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Even if it were theoretically possible or legally possible, it would remain practically impossible. You'd never even be able to get enough awareness of it for p

by smeej 6y ago

Even if it were theoretically possible or legally possible, it would remain practically impossible. You'd never even be able to get enough awareness of it for people to know about it, much less convince people to care. You'll never get anything vaguely resembling a large enough percentage of Google's customers to matter to care about the issues at all. I know that sounds dismissive, but if you step outside the "people who know and care about tech and privacy" bubble for a minute, it's plain as day. The overwhelming majority of people just don't care. If anything, they like seeing more pertinent ads. They like that the Google Assistant tells them when there's traffic on their route and they need to leave early. They like the results, and they don't even realize there is a cost, much less one that should matter to them.

jmkd 6y ago
This is not only dismissive, but pessimistic and derogatory. Consumer confidence in big tech is way below its peak and continues to fall. The idea is both practically possible and perfectly legal (where you got the idea that a consumer group would be illegal I daren't imagine), but as others state on this page you would benefit from an actual customer group (advertisers) in addition to a consumer group (users). It would be great PR for Google to have open channels like this.
- smeej 6y ago
  The question wasn't about whether a "consumer group" would be legal. It was about whether a union would. Those are different. I don't know whether there is any such possibility of legal recognition of a "union" of customers having any meaningful right to come to any kind of binding bargaining agreement with these companies, which is why the distinction matters. And being "below its peak" is completely irrelevant to the practicality of this endeavor when we're talking about a drop from, say, 99% to 94%. The overwhelming majority of people are not only not annoyed enough by big tech to take action, but would immediately retreat from any such action the moment they realized what it would cost them. A miniscule fraction of the people who use these services, or even pay for these services, care enough about their misdeeds to stop using them personally, much less to join some sort of advocacy group about it.

by smeej 6y ago

jmkd 6y ago

This is not only dismissive, but pessimistic and derogatory. Consumer confidence in big tech is way below its peak and continues to fall. The idea is both practically possible and perfectly legal (where you got the idea that a consumer group would be illegal I daren't imagine), but as others state on this page you would benefit from an actual customer group (advertisers) in addition to a consumer group (users). It would be great PR for Google to have open channels like this.

smeej 6y ago
The question wasn't about whether a "consumer group" would be legal. It was about whether a union would. Those are different. I don't know whether there is any such possibility of legal recognition of a "union" of customers having any meaningful right to come to any kind of binding bargaining agreement with these companies, which is why the distinction matters. And being "below its peak" is completely irrelevant to the practicality of this endeavor when we're talking about a drop from, say, 99% to 94%. The overwhelming majority of people are not only not annoyed enough by big tech to take action, but would immediately retreat from any such action the moment they realized what it would cost them. A miniscule fraction of the people who use these services, or even pay for these services, care enough about their misdeeds to stop using them personally, much less to join some sort of advocacy group about it.