4 ms·
You can stop using Google, Facebook, or Apple and not be a customer. You do not get this choice with your government, regardless of the electoral process.
by tomnipotent 5y ago
You can stop using Google, Facebook, or Apple and not be a customer. You do not get this choice with your government, regardless of the electoral process.
- ForHackernews 5y agoIs that actually true? Don't those companies (maybe not Apple) maintain "shadow profiles" to track non-users? https://reclaimthenet.org/google-is-building-shadow-profiles-of-its-users-tech-company-oracle-claims/ https://reclaimthenet.org/google-is-building-shadow-profiles... https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-shadow-profiles/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-shadow-profiles/
- tomnipotent 5y agoA tracking pixel on a website doesn't make me that pixels customer, anymore than being photographed by a photographer on the street makes me their customer.
- ForHackernews 5y agoBy that standard, most Google and Facebook users aren't customers anyway. Nobody pays to use Google Search or Facebook.
- tomnipotent 5y agoYou're either a customer using their services directly, or you're the customer of one of their customers. You only have direct influence over the former, and can decide to avoid companies that fall in the latter.
- emerged 5y agoPeople are also free to stop taking opiates, alcohol, crack, or to stop gambling. Yet these things wreck unbelievable havoc on our society because a vast swath of the human population is not psychologically, even biochemically, capable of stopping themselves from doing these things. Human agency has its limits because humans don’t have precise rational control over their own behavior. Otherwise we’d all eat sleep and exercise flawlessly for our entire lives… and we wouldn’t keep refreshing the front page of HN every 30 minutes.