The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

A few weeks ago I just logged out. I have since then never felt the need to log back in. Occasionally on autopilot I start typing the domain but when I realise I need to open my password manager and click a link in an email to log in, I lose interest.

Well, the tone has a lot to do with the business model of the websites that publish them which is to get people to click on their article and see the ads. There's more than a bit of irony in here; but it's on the front page of HN so they did that right (from the point of view of reaching their target audience).

Things that stand out to me is the use of the word "we" in the title creating an artificial us and them of of people like "us" who are clued in enough to be reading this bit of wisdom on their website.

In reality, this is a piece cliche laden drivel that brings us nothing new, novel, or remotely insightful and rehashes the same things that people have been writing for years. It's true clickbait; no redeaming features. It's light reading for designed to trigger emotions in a particular crowd with reasonable and irrational concerns about having their freedoms infringed by "surveillance capitalism".

My view is very simple: we are enjoying a brief period of time where the technical capabilities still have enough wiggle room that we can sometimes be un-monitored. Enjoy it while it lasts. But given that we all carry phones that have their microphones turned on just so it can respond to "Alexa", "Siri", or "Hey Google" for the last few years means that it's quite hard to be out of reach from several active microphones; no matter how many things you opt out off (unless that includes having a social life). Much of our public space is monitored by surveillance cameras. Our phones also report our location (via cell towers) every second they are connected to a network. Etc. We emit so many signals continuously that are tracking us that the only thing limiting surveillance is our ability to connect the dots. Which is an ability we now know for sure that the NSA has been investing in as fast as nearly unlimited government funding allows (courtesy of Snowden, Assange, and other people risking everything to report on this).

Right now it's easy to track large groups of people but tracking the entire population is still a bit controversial though that's probably been happening covertly in some places and a bit more openly in China. And of course there's no good reason to assume they are limiting their tracking to China. They have a long track record of industrial espionage, just saying.

> I was still struck by the brazenness of advertising something whose ethical dubiousness has been so thoroughly publicized.

I actually don't entirely see the problem here. I mean taking money from Scientologists to fund services I use (I don't use facebook, but hypothetically if I did ...) is a good thing in my view.

I guess you are worried that people will convert to Scientology, but really if the only thing that is keeping people from being Scientologists is not knowing about it then I think the problem is in no way related to Scientology.

The real issue then is that large swathes of society have been advocating for completely abandoning any sense of objective values while they loudly shout value judgements at the top of their lungs like petulant children with no sense of propriety having temper tantrums.

Blocking Scientology ads won't change that. You can't fix a problem not caused by the visibility of Scientology adds by changing the visibility of Scientology ads.

Unfortunately it isn't very clear about it at all, and it actually only talks about it in advice about the legislation - not in the main body of the legislation. It also isn't clear if you can do things like "Click here to continue for free with tracking, or pay to access without tracking".

Oh, the irony of this article slamming me in the face with a sleazy "We need your consent" dialog with intentionally confusing options and sub-dialogs...

My "consent" is being forced out of me so that roughly ~100 (at a first glance) "partners" can invade my privacy and learn about my browsing habits.

By the way, if you are a programmer and you implement those sleazy dialogs, think about your life choices.