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Is it ethical to give a product away for free in order to profit off ever-increasing surveillance? Would it be fair to proposal an ethical position of somethin

Is it ethical to give a product away for free in order to profit off ever-increasing surveillance? Would it be fair to proposal an ethical position of something like "if you won't offer your product in a way that uses my information ethically than I have the right to safeguard my information"? Yes, we could all refuse to use facebook, and only use an ethical (even possibly paid!) alternative, but in the race-to-the-bottom everyone-else-ruins-it-for-everyone-else real-world we live in, maybe there is a lot more gray area than you are proposing. In my view the "ever-increasing" aspect of FB's usage of data is particularly relevant in this case. I deleted my account because I'm aware of it. It's not easy to make everyone else aware of it, or understand the full implications, though. And, of course, FB tracks even those of us who don't have accounts.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Is it ethical to consume without giving anything back? Nobody is entitled to free services over the internet. If you aren't paying with money then expect to be paying with something else. The solution to invasive encroachment of personal data is GDPR-like regulation, not attacking the entities spending money to run servers and pay for development. If they are able to operate in a permissive environment that won't implement regulations then the blame rests with lazy regulators.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  > Is it ethical to consume without giving anything back? Consider this: you sign up for a while, then delete your account forever. Your data however is still there, invisible to users yet available to them, ready to be accessed at will and sold years after you moved away. Would that be ethical? What if we already gave back for services we didn't use yet?
- domador 4y ago
  I do wish we could just pay modest fees for membership in sites like Facebook. But I doubt they'd be willing to try that approach... or that we'd be willing to support it (even for useful services that haven't burned their ethical reputation like Facebook has.) As a society, we really need to learn that our expectation of free services tends to create inferior services, many of which eventually succumb to perverse incentives. On a related note, it was discouraging when Facebook used to say, "It's free, and always will be!" on it's login page. I read that statement as a threat.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  Let's translate the analogy back to the physical world. Imagine you go to the mall to meet friends and simply avert your eyes / otherwise ignore all the advertising displays scattered throughout. Is that unethical? Just like Facebook, the mall is a privately owned public space that costs money to maintain. However, I don't feel like avoiding the ads is unethical at the mall, so what would make it unethical in the digital world?
  - chrischen 4y ago
    I’m not sure that the analogy holds that Facebook is a public space. Many people (young people) do fine without Facebook, and you can totally live without Instagram either.
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      I personally manage without malls too. However, I think it's pretty difficult to argue that Facebook doesn't intend to be a digital public space. Facebook's own mission statement is "to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together". They provide free access to the site (and other services) in developing countries through their free basics program. The site is "free and always will be". The only thing they could do to make it more obvious is to change their slogan to "the front page of the Internet".
      - chrischen 4y ago
        It's a free service but then it's also a membership driven service. It's un-indexed by Google and you have to register and login to see any information. A mall on the other hand you can just walk in, and you do not need to agree to any terms of service to walk in.
        Tijdreiziger 4y ago
        Malls have house rules, which you implicitly accept upon entering the mall and which are equivalent to terms and services (i.e. if you don't observe them, you may be removed from the premises). Example: https://wienmitte-themall.at/en/house-rules/ https://wienmitte-themall.at/en/house-rules/
- neodymiumphish 4y ago
  First: they're just as entitled to deny service to anyone doing this kind of stuff (ad blocking or privacy-enhancing features) as anyone is to using it. The fact that they aren't means they're still gaining some value even with users doing this. Second: I don't think these features actually do anything to prevent tracking anyway. It might take some effort to validate, but my assumption is that Facebook is capable of building the link unique to the user who shared, and even potentially specific to the recipient if their sharing via DM. In the second case, these will be unique enough to easily track the users who open them, specifically by tying the IP of the recipient when they browse, even with other privacy-blockers running. The only way around that would be VPN, presumably. Granted, there's still some data tracking getting broken in these situations, as every link is being interacted with automatically by AdNauseum, but they could still track situations where links are interacted with multiple times, for example.
- 8note 4y ago
  Companies sell things as loss leaders all the time. That doesn't mean you have to buy more stuff from them, and a proper Homo economicus will go buy the cheaper item from a competitor. The solution is for Facebook to stop being bad - regulation is a method, but there's no reason for Facebook to not do so on its own. Its perfectly fine to go after bad actors separately from making better regulations

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

Is it ethical to consume without giving anything back? Nobody is entitled to free services over the internet. If you aren't paying with money then expect to be paying with something else. The solution to invasive encroachment of personal data is GDPR-like regulation, not attacking the entities spending money to run servers and pay for development. If they are able to operate in a permissive environment that won't implement regulations then the blame rests with lazy regulators.

squarefoot 4y ago
> Is it ethical to consume without giving anything back? Consider this: you sign up for a while, then delete your account forever. Your data however is still there, invisible to users yet available to them, ready to be accessed at will and sold years after you moved away. Would that be ethical? What if we already gave back for services we didn't use yet?
domador 4y ago
I do wish we could just pay modest fees for membership in sites like Facebook. But I doubt they'd be willing to try that approach... or that we'd be willing to support it (even for useful services that haven't burned their ethical reputation like Facebook has.) As a society, we really need to learn that our expectation of free services tends to create inferior services, many of which eventually succumb to perverse incentives. On a related note, it was discouraging when Facebook used to say, "It's free, and always will be!" on it's login page. I read that statement as a threat.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
Let's translate the analogy back to the physical world. Imagine you go to the mall to meet friends and simply avert your eyes / otherwise ignore all the advertising displays scattered throughout. Is that unethical? Just like Facebook, the mall is a privately owned public space that costs money to maintain. However, I don't feel like avoiding the ads is unethical at the mall, so what would make it unethical in the digital world?
- chrischen 4y ago
  I’m not sure that the analogy holds that Facebook is a public space. Many people (young people) do fine without Facebook, and you can totally live without Instagram either.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    I personally manage without malls too. However, I think it's pretty difficult to argue that Facebook doesn't intend to be a digital public space. Facebook's own mission statement is "to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together". They provide free access to the site (and other services) in developing countries through their free basics program. The site is "free and always will be". The only thing they could do to make it more obvious is to change their slogan to "the front page of the Internet".
    - chrischen 4y ago
      It's a free service but then it's also a membership driven service. It's un-indexed by Google and you have to register and login to see any information. A mall on the other hand you can just walk in, and you do not need to agree to any terms of service to walk in.
      - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
        Malls have house rules, which you implicitly accept upon entering the mall and which are equivalent to terms and services (i.e. if you don't observe them, you may be removed from the premises). Example: https://wienmitte-themall.at/en/house-rules/ https://wienmitte-themall.at/en/house-rules/
neodymiumphish 4y ago
First: they're just as entitled to deny service to anyone doing this kind of stuff (ad blocking or privacy-enhancing features) as anyone is to using it. The fact that they aren't means they're still gaining some value even with users doing this. Second: I don't think these features actually do anything to prevent tracking anyway. It might take some effort to validate, but my assumption is that Facebook is capable of building the link unique to the user who shared, and even potentially specific to the recipient if their sharing via DM. In the second case, these will be unique enough to easily track the users who open them, specifically by tying the IP of the recipient when they browse, even with other privacy-blockers running. The only way around that would be VPN, presumably. Granted, there's still some data tracking getting broken in these situations, as every link is being interacted with automatically by AdNauseum, but they could still track situations where links are interacted with multiple times, for example.
8note 4y ago
Companies sell things as loss leaders all the time. That doesn't mean you have to buy more stuff from them, and a proper Homo economicus will go buy the cheaper item from a competitor. The solution is for Facebook to stop being bad - regulation is a method, but there's no reason for Facebook to not do so on its own. Its perfectly fine to go after bad actors separately from making better regulations