This is all well and good but as long as advertising is how folks make money on the web, the surveillance state will persist.
are apps and phones more private?
We accepted surveillance as default
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Re: We accepted surveillance as default
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why wouldn't they? It's an additional income stream. If customers cared, the additional income from being someone who didn't surveil could outstrip the income stream from surveilling.
I agree with you, and if you frequent tech circles you'd be under impression that the masses prioritize lack of surveillance and privacy. In my experience with IRL acquaintances, although anecdotal, exactly 0% of people I have spoken to where it's come up in conversation care at all about privacy or surveillance in general with the old "nothing to hide" fallacy.
It just takes some more explaining.
Most folks do care, they just don't understand. When you stop with the high level topics like "surveillance" and start in on the practical impacts like:
- They charge you more if they know you want something (ex - dynamic pricing).
- They try to get you addicted (gambling, vapes, social media)
- They feed you lies (curated social bubbles)
- They manipulate elections (targeted campaigns and ads, targeted social policies)
Etc... most people do actually care, they just struggle to relate the words the industry uses with the real impacts.
Folks tend to think of privacy like someone opening the bathroom door on them (and this gets immediate pushback... see all the articles about the Roomba cameras). But the surveillance we're under now is more subtle and insidious, less visceral. Harder for folks to understand without concrete impacts.
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The reason so many tech people care is because lots of them get to watch the sausage being made, and they understand.
Re: We accepted surveillance as default
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU did that and people still bitch about GDPR banners on websites.
They took what should have been a browser on/off switch and turned it into something almost worse.
GDPR isn't about cookies, or any specific tech. It's a GENERAL Data Protection Regulation.
On top of that it literally defines opt-out as the default state
As for browsers, imagine if world's largest advertising and tracking company that incidentally builds world's dominant browser and dominates all web standards would implement this as a browser switch instead of inventing new ways of tricking you into surveillance? https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1908951546869498085 and https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1664682689591377923
Re: We accepted surveillance as default
#74Comparing digital ads to the Stasi is just peak Western snowflake behavior, I'm sorry.
There are many imaginary arguments about harm in the article, with precisely zero actual examples or cases. Data brokers, buy data, stalk somebody. Can you share at least something? No, it's all just hand waving. Because none of these people can offer any. The fact that the author still thinks Cambridge Analytica meant something says a lot as well. This was a scandal out of nothing.
I, for one, am extremely grateful that, as I was growing up with not much money, I was still able to access more or less the same Internet as people in the US. I don't care about a black-box algorithm looking at my habits to figure out that I love backpacks and microbrand watches, especially if it enables free platforms for me.
Stasi didn't watch you to sell your crap online, you know. They had much worse motives.
If anything, we're now going backward because of the enormous marginal costs of inference. With AI, people aren't on the same page (even a $20 subscription is a lot of money in many countries).
Re: We accepted surveillance as default
#75[dead]
Re: We accepted surveillance as default
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU did that and people still bitch about GDPR banners on websites.
GDPR didnt do it, lazy site owners that didnt want to read the legislation did. Most sites dont even need those popups, but its easier to just shove one on your site than try to understand the specific situations which do need it.
Yeah, the banners/popups aren't required by gdpr, they're the "malicious compliance" solution site owners came up with because they don't want to comply with the limitations, and make it as difficult as possible for the user not to let them.
Re: We accepted surveillance as default
#77I think this blog won the most unserious design of the year.
Re: We accepted surveillance as default
#78Militarism, surveillance, propaganda, statism. Reminds me of something. Are we the baddies now ?
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Re: We accepted surveillance as default
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but surveillance is profitable outside of advertising, and advertising provides a perfect cover for surveillance: It's hard to make things that can separate third-party content from surveillance from third-party content for advertising, or for UI JS libraries for that matter
I'm tired of the feigned helplessness. Well gee this is the only way things can be. Internet doesn't work without surveillance! Guess you don't want the internet! /s Ads and surveillance are not inseparable. We don't need to accept surveillance as the price for a functional internet.
> feigned helplessness
Of whom?
Google and Meta are gigantic surveillance companies. It's their imperative that you keep allowing it. On top of that, most state actors love the idea of more surveillance.
Then you have huge portions of the population that simply don't care or don't know better and aren't going to start directly paying for anything.
Re: We accepted surveillance as default
#80Whenever I read your articles, I get distracted by the space invaders and just play that instead. Maybe this is a problem with me being a bit ADHD, but I feel like I am not the only one
i was just scanning the comments and decided to not click through until i saw yours -- space invaders is now what i'm doing for the next hour.