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This is defeatist and normalizing a situation that is abnormal. People pay for hardware, bandwidth and pretty much all software but somehow a few trinkets must

This is defeatist and normalizing a situation that is abnormal. People pay for hardware, bandwidth and pretty much all software but somehow a few trinkets must be paid with relinquishing privacy.

veave 3y ago
The only reason people pay for those things is because no one offers them for free yet. If they did they would be really happy to trade their privacy. For example, Chinese smartphones are full of tracking ads, which is why they are so cheap, and they are extremely popular.
- nologic01 3y ago
  This is true, but its also an unworkable dead end for the tech industry. Private data is worth alot, but it cannot compensate for all the potentially valuable products people would happily pay for. By undermining trust with users (turning them into products) they put a lid on the market. So even from a pure financial perspective they have opted for short term profit and killing the golden goose.
Eumenes 3y ago
I'm on your side ... The defeatism is real, I can't really name a single win. GDPR? Protests against SOPA/PIPA? Net neutrality? Apple not giving up passcodes to LEO (they do)? I've attempted to educate friends/family on tech privacy concerns, but nobody cares, even my friends in the industry. I have many tech friends that won't even modify their home network, let alone ditch FB or Google or Snapchat or Tiktok. Ultimately, computing and the internet is untrustworthy and always will be so. I don't possess the knowledge or time to assess every line of code or dependency in a project. Let alone backdoors in chips, hardware, and my ISP providing a line to the NSA. Abstinence + sabotage of platforms is probably the only way. Keep the corporate developers busy fighting spam, fraud, abuse - make it unprofitable to build spyware.
- nologic01 3y ago
  I cant deny any of that. Its more or less my experience. Ultimately it boils down to fundamental optimism or pessisism that is not necessarily linked causally to empirical data. To me the commingled business models of big tech as we have come to know them, dipping their fingers at every possible data jar, are an outlier, a dissonance. How and when this could resolve into something more stable its not obvious. Politicians can go being immoral and look the other way for a long time. But you cant buy all the politicians all the time. If we start by clearly separating what is really free (because its a commmon public good paid by all), from what is paid by users to private companies for real services provided in competitive markets and with respects to their clients (not product) we'll be on a good path. National security related privacy is another can of worms altogether. You really dont want a repeat of 20th century dictators dissolving democracy and exterminating whomever they managed to cast as the enemy with the ruthless efficiency of an AI guided panopticon. I mean these things are pretty basic. Only when we give up on common sense will dystopia become a reality.

This is defeatist and normalizing a situation that is abnormal. People pay for hardware, bandwidth and pretty much all software but somehow a few trinkets must be paid with relinquishing privacy.

veave 3y ago

The only reason people pay for those things is because no one offers them for free yet. If they did they would be really happy to trade their privacy. For example, Chinese smartphones are full of tracking ads, which is why they are so cheap, and they are extremely popular.

nologic01 3y ago
This is true, but its also an unworkable dead end for the tech industry. Private data is worth alot, but it cannot compensate for all the potentially valuable products people would happily pay for. By undermining trust with users (turning them into products) they put a lid on the market. So even from a pure financial perspective they have opted for short term profit and killing the golden goose.

Eumenes 3y ago

I'm on your side ... The defeatism is real, I can't really name a single win. GDPR? Protests against SOPA/PIPA? Net neutrality? Apple not giving up passcodes to LEO (they do)? I've attempted to educate friends/family on tech privacy concerns, but nobody cares, even my friends in the industry. I have many tech friends that won't even modify their home network, let alone ditch FB or Google or Snapchat or Tiktok. Ultimately, computing and the internet is untrustworthy and always will be so. I don't possess the knowledge or time to assess every line of code or dependency in a project. Let alone backdoors in chips, hardware, and my ISP providing a line to the NSA. Abstinence + sabotage of platforms is probably the only way. Keep the corporate developers busy fighting spam, fraud, abuse - make it unprofitable to build spyware.

nologic01 3y ago
I cant deny any of that. Its more or less my experience. Ultimately it boils down to fundamental optimism or pessisism that is not necessarily linked causally to empirical data. To me the commingled business models of big tech as we have come to know them, dipping their fingers at every possible data jar, are an outlier, a dissonance. How and when this could resolve into something more stable its not obvious. Politicians can go being immoral and look the other way for a long time. But you cant buy all the politicians all the time. If we start by clearly separating what is really free (because its a commmon public good paid by all), from what is paid by users to private companies for real services provided in competitive markets and with respects to their clients (not product) we'll be on a good path. National security related privacy is another can of worms altogether. You really dont want a repeat of 20th century dictators dissolving democracy and exterminating whomever they managed to cast as the enemy with the ruthless efficiency of an AI guided panopticon. I mean these things are pretty basic. Only when we give up on common sense will dystopia become a reality.