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I agree. Philosophically, politically and financially (in terms of groups I donate to). But it's too late. The frame shift is too great for most people. Gettin

• EGreg 2y ago
  Vegans can talk all they want But the Impossible Burger did more than talking ever did Government tried antitrust for decades w telcos But the costs of long distance calls dropped to practically zero when open VoIP protocols came out The Web disrupted AOL, MSN, CompuServe, TV, Newspapers, Magazines etc. Wikipedia disrupted Britannica and Encarta The answer: open source must get good enough that people can switch from big tech corporation-controlled solutions and then they will be in control of their own software !! :)
  • wdh505 2y ago
    I love this answer. I don't have a large enough graphics card to host a local open sourced gpt 4o yet. I like seeing the options grow though
  • kbenson 2y ago
    Caring about privacy has always been a rich person's game, since the poor have little to pay with other than their data. That's worth keeping in mind.
    • mindslight 2y ago
      But the products we're talking about "paying" for here are continually dropping in price - email, media sharing, social networking, etc. A basic cloud host that can take care of a whole family can be had for $5/mo. Perhaps that's still too much for your exemplar poor to spend on a hope. But the amount extracted by the surveillance industry is always increasing, and eventually that levee will break. I'd say there are much bigger impediments - needing to invest time for setup, needing trust a given solution won't turn out to be a lemon or even backfire, and lack of straightforward packageable solutions to many of the technical problems.
      • kavalg 2y ago
        It's not the cloud cost that is stopping people from doing this. It is the installation and administration cost. That requires time and expertise that most either don't have or are not willing to spend.
        • mindslight 2y ago
          "Poor" on its own generally refers to monetary cost, which is what I responding to. I agree with you. Time poor is a definite problem, even (or especially) among people that aren't money poor, and it comes with its own Vimes's Boots analogy. For example, the many articles we read here about the centralized service of the week creating some kind of problem for their users, which could have been dodged with a little outlay of time to make better tech choices in the first place.
          • kbenson 2y ago
            Poor, as I intended it, was meant to encompass many things. Working poor people have less money, but they also often have less free time because they have less money. If you have plenty of money you can shop around for jobs that fit your schedule better, or if your job allows for it take time off, or outsource some work you would have to do yourselves (housecleaning, maintenance, landscaping, child care when you're unavailable, cooking, etc). Additionally, if you're in a family, there's a higher chance that both parents will need to work full time, meaning there's less free time for all those things mentioned above, which if one parent worked part time or not at all could allow for a lot of those things to be done while one is working, leading to more free time in the evening for both. Given that, who's more likely to look into free alternatives to apparently free services online? The middle-class person with a spouse that works part time and takes care of many of the chores and that pays for a handyman or contractor or repair man to fix appliances and household problems or the poor person that works full time, their spouse works full time, and when they're done working they're busy doing the chores that life requires because paying someone else is not feasible for them? Time is money, and the working poor have neither.
            • 2y ago
    • huygens6363 2y ago
      The “poor” seem to scrape by just enough to get access to Netflix, sports.. I don’t think this is a money issue.
      • jononor 2y ago
        Having to choose between those things and privacy is definitely a money issue! It is not surprising that privacy looses in that case - it is opening up another huge can of worries. Entertainment is a source of relaxation, de-stressing as well as social connection (notice how much people talk about and group around the topics you mention).
        • huygens6363 2y ago
          Having to choose between what is actually good for you and what is “relaxing” and then deciding to divert all available funds to “relaxation” is not a money issue.
          • jononor 2y ago
            I think privacy is very important. But a social network is definitely more so! And many have that via sports, for example. And if someone thinks it best to spend money on Netflix over Fastmail, I definitely am not gonna shame them and say "that is not good for you"! Especially not if they are poor.
    • freehorse 2y ago
      The only reason that privacy issues exist online in the first place is the advertising business. The advertising business increases the costs of everything. So, enjoy your "free youtube videos" that contain advertisements for which you pay through the products you buy and are advertised. Privacy being "rich people's game" is BS because essentially everybody pays for the advertising costs in a rather horizontal fashion.
      • sambazi 2y ago
        tracking for advertising can also be seen as a stop-gap measure against surveillance because the financial incentive for quantity corrupts the quality of the data
      • chuckadams 2y ago
        If it were just about targeted advertising offsetting the platform costs, I’d be fine with it. What torques me off is that my digital footprint is being sold to anyone and everyone with two nickels to rub together.
  • scarface_74 2y ago
    And if you want to be noticed on the web, you have to go through Google. If you want to sell anything you either have to go through Facebook or Amazon. The web is “open”. But Google and to a lesser extent Apple control the browsers to access it and they can control the platforms. Meet the new boss…
    • jononor 2y ago
      You do not have to. But, there is a considerable cost to shying away from the dominant actors. Adding on top of the existing difficulties... But it probably can be done. It would be very interesting, especially in HN community, to build some entrepreneurial practice around "succeeding without surveillance capitalists organizations". As a parallel to the "succeeding without venture capital" practices that already have been building up (bootstrapping, tiny teams) the last years. We can be the frontrunners.
      • scarface_74 2y ago
        And how will your alternative get users without advertising? Where are you going to advertise if not Google and Facebook? Ben Thompson talks about “Aggregation theory” all of the time. The companies that have the power have that power because that’s where the users are. How do you compete with “free with advertising”? We talk about how the web killed TV networks. But streaming services are making deals with cable companies to bundle their ad supported tier with regular TV and with their internet only packages. Oh and the largest cable company owns NBC. When “cord cutters” get rid of pay TV and use YouTube TV where most of the money still goes back to the same providers - how is this any different?
        • jononor 2y ago
          Possibly via organic, physical, viral and direct marketing techniques. I would never try to compete with free. Probably not anything B2C at all, if I were to have avoid the surveillance capitalists as a constraint.
  • reverius42 2y ago
    2024 will be the year of the Linux Desktop.
  • antifa 2y ago
    > But the Impossible Burger did more than talking ever did TBH, nah, I don't believe the impossible burger has really done anything truly notable, as far as vegan causes go. Now, if you were to end beef subsidies leading to something like 25% of beef farms changing over to a more vegan friendly or environmentally friendly alternative uses, or developed protein alternatives that reduced food costs for the average person, then yeah. Impossible Burger isn't a bad product, but as far as the big picture goes, it's a slightly tastier virtue signal than black bean burgers.
• poikroequ 2y ago
  I've seen first hand just how little the average person cares about privacy. The type of people who believe they have nothing to hide. My friends and family don't understand why I don't post everything to social media. No I'm not going to install this app and scan all my receipts. BuT wHy?!?!?! I think many people here on hackernews live in a bubble and just don't understand what is an average human being. They surround themselves with like-minded tech savvy individuals and fail to comprehend how there isn't stronger support for privacy.
  • kbenson 2y ago
    > I think many people here on hackernews live in a bubble and just don't understand what is an average human being. Plenty of us understand, but it's depressing and usually trying to explain to others that have a rosier view of how people will react feels a lot like trying to get the people themselves to care, which is to say it's hard, thankless, and depressing, so few people bother.
  • renonce 2y ago
    You don’t want to be responsible for some random receipt 10 years ago that allegedly commits tax fraud, allow influencers to manipulate you into buying things or supporting campaigns that you immediately regret 1 minute later, receive lots of spams in your email and social accounts, etc, and the stakes get higher as you climb up the social ladder. Many of these don’t matter for people with little stakes as they have nothing to lose.
  • pennybanks 2y ago
    i agree. people just dont care. and if everyone did we would be paying cash for the online products we use for free
    • arresin 2y ago
      It’s the “free” price. I used to think it was great! Now it always makes me uneasy.
  • teh_infallible 2y ago
• pennybanks 2y ago
  is it such a problem if people dont care? its not like they arent aware. i mean its not too complicated to get to a desired privacy standard for the most part so it seems like the privacy conscious in general get angry for other people, who dont even care. its because of those people that we can even use these products for free. i mean they arent making ad revenue off of us....
  • myaccountonhn 2y ago
    I think people do care, but are either not empowered or really know how/why it happens . Many times, I’ll discuss the issue with less tech literate people and when they learn all the spying that’s going on, they feel really bothered by it, but not empowered enough to do anything about. IMO it’s a bit like organic, unprocessed and local food. My personal experience is that I only started caring about it after really learning about agriculture.
• JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > it's too late. The frame shift is too great for most people The capacity for the current crop of privacy advocates to make a cogent case it lacking. Peoples’ capacity to recognise and rearrange themselves in defence of a novel threat is not. If anything, our present malaise is one of allergic reactions to phantom threats.
  • whoknowsidont 2y ago
    >Peoples’ capacity to recognise and rearrange themselves in defence of a novel threat is not. Yet the two major topical events one could easily point to escape you.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Yet the two major topical events one could easily point to escape you Sure, as with you the trend line. Your wit would be stronger with substance. Which events do you cite, and how?
      • whoknowsidont 2y ago
        >Your wit would be stronger with substance It would be wasted on you, as you are clearly acting dishonestly.