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Putting the government question aside, what prevents Google and advertisers from using your own data to your disadvantage? For example: personalizing pricing b

Putting the government question aside, what prevents Google and advertisers from using your own data to your disadvantage? For example: personalizing pricing based on how much you’re likely to be willing to pay. I’m flying to a tropical destination in a couple weeks, I live in a cold climate, and I just ordered a bunch of new warm weather clothes and some swim suits for my trip. Any corporation with access to my email would know about my trip, my home address, any previous online clothing purchases, and how much I paid for given articles of clothing. Using that, they can make a decent estimate of how elastic my demand is for the new clothes, and how much I’m willing to pay — especially if they leverage detailed financial information that’s readily available from data brokers. How much would retailers by willing to pay for that kind of pricing insight? How much would you overpay for goods and services thanks to that massive information asymmetry, in exchange for free e-mail hosting? That’s not a far-fetched future; giving corporations, data brokers, and the government access to the most intricate inner-most details of your life hastens its arrival, and is dangerously and willfully naive.

eternityforest 4y ago
Nothing really. The main thing is that it would be very very hard for them to make more of a disadvantage to me than a low tech life would naturally cause. I'll always be a fan of open source tech, and I 100% support right to privacy in private spaces. But we can't join every single protest in the world. Five minutes delay fussing with buggy apps could mean missing a bus. Not having Google Services would probably mean I couldn't use important work apps. Not having location history could mean not being able to find something you dropped. And not using Amazon prime would almost make some areas into prisons if you can't drive.

eternityforest 4y ago

Nothing really. The main thing is that it would be very very hard for them to make more of a disadvantage to me than a low tech life would naturally cause. I'll always be a fan of open source tech, and I 100% support right to privacy in private spaces. But we can't join every single protest in the world. Five minutes delay fussing with buggy apps could mean missing a bus. Not having Google Services would probably mean I couldn't use important work apps. Not having location history could mean not being able to find something you dropped. And not using Amazon prime would almost make some areas into prisons if you can't drive.