this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Comments like this just make me depressed (well this is all depressing really) because it feels like a lot of people don't quite understand how utterly insignificant we are to these businesses. They will lose so few customers it won't even wiggle the dial. People will simply download Chrome to do whatever this is, they will get the data they want, user goes back to using Firefox until the next shitty company makes them use Chrome for something.
The problem is simply the consumers. We are all suffering, increasingly, because of the complacency, tech illiteracy, laziness, and short-sightedness of the average consumer. It's not really their fault, in that these businesses are the ones making the decision to do this, but realistically, if there's no market pressure, a business is going to do exactly what every business does, which is maximize all potential avenues for profit.
The average consumer is the reason why we can't have nice things anymore. And it is getting very hard not to feel a certain degree of resentment toward them as everything seems to just get progressively worse and worse with no hope in sight for any type of correction. They don't think that this is something they need to care about, and it legit makes me want to scream thinking about 6-7 years from now when these same exact people will complain about how unusable the internet has gotten.
@deweydecibel @Yoz don't blame the consumers people have busy lives and don't have the time or interest to spend their limited free time learning privacy or avoiding a certain company because of an obscure privacy reason they don't understand.
this is why market pressure is essentially bullshit. If more aggressive action is taken towards these companies instead of just blindly believing in the free market we might actually make an impact.
we have the free time let's use it to hurt them
People do give a shit. There is just an overload of shitty corporate behavior and people only have so much bandwidth. Each person fights on the fronts most important to them - which vary person to person (and over time). In the end you’re right, the answer is to regulate and make things illegal so people aren’t fighting thousands of battles at once.
Exactly. I used to run a corporate banlist, where if a company screwed me over, or I though what they sold simply insn't good enough I wouldn't buy their shit. If I stuck to it completely, I would have 0 options for computer mice, 0 options for phones, 0 options pretty much for laptops, literally 0 option for any home appliance, the list goes on and on and on.
Market pressure is not bullshit. Unorganized mod simply doesn’t exert any. You need money (corporations and billionaires) or coordination (unions, activists, and governments) to pressure markets.
So yeah, it’s possible to exert market pressure by pushing politicians to outlaw such practices.
Regulations are what matter
Man you took this whole comment right out of my mouth. These days I just resent everyone around me.
And these people are just fucking everywhere. The future just feels so hopeless.
Like I get it can be difficult but I point out how they can be better and they just get offended.
I agree so much.
I sometimes go to a grocery store near work to pick up lunch, and I usually get like two things. The cashier always seems confused when I ask for no bag, despite me obviously being capable of carrying those items to the register.
So not only are people making weird choices for themselves, they seem adamant that I need to make them too.
Yeah I know. My brother in law (and by extention my sister) are super smart and politically active but they have a house full of data sucking gadgets like Alexa and absolutely no concerns about data privacy or security. I've tried to talk to them about being more selective about how they share their data, but my brother in law is a lawyer so trying to persuade him is like going to court and is just exhausting.
No, it's the supply side cornering the market. If there was two similar mouses on the shelf, and one said "no crappy spyware bundled", the average consumer would buy that. That's what they teach the "free market" is, and how free market capitalism should solve this problem.
But free markets don't really exist, the better mouse without crappy spyware doesn't either, so people need to come together and force corporations to respect the social contract. One might call this governmental regulation. That's where the answer is.
So then the problem is not consumers, it is citizens. Because how do you expect government regulations to come about if citizens are not asking for it? Citizens and consumers are generally the same people.
My point is more about "vote with your wallet" is stupid, you should vote with your ... vote.
Then again, some places don't offer the plurality of vote choices that would make a democracy function properly, so privacy regulations can't be voted for. I mean if all your choices are Putin or Putin; or Trump or Biden; what do you do to regulate companies to preserve privacy?
Activism is the answer I guess.
The logic is still somewhat circular, given that ordinary people mostly do not vote for Pirates even if they have the choice, and they do not ask their politicians for privacy regulations, much less bother joining a party or running for election.
And if in a democracy your choice is Putin or Putin, who ultimately is to blame for that? Was Putin parachuted into his position by foreign agents? Political systems, whatever their exact nature, are ultimately dependent on the responsibility of their citizens. And, well, it seems that in most places citizens, like consumers, are just not very responsible.
Activism is an answer, agreed on that.
100% even I blame the consumers for being lazy and illiterate.