. “They have a database of menstrual data, they can use data science and pattern analysis to detect changes in a woman’s reproductive cycle and use that information to make decisions to harm her!” minutes later App developers are rock chewing morons, there’s no way they could detect a pattern of strange data entering their database all at once, figure out what it is possibly by googling the name of their app and finding a Tumblr post about polluting the app, and then cancel those suspicious accounts."
I agree with the first half… It’s very easy to ingest and sift through insane amounts of data
What isn’t easy is doing so usefully. Yes, if you can link the account to a person, it’s trivial to pull up their records. Linking is easier said than done - it’s doable, but to make it scale you have to get the full records of device IDs, link them back to a number, then link them to a person. Minimum, you’d need the telco’s data
That’s a staggering amount of work - it’s much easier to do it if the app also has phone numbers, but even then where do you link it? The telco’s have an account holder (which often will be a family member), 50 separate dmvs might have more accurate links, but they’re largely legacy systems that will be a nightmare to work with. It’s doable, but it’s hard
Then you get to distribute this super extensive database of personal information - at this point it’s prism, and probably already has most of this data - they’d just have to ingest period data too
But we don’t give that kind of access to local police, because then every government would end up with it. And that’s a big and genuine security threat… But also a very unwieldy thing to work with. More data means more man hours to work with
The other direction is far more practical - if you start by looking at the data, you can tie it back to a person if they match a pattern. Then you can look at just the records you do have, and pay Amazon or the credit agencies for more. A human can easily investigate another human, because we are great with unstructured data, and computers aren’t
A chaotic data source means more bad leads to manually chase down. Man hours are limited, and people have morale - if a cop wastes an hour on a lead that ends with a spare phone or a single man, they’re going to complain and drag their feet. If productivity and morale are in the garbage, that’s going to lead to pushback. If it happens enough, the message at the top will be “this program doesn’t work”
It would be far better to find the patterns and target them methodically, but even chaotic garbage is effective - data analysis isn’t easy to automate, it’s very expensive to do when accuracy matters and they’re poisoning the data source
We’d need to identify some threat model to continue the discussion. I don’t know what people are afraid of. I’d say the other way round is more likely. For example a state decides to pursue people terminating a pregnancy. They can use data from telecommunications providers to find out which phones cross the border to the neighboring state and return the same or the next day. Disregard people who do it regularly, and then correlate that data to other factors. Like pull up the menstrual tracker account that was accessed by that specific IP address.
We know since Snowden that some agencies do similar things (supposedly for terrorism) and generally a lot of logs are kept. Also we have lots of automatic license plate readers and additional surveillance available.
Aside from that, it is spread that Amazon knows if you’re pregnant before you do. They could also buy the data who is interested in romper suits, supplements or other specific things and then isn’t. I suppose it’s not exactly about that… More that Amazon have some good heuristics and algorithms to predict things from general shopping behaviour. And you could also do the same thing to menstrual tracking. The cycle is pretty regular. And then it usually stops once someone gets pregnant. And I believe after that it takes some time to settle down to a very regular pattern again. You could easily detect that with an algorithm. And simultaneously get rid of artificial (spammed) data that doesn’t follow what is possible. Probably takes a skilled programmer like 3 weeks and then you can tell if an account owner is real, and probably even if they take some contraceptive or not, due to the slight variations. And if an app has some recommendations features, they’re likely to already include the groundworks for data analyzing.
Ultimately, the government already analyzes and stores the data from telco providers. And it’s always easier to combine several factors to make good predictions, than to rely on a single source. And I’d say this kind of surveillance has to be done automatically, anyways. It’s almost never feasible to sift through databases manually.
Ok, let’s use your first example. Someone crosses into a neighboring state and returns in the same day…I had co-workers who did that every day.
Let’s narrow that down… You cross into another state with abortion care once and return in the same day. Or maybe you’re a salesman closing a deal. Or maybe you’re visiting family and have work tomorrow… And honestly, both those situations are far more frequent. That happens every day. It happens more if you live near the border - otherwise you probably got a hotel. Unless you can’t afford a hotel. And the list goes on - all this structured data turns into stories at some point
Here’s the thing. Prism could handle it, because it’s a ton of people on the payroll
The government is not a monolith though…9/11 is a great example. We knew it would happen, we knew it was planned, but the right people didn’t know in the right time, because the agencies are not a monolith.
Because that is the hard part - communication is hard, harder with security concerns. More data means more analysts reviewing it - you can collect all the data you could want , (and we do), you could hire all the analysts you can afford (and we do), but that still gives you severe limits
We’re actually pretty great at stopping terrorism, but we do that (in part) because we have all this data and use it for specific ends
None of this shit is easy - I used to do this, specifically. How do you take 15 data sources that sometimes conflict, and deconflict them? There’s no hierarchy of truth here. This is literally a cutting edge problem - it’s a literal holy Grail. No one can solve it in 3 weeks, or even 3 years
You want a 20% rate? I could give it to you tomorrow, poisoned data or no, I could give it to you in weeks… Maybe not 3, because that’s a shit ton of data sources, but with proper motivation I could pump it out.
You want 90%? Give me a century or two, and I’m good at this. Maybe a genius could give it to you in a lifetime of with
It’s like they say in game dev, you can do 90% in 10% of the time, but the last 10% takes 90% of the time. And that’s a solved problem.
Except this is an unsolved problem, possibly the most lucrative unsolved problems in history
I think that’s overestimating the complexity. In my example you can just delete all data from people who cross the border regularly. I heard like >80% of Americans don’t travel that much. So you’d still catch the vast majority. And there are additional giveaways. Visiting relatives will follow a pattern or coincide with holidays like every other thanksgiving. Weekend trips will start at the end of a week while work will be during the week and often someone would visit a worksite multiple times.
And correlating data and having multiple datapoints helps immensely. For example if you want to correlate license plates with cell tower data: One measurement will only narrow it down to a few hundreds or thousands of people who passed the highway at that point. But, a single additional datapoint will immediately give an exact answer. Because it’s very unlikely that multiple of the people also return at the same time. Same applies to other statistics.
And you don’t even need to figure out the patterns. It’s a classification problem. And that’s a well understood problem in machine learning. You need a labeled dataset with examples and ML will figure out the rest. No matter if it’s deciphering hand writing, figuring out shopping behaviour to advertise, or something like this. We figured out the maths a long time ago. Nowadays it’s in the textbooks and online courses and you just need some pre-existing data to start with. Maybe you’re right and compiling a dataset will take more than 3 weeks. But it’s certainly doable and not that complicated. And menstrual cycles follow patterns. That makes machine learning a precise approach. It’ll home in on the ~4weeks cycle, find outliers and data that never followed a realistic cycle.
I agree, there are complications. People need to be incentivised to pay attention. Government agencies regularly fail at complex tasks. Due to various reasons. But it’s probably enough to make peoples’ lives miserable if they have to live in constant fear. So there is an additional psychological factor, even if they don’t succed with total surveillance.
And this approach is a bit unlikely anyways. It’s far easier to pass a law to force clinics to rat out people or something like that.
But my guess is that [predictive policing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_policing might become an issue. Currently we seem to stick to intelligence agencies and advertising with that technology (and Black mirror episodes and China). But that’s mainly a political choice.
The tiny percentage of users of these apps doing this will have their outlier data completely ignored. Colossal waste of time and energy.
A government hunting illegal abortions would only care about data that shows signs of pregnancy followed by early termination, random data will never match those criteria and as such is utterly useless.
Like not having a period for 4 months, then having a period again. You’re expecting legislature and law enforcement to actually know science things.
Also, Google/Apple metrics already know if you’re a boy or girl based on soooo much other data and trackers, that it’s completely trivial for this company or any other company to just filter out any data being reported by a male.
Clearly gotta start listening to truecrime podcasts and let some young kids muck up your YouTube algorithm and they won’t know anymore what your gender is
Fuck it, download all of them.
I have a reminder app that randomizes reminders for a medical issue I’m dealing with.
Sounds like I’ll be dealing with two medical issues that app will require now.
Just curious, why randomize?
Why randomize Flo or why am I doing it for other reasons?
The latter, for other reasons
I am dealing with a mystery illness which has made it so that I cannot eat solid food. I’ve had it for well over a year now. The current theory is that it is ARFID, an eating disorder that has nothing to do with body image like most eating disorders.
Because I never feel hunger or thirst, I have had reminders on my phone to have nutrition (Ensure and soup mostly) and drink water.
The doctor that I am working with thinks that randomizing my feeding routines rather than having them at the same time every day, which I was doing, will be therapeutic. I’m also supposed to do a sort of wellness check and log when I feel hungry three times a day. The answer is always either ‘not hungry at all’ or, if I’m really stressed, ‘the concept of hunger is repulsive to me.’ I don’t want to say this isn’t working yet though. It’s only been a few weeks.
That sounds super interesting. Good luck.
Thanks!
