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How does it make a difference? First, if an entity want my input and are going to use it, they should be decent enough to pay me for giving it. Why do users ne
by neiman 6y ago
How does it make a difference?
First, if an entity want my input and are going to use it, they should be decent enough to pay me for giving it. Why do users need to work for free for Amazon?
Second, is it opt-in? If not, then there's an ethical issue here, even if a manual opt-out option is given (does it?). If there's no opt-out, there's a double ethical issue.
Thirdly, is this data deleted once it's being used for the goals you mentioned, or is it kept, making it a risk both for leaking and for Amazing deciding to put it for a different usage in the future.
- dimitrios1 6y agoYou don't. You have 100% freedom to not work for Amazon. Don't buy a kindle. Don't use a kindle.
- neiman 6y agoIf I would have known that by buying Kindle I end up working for Amazon, I indeed wouldn't have bought one. It's deception. Please put on the box a big warning, "THIS DEVICE COLLECTS YOUR DATA", similar to those on cigarette boxes.
- jjcon 6y agoIt’s called the terms of service?
- neiman 6y agoVery different things.
- ethbro 6y agoToS are effectively useless for this purpose. If the industry moved to a standardized disclosure form (e.g. something like the HUD-1 [1] in real estate sales), people would stop complaining about this. [1] https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/1.PDF https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/1.PDF
- oblio 6y ago1. Nobody actually reads Terms of Service (well, governments and some major businesses do, but 99,99% of regular users don't). 2. Nobody reads them because most of the time they are explicitly user hostile, I'm pretty sure they are designed to prevent users from reading them.
- violetgarden 6y agoYes! Even when I try to read the terms of service, I find them hard to understand. I feel bad because it’s sort of shame on me for agreeing to stuff blindly. User hostile is a good way of putting it.
- danShumway 6y agoAre they printed on the box in a readable form before the customer buys the product?
- jabirali 6y agoTerms of service are written to be understandable by lawyers, not average end-users. At this point, understanding every terms of service, privacy policy, etc. presented by every piece of software, website, etc. encountered by an average user would require them to spend hours per week on it. This is assuming that they even have the language skills necessary to decipher the document (think of non-native English speakers, people without higher education, and so on.) Creative Commons was on the right track with their human-readable licenses, see e.g. this example [1]. Apple is on the right track with their App Store "nutrition labels" [2]. This is what we need for people to make informed decisions. For physical objects like a Kindle, I believe such "nutrition labels" should ideally be put on the box (physical store) and website (online stores), so the consumer is aware before they go home and turn on the device (this makes it easier to compare the Kindle to a Boox or Nook at the store). [1]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ [2]: https://mashable.com/article/apple-privacy-nutrition-labels-ios14/ https://mashable.com/article/apple-privacy-nutrition-labels-...
- shmel 6y agoAre you genuinely surprised at this point? Pretty much all big tech companies were caught outright lying about user data collection. Why would you assume by default they don't try to get as much as possible? They are all based on ML, of course they do. A year or two ago Amazon was swearing that humans don't listen to Alexa conversations until we learned they actually do. IIRC Amazon tried to backpedal: "of course they do, it is their job, we meant humans don't listen _for fun_". At this point just assume the internet connectivity as such a warning.
- neiman 6y agoOf course I'm not surprised, but I refuse to accept this as normal.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoBut your refusal doesn’t change the reality. Kinda like refusing to believe that climate change is real does not change the reality.
- neiman 6y agoWhat? I didn't say I don't recognize the reality. I said I don't accept it as normal, meaning I work trying to change it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- charles_f 6y ago> Pretty much all big tech companies were caught outright lying about user data collection. You can strip the big here.
- radicaldreamer 6y agoThere’s a plastic bag over the product saying don’t open it if you don’t agree with the terms of service and that it’s required to use the device. Also, plenty of people just leave the kindle in airplane mode and use third party software like Calibre to manage their libraries.
- falcolas 6y agoFWIW, the website providing this breakdown also collects analytics data without a warning. So, there's that to consider as well.
- 2rsf 6y agoPayment is a fair point on Kindles, I get why web sites offers free services in return to commercials (and your data) but I paid for my Kindle and (most of) the content I read.