Comment by lijogdfljk
3 years ago
Eh, it's exactly what you expect from America though. Ie the embodiment of short term thinking. Economy, environment, politics, etc - not that America is entirely unique here, just that the population seems to embrace this as a foundation in my experience.
Privacy to tech like this is very hypothetical till it happens, and it'll rarely happen. If it's not in our faces we won't vote against it.
>Eh, it's exactly what you expect from America though. Ie the embodiment of short term thinking.
I think this is the entirely wrong framing. My other comment covers some of it, but specifically in regards to your comment: it's a lack of education, not the embodiment of short-term thinking.
And really, we can't expect every person that uses Google (or whatever other large tech company) to thoroughly understand all of the bits and pieces of technology that could be used to fuck them. Or how things that we've been told are anonymous/private become non-anonymous/non-private when combined with other sparse data. These are complex topics that even many technologists don't understand (or are outside of their field of expertise).
These companies hire top lawyers to write complex ToS, use as many dark-patterns as legally possible, do illegal things until they get caught doing so, evolve their terms frequently, etc. Yet somehow they've convinced everyone to blame the layperson. It's remarkable, really.
What would be really swell is if we could, you know, not have companies spend millions of dollars on how-to-fuck-your-user initiatives.
But we can't live in a world where the responsibility isn't on the individual, can we?
Ie if we expect corporations to not fuck you over, who is there to enforce that? Who has the power to keep them in check? Okay, maybe Government should hold that role - but who then keeps the government in check? Who ensures that the spying or privacy from the Government is kept in check? etc
Ultimately the buck always stops at the individual. And we have to be hyper aware of long term implications, because money, greed and power has deep, deep pockets (as you also mentioned) and the fight will be never ending.
We, as a community, have de-propritized education, health care, public safety, privacy, etc. Sure, powerful forces have been pushing for that exact thing, but we can't expect them to "just be nice" or w/e.
I'm very pro "Big Government". However my ideas behind big government will not work without individual responsibility. Until then citizens are purposefully and willfully giving their power away with every tiny step. The blame is on us, and our current state is inevitable. My 2c.
My last sentence was more wishful thinking than a proposed solution. I am obviously aware the world isn't as utopic as the sentence would require.
The main point I wanted to get across is that it's baffling that companies aren't blamed in these conversations. It's always the user who is blamed ("well you read the ToS didn't you!"). And that's dumb, because the vast majority of users aren't lawyers and don't have CS degrees -- both of which are becoming increasingly required to provide informed consent to a ToS. (edit: in every other contract I sign, a lack of informed consent is grounds to void the contract, exception being tech-company ToS contracts)
If you still want to blame my 85-year old parent for not understanding what Google is doing with his data, go for it, I guess. Just seems stupid to do so, because he barely can open up a web browser but is somehow expected to understand the complexities of data aggregation and what impact it will have on him. And as time marches on, it's equally ridiculous to suggest that he just never use a computer to avoid the issue.
>And we have to be hyper aware of long term implications,
Without post-secondary education in niche fields, this is becoming impossible. Especially across multiple services with changing terms, in countries with changing laws, in a world where technology evolution outpaces curriculum changes.
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> it's a lack of education
This is absolutely by design and part of a larger pattern of propaganda that keeps Americans scared of the government and in love with the idea of becoming billionaire CEOs themselves because it's "moral". That holy "free market" has rewarded those rich people for being some damn smart and efficient--they deserve it, not the damn communist free loader leftists who hate America.
"Capitalism, God's way of determining who is smart and who is poor."
-Ron Swanson
/s, obviously