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You are setting a false dichotomy. Most people that care about privacy are angry at _both_ ISP stalkers _and_ BigTech stalkers. That being said, BigTech has de

by pacala 7y ago

You are setting a false dichotomy. Most people that care about privacy are angry at _both_ ISP stalkers _and_ BigTech stalkers. That being said, BigTech has developed significant stronger capabilities for aggregating and exploiting the data at scale, and using it for manipulating mass behavior. It's their business model: serve ads and curate content for maximum $$$ and engagement. For better or worse, ISPs just pass bits around on behalf of their customers, without deciding which bits to show and which to hide. Given the death of net neutrality things may change, but for now ISPs have a lot of ground to cover to become as noxious as BigTech.

_jal 7y ago
> For better or worse, ISPs just pass bits around on behalf of their customers, without deciding which bits to show and which to hide Comcast does DPI and will inject "warnings" into your port 80 traffic if they see you downloading bits they disapprove of. They've also been caught blocking sites multiple times; it is always a "mistake", but somehow also always something like this: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/07/comcast-xfinity-paypal-net-neutrality/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/07/comcast-xfinity-... You're also forgetting Verizon's magic headers, various carriers' zero rating, mining DNS requests, AT&T's Room 641A, and about 50 years of other charming behavior.
caconym_ 7y ago
No, I'm not "setting a false dichotomy" at all, actually. I could be wrong, but I'd bet some amount of money that less than 1 in 10 Americans who have an opinion about "Big Tech" (in the sense that if you say those words to them, they will provide an opinion) have any meaningful knowledge of these less-visible players outside of the services they provide directly to consumers. ("Oh, Verizon? That's my phone company! Yeah, their customer service is pretty bad but it's cheaper than T-Mobile, so...") That's the point of my comment. It may be a dichotomy, but from my observations of "regular people" it's certainly not a false one. IMO your viewpoint here is a very tech-centric one, and doesn't accurately represent "most people".

by pacala 7y ago

_jal 7y ago

> For better or worse, ISPs just pass bits around on behalf of their customers, without deciding which bits to show and which to hide Comcast does DPI and will inject "warnings" into your port 80 traffic if they see you downloading bits they disapprove of. They've also been caught blocking sites multiple times; it is always a "mistake", but somehow also always something like this: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/07/comcast-xfinity-paypal-net-neutrality/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/07/comcast-xfinity-... You're also forgetting Verizon's magic headers, various carriers' zero rating, mining DNS requests, AT&T's Room 641A, and about 50 years of other charming behavior.

caconym_ 7y ago

No, I'm not "setting a false dichotomy" at all, actually. I could be wrong, but I'd bet some amount of money that less than 1 in 10 Americans who have an opinion about "Big Tech" (in the sense that if you say those words to them, they will provide an opinion) have any meaningful knowledge of these less-visible players outside of the services they provide directly to consumers. ("Oh, Verizon? That's my phone company! Yeah, their customer service is pretty bad but it's cheaper than T-Mobile, so...") That's the point of my comment. It may be a dichotomy, but from my observations of "regular people" it's certainly not a false one. IMO your viewpoint here is a very tech-centric one, and doesn't accurately represent "most people".