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If the big tech companies hadn't made surveillance and ads as the defacto business model, letting users own and keep their data would have been the natural evol

by yedava 3y ago

If the big tech companies hadn't made surveillance and ads as the defacto business model, letting users own and keep their data would have been the natural evolution from desktop computing to mobile computing. Instead we are stuck with this toxic environment of giving out software for "free" in order to establish a monopoly and then squeezing data out of users.

deleted 3y ago
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Arainach 3y ago
>letting users own and keep their data would have been the natural evolution from desktop computing to mobile computing This simply isn't true. Bias disclaimer, most of my salary is paid by ads. Is there a lot of money to be made selling data? Sure. But most of the scenarios of value to customers involve sharing data. It is crucial to me that my photos are backed up automatically in case I lose my device. It is very convenient and nice that those photos have metadata such that I can search "Berlin" and find photos taken when I'm in Berlin. It is convenient for me to have one search bar where I can search for "Thai food" and find it near me without having to go into a mapping app and do the search from there (which would also need to reach out to the internet with a query about my current location). There are societal problems from big data, but the concept of "free" is only one reason we ended up here - data enables a huge number of scenarios which deliver real customer value and which people want.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Both of your examples don't necessarily require me to share my data completely with a third party. One could host all of that at home without much computing power. However I don't think it's entirely just platforms only selling that. Instead I think most consumers don't want to have to host the app at home, they don't want to configure and manage anything they just want to install an app or go to a webpage and have it work and scale.
- yedava 3y ago
  Data could be encrypted (on the cloud, with backups and all) and the software could be given permission to just access the data it needs, do the computation and then discard the data. To clear, these are hard problems to solve, which could be solved if there is a market for them. But the big tech companies have made it prohibitively expensive to carve out any market for software that respects the user. You can't start a business saying "let us have a fair exchange of money for services provided". Some other surveillance company would undercut you by providing the same service for "free". Even if you did establish a viable payment based business (like whatsapp), some big tech company will buy you out and turn it into a surveillance product.
eli 3y ago
Residential telephone service doesn’t have ads but the government scooped up the metadata of who you’re calling and who called you just the same.

by yedava 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Arainach 3y ago

>letting users own and keep their data would have been the natural evolution from desktop computing to mobile computing This simply isn't true. Bias disclaimer, most of my salary is paid by ads. Is there a lot of money to be made selling data? Sure. But most of the scenarios of value to customers involve sharing data. It is crucial to me that my photos are backed up automatically in case I lose my device. It is very convenient and nice that those photos have metadata such that I can search "Berlin" and find photos taken when I'm in Berlin. It is convenient for me to have one search bar where I can search for "Thai food" and find it near me without having to go into a mapping app and do the search from there (which would also need to reach out to the internet with a query about my current location). There are societal problems from big data, but the concept of "free" is only one reason we ended up here - data enables a huge number of scenarios which deliver real customer value and which people want.

vel0city 3y ago
Both of your examples don't necessarily require me to share my data completely with a third party. One could host all of that at home without much computing power. However I don't think it's entirely just platforms only selling that. Instead I think most consumers don't want to have to host the app at home, they don't want to configure and manage anything they just want to install an app or go to a webpage and have it work and scale.
yedava 3y ago
Data could be encrypted (on the cloud, with backups and all) and the software could be given permission to just access the data it needs, do the computation and then discard the data. To clear, these are hard problems to solve, which could be solved if there is a market for them. But the big tech companies have made it prohibitively expensive to carve out any market for software that respects the user. You can't start a business saying "let us have a fair exchange of money for services provided". Some other surveillance company would undercut you by providing the same service for "free". Even if you did establish a viable payment based business (like whatsapp), some big tech company will buy you out and turn it into a surveillance product.

eli 3y ago

Residential telephone service doesn’t have ads but the government scooped up the metadata of who you’re calling and who called you just the same.