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Is the problem actually "free?" I mean, if Disqus or facebook had been offering these as paid services, would we expect them to be respectful of privacy? When
by netcan 6y ago
Is the problem actually "free?"
I mean, if Disqus or facebook had been offering these as paid services, would we expect them to be respectful of privacy? When buy an android phone, amazon echo or whatnot... When we order stuff on amazon, subscribe to Spotify, download a paid app or even purchase a car... do these come with the expectation of privacy?
Increasingly, data gathering is just built into everything, free, paid or foisted. I think the "if you aren't paying, you're the product" trope is trite at this point. We're "the product" regardless.
Framing this in terms of "the problem with free" is off, IMO. It doesn't point to a solution. A paid facebook or google is neither realistic nor likely to solve anything. All it does is point the finger in the wrong direction, as if we, the ignorant masses, are selling ourselves willingly.
Corporate (and state) espionage is simply the default. Avoiding it takes effort, and compromise. Part of that compromise may be financial, or it may not be.
- 101008 6y agoBut when you buy an Android Phone or an Amzazon Echo you are buying the hardware, that's what you are paying with your money. What you are paying with your privacy is the software or the service that is running in the cloud.
- nyaiden 6y agohttps://financialeditorial.com https://financialeditorial.com
- julianlam 6y ago> Framing this in terms of "the problem with free" is off, IMO. Not necessarily, I would say it's just an outdated concept, since an expectation of privacy has been corrupted by marketing departments everywhere. It _used_ to be the case that paying for something meant there was an expectation of privacy, but as you so eloquently put it, "the ignorant masses, are selling ourselves willingly", and these companies have realized that they can sell a product _and_ their users' info as a bonus.
- gingerlime 6y agoYes, and this makes it even worse. I recently bought a Sonos. Deliberately chose the one without mic and Alexa. But Sonos are tracking the hell out of everything. Usage tracking on by default, and even their non opt-out-able “functional” tracking is just riddiculous. And that’s in a country covered by the GDPR and ePrivacy directive. ...so I’m clued enough to notice, care and able to block most of it. But my mum and so many others sadly aren’t.
- soperj 6y agohow do you block most of it?
- gingerlime 6y agoIn general at home I’m using Nextdns across all my devices including the router. uBlock origin extension on my browsers. The Sonos specifically is now blocked on my router... the problem with some devices however is that I might actually want them to connect to the internet, but I have little control about what payloads they might be sending and where.
- ssss11 6y agoI use pihole to block sonos, tv etc phoning home but while still allowing them to play music or videos from spotify, netflix etc. it works pretty well
- Bancakes 6y agoIf you're on any UNIX, grab a RAW hosts file off https://github.com/EnergizedProtection/block#Formats https://github.com/EnergizedProtection/block#Formats and put it in /etc/ I use Unified. On FreeBSD and Linux, the OS handles the hosts file really fast, faster than ublock origin. Windows crawls to a halt with a large hosts file for some dumb reason.
- nuker 6y agoUse incognito mode in browsers. It clears cookies, trackers can't work without persistent cookies. I use it by default and only inconvenience is logging in more often, but its just two more clicks. And a good adblocker too.
- FerretFred 6y ago..if Disqus or facebook had been offering these as paid services, would we expect them to be respectful of privacy I would, but it almost certainly wouldn't happen, knowing the way they work. This is one reason I won't sign up for allegedly privacy-centric iOS apps that ask you to create an account with the vendor/author.
- pessimizer 6y ago> Is the problem actually "free?" It's not. Paying to avoid advertising (which is the precursor to the modern "paying to avoid total surveillance") has been a thought-terminating marketing cliché since the days that "pay TV" was being introduced in the 60s. At this point, as you say, it just serves to blame the surveilled for the surveillance. People using a free service make a lower-quality advertising target than people using a paid service, and people using a less-expensive service are a lower-quality advertising target than people using a more expensive service.
- ooobit2 6y agoI appreciate this. The point, succinctly: This is a manufactured problem for a manufactured solution that hasn't evolved utility.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoExcept pay TV still comes with ads. Even Amazon prime plays stupid ads. Paid DVDs come with unskippable crap. Pay to remove ads never really worked.
- grishka 6y agoIt's funny how you get ads when you pay for movies and TV shows, but you don't if you obtain them for free.
- JetSpiegel 6y agoNot with old school piracy (just getting a video file), but on pirate streams, you do get ads (for porn).
- rmrfstar 6y agoBlacklight even turns up trackers on ftc.gov. Think about that. If you go to ftc.gov to file a complaint about Google, Google will have a log of that interaction. I trust that Google is honorable and does not abuse this privileged position, but it is unsettling to realize just how involved FAAMG has become in daily life.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoSadly, you are correct. Increasingly, even if I pay good money, the expectation is that I forego any kind of privacy. An annoying recent example, I was debating buying AR-15, but website recommended by a friend wanted me to drop adblocker for 'fraud prevention' purposes. Guns are not a cheap hobby; I already pay a premium and deal with a lot of bureaucratic idiocy on every level and now this. Next step is probably required FB login with integration allowing you to blast everyone with the fact that you purchased $something. It gets more annoying when a random store clerk is unable to ring me up when I won't give her my phone number. Like you said, it take a lot of effort just to avoid it. I don't know what it would take to actually nullify its impact on me.
- dredmorbius 6y agoArguably, payment systems themselves (credit cards) are the richest, most deterministic, and among the largest data siphons available. Back in the late 1990s a friend working for the leading back card reported a conversation with another worker with defence experience. Defence's was talking of how an IC associate expressed jealousy over the size of the bank card's data trove: "you've got more information than we do". I'm unsure how reliable this is, or was, but the conversation was at least a casual acknowledgment of the possibility at the organisation.
- api 6y agoFree makes any business model other than surveillance capitalism effectively impossible. Direct paid revenue is a necessary but not sufficient condition for an honest transparent model of user interaction that respects privacy. Facebook with a subscription fee could still have been shady, but a world where Facebook charges a subscription fee is a world where an alternative might have a chance to finance itself as the direct revenue potential of a social network would not be $0.
- netcan 6y agoThis is why I think it is trite to go on saying "if you're not paying, you are the product." On paper, sure. You are right. Free makes any business model other than surveillance capitalism less viable (though I definitely would not say impossible). In reality, "surveillance capitalism" is the most profitable regardless. So, even if we pay, we still get surveillance. The trope just lets the finger be pointed at the public, instead of at whoever is doing the surveillance. Even if you could get most people to prefer paid to free (you can't), it wouldn't do anything to mitigate surveillance in reality. Just because paying enables nonsurveillance in theory, doesn't mean that it will actually result in non-surveillance in reality. In fact, it probably won't.