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There was a belief for a time that consumers no longer cared about privacy, that the millennial generation preferred to share everything, and harvesting data wa

There was a belief for a time that consumers no longer cared about privacy, that the millennial generation preferred to share everything, and harvesting data was fine because the concept of privacy was antiquated. What surprised a lot of tech execs was that when people understood how much data was collected they got creeped out and when given the option to opt-out of data collection they agreed at very high rates. Apple's move to limit in-app tracking was genius because any lawsuit from FB or similar is counter-productive - consumers are given the option and they opt out at 99%. Suing Apple to force them to let FB track consumers would be a PR disaster.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Have you ever read Yurtle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss? It’s the story of a turtle who considered himself “the king of all that I can see,” and kept building a tower of turtles higher and higher to see more, and thus rule more…
- FridayoLeary 4y ago
  Ironically, if Yurtle had used the metaverse, he could have kept the illusion going indefinitely and would have remained happy. While the other turtles could have gone happily about their daily lives, because it turns out they never needed a king and all he did was burden them with his vanity projects. I think we can apply this in real life with advanced AI bots, from whom Metas advanced scraping software can gather data which can then be used to show the bots relevant ads.
yanderekko 4y ago
>There was a belief for a time that consumers no longer cared about privacy, that the millennial generation preferred to share everything, and harvesting data was fine because the concept of privacy was antiquated. It's not like this is wrong. If you give consumers the choice of paying $5/month directly for some service vs. providing $5/month in personal data then they'll pretty much always choose the latter - I don't believe this has changed. What has changed is that now third parties are better-able to disrupt companies from Meta from silently harvesting personal data as a default, and consumers generally don't mind this because they see the result as them getting to use the data-harvesting websites for free. Just like they're happy to use adblockers even if that collectively results in sites having to use heavy-handed subscription policies. If you give people the option to free ride, it's not surprising that they do it.
itslennysfault 4y ago
Anecdotally every non-tech person I know gives literally zero Fs about their data/privacy. They're FAR more annoyed by the cookie / tracking pop-ups than what they represent, and would generally opt to just be tracked everywhere than be annoyed with the question. I'd also say that the majority of my tech friends feel about the same, and do not care, and have the "I have nothing to hide / who cares if they see my boring life" attitude.
- nocsi 4y ago
  What about if you film them in public? I’m sure those same people would care a lot, they just understand things differently. If there was more of a sensory experience to having your data/privacy invades, such as someone putting a camera up to your face - then non-tech people would get it.
  - itslennysfault 4y ago
    Depends what you mean by that. If you mean someone in their face with a camera or microphone. Then, yeah I'd agree they would be upset. However, pretty much everyone walks into stores daily that record video/audio, and have signs informing people of it. No one seems to care.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

Have you ever read Yurtle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss? It’s the story of a turtle who considered himself “the king of all that I can see,” and kept building a tower of turtles higher and higher to see more, and thus rule more…

FridayoLeary 4y ago
Ironically, if Yurtle had used the metaverse, he could have kept the illusion going indefinitely and would have remained happy. While the other turtles could have gone happily about their daily lives, because it turns out they never needed a king and all he did was burden them with his vanity projects. I think we can apply this in real life with advanced AI bots, from whom Metas advanced scraping software can gather data which can then be used to show the bots relevant ads.

yanderekko 4y ago

>There was a belief for a time that consumers no longer cared about privacy, that the millennial generation preferred to share everything, and harvesting data was fine because the concept of privacy was antiquated. It's not like this is wrong. If you give consumers the choice of paying $5/month directly for some service vs. providing $5/month in personal data then they'll pretty much always choose the latter - I don't believe this has changed. What has changed is that now third parties are better-able to disrupt companies from Meta from silently harvesting personal data as a default, and consumers generally don't mind this because they see the result as them getting to use the data-harvesting websites for free. Just like they're happy to use adblockers even if that collectively results in sites having to use heavy-handed subscription policies. If you give people the option to free ride, it's not surprising that they do it.

itslennysfault 4y ago

Anecdotally every non-tech person I know gives literally zero Fs about their data/privacy. They're FAR more annoyed by the cookie / tracking pop-ups than what they represent, and would generally opt to just be tracked everywhere than be annoyed with the question. I'd also say that the majority of my tech friends feel about the same, and do not care, and have the "I have nothing to hide / who cares if they see my boring life" attitude.

nocsi 4y ago
What about if you film them in public? I’m sure those same people would care a lot, they just understand things differently. If there was more of a sensory experience to having your data/privacy invades, such as someone putting a camera up to your face - then non-tech people would get it.
- itslennysfault 4y ago
  Depends what you mean by that. If you mean someone in their face with a camera or microphone. Then, yeah I'd agree they would be upset. However, pretty much everyone walks into stores daily that record video/audio, and have signs informing people of it. No one seems to care.