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> It's sort of understandable when Google or Facebook spy on you and monetise your data to profit from the services that they provide you free of monetary charg

> It's sort of understandable when Google or Facebook spy on you and monetise your data to profit from the services that they provide you free of monetary charge to you. I personally don't like that line of reasoning. If you start to justify abusive behavior in the name of making money you're not giving someone for a "service", it's a small leap to reach the conclusion that abusive behavior (and profiting from it) is justified no matter what as long as you've been provided some kind of service. Either it's a gift, or it's a paid service. In neither cases does abusive behavior ever become justified, whether it's from a friend, a neighbor, or a multi-billion dollar company. If your company wants to offer me free donuts, that's your company's choice and does not grant you the right to follow me home and steal my books. Why would it be any different with Silicon Valley companies?

Hnrobert42 5y ago
Google and FB are unscrupulous and terrible. But it is absurd to insist the only two valid transaction models are offer paid service (which I assume means for money) or gift. Even in your hypothetical, it would not be unreasonable for them to give me a donut in exchange for taking notes on which donut I like and handing me a coupon for my next donut. To me, the issue is not the data collection. It is the lack of transparency.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > To me, the issue is not the data collection. It is the lack of transparency. I don't exactly disagree, but it's hardly comparable. As a human being, i can grasp the notion of giving you 30 minutes of my time to try different cookie flavors and tell you what i think. I could likewise understand the notion/consequences of filling a one-page questionnaire for Facebook's advertisement engine in exchange for free service. But i don't think implicit background data collection on anything they can (my phonebook, really?!) is a reasonable contract, because it's hard to comprehend what are the limits and consequences of that. So it's not just "lack of transparency". I would consider it abusive behavior even if the sign up form read "I WILL FOLLOW AND WATCH YOU EVERYWHERE YOU GO AND TELL ALL MY FRIENDS ABOUT YOUR GREAT ADVENTURES"... especially considering they would probably make it look like a cute pet saying that. I would not consider it abusive behavior if their ad business was *not* collecting any information from the users (except maybe like i said a sign-up questionnaire) and was just doing advertisement.
  - kajaktum 5y ago
    I think that free services are a mistake. But for whatever reason people _really_ like it. Take Youtube. It offers a way to avoid all ads and yet people who spent hours upon hours every day either watching videos or listening to music with it refuses to spend a dime on it. And yet, they also complain that ads are ruining Youtube and so they installed adblocker specifically for it. Since everyone refuses to _directly_ spend money, companies just move to taking money from us indirectly. To me "free services" is like a casinos, its easy to say that you should "just not do/use it lmao" but its extremely hard to think back and consider why Reddit/Hackernews/Youtube/Twitter/Facebook is free and what are the consequences/incentives of it being "free" will mean to our society. It is simply too enticing.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      I am one of those people who really likes it. And I hate it too, and for all the reasons given here. (Did not check them all, but it is a pretty safe bet.) Hating it all means I am on board with activism, advocacy, law, whatever we need to do in order to establish / extend the Bill Of Rights into digital spaces. Society, tech and the law have collided and that mess is ongoing and expanding. Imagine one of those cars smashing into a train with the dummy in it. It crumples, folds, then pieces fly off, the dummy takes damage, and just down the track is a truck, and a bus with kids in it, and so on... That train is heavy, well powered with spiffy tech, and it is powering right through the public! Hate it, but I am quite sure I can't do much, even resisting, doing all the work to anonymize, is a total PITA. Drains the value right out of it all, out of me, my life, and I just do not have time for it, unless a lot of us have time together somehow. And I think dollars are the only language our oppressors, abusers, and the like will both hear and act on because they must! Lessig wrote about things that regulate our behavior: Norms. They do not prevent anything, but do reward or punish. Law. Like norms, but with real teeth well beyond praise and shunning. Physics. The rules of the world will prevent actions. The more we understand, the more this world permits. Money / markets. These also can prevent things. If we cannot afford an action... It will take a lot of us setting norms, doing things that cost, and all of that rolling up into law more relevant than this current "wild west" is. I really like it because I get to do things, have access to information that was the stuff of dreams not so long ago. It is all as empowering as it is exploitative.
- lobocinza 5y ago
  > Even in your hypothetical, it would not be unreasonable for them to give me a donut in exchange for taking notes on which donut I like and handing me a coupon for my next donut. Google Rewards
tim333 5y ago
>If you start to justify abusive behavior... I use both and am yet to find the "monetise your data" stuff abusive. It's mostly things like trying to show an ad for mortgages if they figure you need a mortgage. Honestly with the various forms of death and hunger and real bad stuff in the world I'd feel a bit of a snowflake freaking out over someone trying to show me an ad for something they figure I may need.
- dhimes 5y ago
  To me the biggest crime is in how they figure out what I need. They should let me ask. Period.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > Honestly with the various forms of death and hunger and real bad stuff in the world I'd feel a bit of a snowflake freaking out over someone trying to show me an ad Fair point, but it's all related. The global wealth we have as a planet could provide everyone with decent housing, food and healthcare. Instead it's being owned by a minority who dedicated resources to making things worse for everyone else. The IT industry in particular largely benefits from human rights abuses in mining operations and in the factories on the hardware side, and from big contracts with tyrannical regimes on the software side (Amazon + ICE? Google + China?). The problem is we largely live in a globalized culture in which "exploit others before they exploit you" (the paradigm we're taught in schools/media) is the norm. We are enough technologically-advanced to have a world without war and hunger, but not as long as psychopaths are socially rewarded.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
NoboruWataya 5y ago
This is a difficult one because, like the other person that replied to you, I can't agree that cash payment is the only legitimate form of bargain that might be struck for services. I feel like it's an elitist take, because while I can thankfully afford to pay for these services with cash, a lot of people out there can't and that doesn't mean they should be shut out of basic internet services (like email, for example). And once you agree that non-cash payment is legitimate in principle, we're arguing over matters of degree and what is "reasonable". Although I've become more privacy conscious in recent years, I'm not even sure I can agree that the bargain offered by the ad tech companies is objectively unreasonable. What I can conclude is that it is highly opaque, many people are sleepwalking into it without fully considering its ramifications, and I personally am not comfortable with it. Samsung's practice of taking your money, offering you a product and then taking your data as well is a particularly dark pattern because it strays even more from the reasonable expectations of consumers.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > because while I can thankfully afford to pay for these services with cash, a lot of people out there can't I don't know where you live, but here in France it's the other way around. You can pay with cash pretty much in any shop, but it's expensive on vendors to provide card payments. And the real problem is millions of people don't have a credit card due to being blacklisted (for debt) or undocumented immigrant. That's why for example Lycamobile/Lebara are the most popular phone service providers among the lower classes in France: you can find SIM cards and "tip-up" cards pretty much everywhere. Of course, this raises the question on how to pay on the Internet with cash as i know a lot of people who can't buy stuff online. For people who want to pay online (and have a bank account), taler.net seems like the most promising R&D in the field of "digital cash". For the rest, i can't see why we couldn't have a tip-up card system like we have for phone providers, but as a generic means to pay for online services with cash.

Hnrobert42 5y ago

Google and FB are unscrupulous and terrible. But it is absurd to insist the only two valid transaction models are offer paid service (which I assume means for money) or gift. Even in your hypothetical, it would not be unreasonable for them to give me a donut in exchange for taking notes on which donut I like and handing me a coupon for my next donut. To me, the issue is not the data collection. It is the lack of transparency.

southerntofu 5y ago
> To me, the issue is not the data collection. It is the lack of transparency. I don't exactly disagree, but it's hardly comparable. As a human being, i can grasp the notion of giving you 30 minutes of my time to try different cookie flavors and tell you what i think. I could likewise understand the notion/consequences of filling a one-page questionnaire for Facebook's advertisement engine in exchange for free service. But i don't think implicit background data collection on anything they can (my phonebook, really?!) is a reasonable contract, because it's hard to comprehend what are the limits and consequences of that. So it's not just "lack of transparency". I would consider it abusive behavior even if the sign up form read "I WILL FOLLOW AND WATCH YOU EVERYWHERE YOU GO AND TELL ALL MY FRIENDS ABOUT YOUR GREAT ADVENTURES"... especially considering they would probably make it look like a cute pet saying that. I would not consider it abusive behavior if their ad business was *not* collecting any information from the users (except maybe like i said a sign-up questionnaire) and was just doing advertisement.
- kajaktum 5y ago
  I think that free services are a mistake. But for whatever reason people _really_ like it. Take Youtube. It offers a way to avoid all ads and yet people who spent hours upon hours every day either watching videos or listening to music with it refuses to spend a dime on it. And yet, they also complain that ads are ruining Youtube and so they installed adblocker specifically for it. Since everyone refuses to _directly_ spend money, companies just move to taking money from us indirectly. To me "free services" is like a casinos, its easy to say that you should "just not do/use it lmao" but its extremely hard to think back and consider why Reddit/Hackernews/Youtube/Twitter/Facebook is free and what are the consequences/incentives of it being "free" will mean to our society. It is simply too enticing.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    I am one of those people who really likes it. And I hate it too, and for all the reasons given here. (Did not check them all, but it is a pretty safe bet.) Hating it all means I am on board with activism, advocacy, law, whatever we need to do in order to establish / extend the Bill Of Rights into digital spaces. Society, tech and the law have collided and that mess is ongoing and expanding. Imagine one of those cars smashing into a train with the dummy in it. It crumples, folds, then pieces fly off, the dummy takes damage, and just down the track is a truck, and a bus with kids in it, and so on... That train is heavy, well powered with spiffy tech, and it is powering right through the public! Hate it, but I am quite sure I can't do much, even resisting, doing all the work to anonymize, is a total PITA. Drains the value right out of it all, out of me, my life, and I just do not have time for it, unless a lot of us have time together somehow. And I think dollars are the only language our oppressors, abusers, and the like will both hear and act on because they must! Lessig wrote about things that regulate our behavior: Norms. They do not prevent anything, but do reward or punish. Law. Like norms, but with real teeth well beyond praise and shunning. Physics. The rules of the world will prevent actions. The more we understand, the more this world permits. Money / markets. These also can prevent things. If we cannot afford an action... It will take a lot of us setting norms, doing things that cost, and all of that rolling up into law more relevant than this current "wild west" is. I really like it because I get to do things, have access to information that was the stuff of dreams not so long ago. It is all as empowering as it is exploitative.
lobocinza 5y ago
> Even in your hypothetical, it would not be unreasonable for them to give me a donut in exchange for taking notes on which donut I like and handing me a coupon for my next donut. Google Rewards

tim333 5y ago

>If you start to justify abusive behavior... I use both and am yet to find the "monetise your data" stuff abusive. It's mostly things like trying to show an ad for mortgages if they figure you need a mortgage. Honestly with the various forms of death and hunger and real bad stuff in the world I'd feel a bit of a snowflake freaking out over someone trying to show me an ad for something they figure I may need.

dhimes 5y ago
To me the biggest crime is in how they figure out what I need. They should let me ask. Period.
southerntofu 5y ago
> Honestly with the various forms of death and hunger and real bad stuff in the world I'd feel a bit of a snowflake freaking out over someone trying to show me an ad Fair point, but it's all related. The global wealth we have as a planet could provide everyone with decent housing, food and healthcare. Instead it's being owned by a minority who dedicated resources to making things worse for everyone else. The IT industry in particular largely benefits from human rights abuses in mining operations and in the factories on the hardware side, and from big contracts with tyrannical regimes on the software side (Amazon + ICE? Google + China?). The problem is we largely live in a globalized culture in which "exploit others before they exploit you" (the paradigm we're taught in schools/media) is the norm. We are enough technologically-advanced to have a world without war and hunger, but not as long as psychopaths are socially rewarded.
netizen-936824 5y ago

NoboruWataya 5y ago

This is a difficult one because, like the other person that replied to you, I can't agree that cash payment is the only legitimate form of bargain that might be struck for services. I feel like it's an elitist take, because while I can thankfully afford to pay for these services with cash, a lot of people out there can't and that doesn't mean they should be shut out of basic internet services (like email, for example). And once you agree that non-cash payment is legitimate in principle, we're arguing over matters of degree and what is "reasonable". Although I've become more privacy conscious in recent years, I'm not even sure I can agree that the bargain offered by the ad tech companies is objectively unreasonable. What I can conclude is that it is highly opaque, many people are sleepwalking into it without fully considering its ramifications, and I personally am not comfortable with it. Samsung's practice of taking your money, offering you a product and then taking your data as well is a particularly dark pattern because it strays even more from the reasonable expectations of consumers.

southerntofu 5y ago
> because while I can thankfully afford to pay for these services with cash, a lot of people out there can't I don't know where you live, but here in France it's the other way around. You can pay with cash pretty much in any shop, but it's expensive on vendors to provide card payments. And the real problem is millions of people don't have a credit card due to being blacklisted (for debt) or undocumented immigrant. That's why for example Lycamobile/Lebara are the most popular phone service providers among the lower classes in France: you can find SIM cards and "tip-up" cards pretty much everywhere. Of course, this raises the question on how to pay on the Internet with cash as i know a lot of people who can't buy stuff online. For people who want to pay online (and have a bank account), taler.net seems like the most promising R&D in the field of "digital cash". For the rest, i can't see why we couldn't have a tip-up card system like we have for phone providers, but as a generic means to pay for online services with cash.