7 ms·

> you can simultaneously care about commercial surveillance ("advertising") and the plight of small businesses despite those small businesses also patronizing t

by boh 5y ago

> you can simultaneously care about commercial surveillance ("advertising") and the plight of small businesses despite those small businesses also patronizing the surveillance economy If you define caring as expressing passive concern in comment boards, I guess you can. If a small business depends on a surveillance infrastructure and removing the infrastructure negatively impacts the business, then you can't equally "care" about both at the same time--a choice must be made. Whether it's destroying energy jobs to lower carbon emissions or lowering the sales of an independent seller to diminish advertising reach, a choice must be made. Society pays a greater price diminishing its civil liberties than compromising the sale of consumer goods.

mindslight 5y ago
> If you define caring as expressing passive concern in comment boards No, caring describes one's personal thought process, which may then be reflected on comment boards and elsewhere. I can believe that oil extraction needs to be reduced to mitigate climate change, and even more fundamentally that the amount of work in general should decrease so the productivity gains of technology accrue to wider society, while still lamenting specific losses of jobs creating individual suffering as workers lose their existing purpose and become less able to support themselves. In fact I'd say the tendency to turn off such empathy in favor of simplistic one-sided narratives is the root of our political polarization. > If a small business depends on a surveillance infrastructure and removing the infrastructure negatively impacts the business The more plausible explanation is that small business revenue has gone down due to the pandemic (as widely covered), which has caused them to spend less on advertising (a straightforward way of budgeting is as a fixed percentage of profit/revenue), which has cut Faceboot's revenue. Faceboot is then blaming this downturn on increased privacy, hoping to garner some sympathy while distracting from a fundamental downturn in their market. As I said, you're prematurely celebrating the surveillance industry's demise by buying into its own narrative. The advertising industry has a history of painting anything that might reduce their invasiveness as an existential threat, and yet the leeches are still here and drinking as much blood as ever.

by boh 5y ago

mindslight 5y ago

> If you define caring as expressing passive concern in comment boards No, caring describes one's personal thought process, which may then be reflected on comment boards and elsewhere. I can believe that oil extraction needs to be reduced to mitigate climate change, and even more fundamentally that the amount of work in general should decrease so the productivity gains of technology accrue to wider society, while still lamenting specific losses of jobs creating individual suffering as workers lose their existing purpose and become less able to support themselves. In fact I'd say the tendency to turn off such empathy in favor of simplistic one-sided narratives is the root of our political polarization. > If a small business depends on a surveillance infrastructure and removing the infrastructure negatively impacts the business The more plausible explanation is that small business revenue has gone down due to the pandemic (as widely covered), which has caused them to spend less on advertising (a straightforward way of budgeting is as a fixed percentage of profit/revenue), which has cut Faceboot's revenue. Faceboot is then blaming this downturn on increased privacy, hoping to garner some sympathy while distracting from a fundamental downturn in their market. As I said, you're prematurely celebrating the surveillance industry's demise by buying into its own narrative. The advertising industry has a history of painting anything that might reduce their invasiveness as an existential threat, and yet the leeches are still here and drinking as much blood as ever.