Comment by Brian_K_White
15 days ago
The only reason it's valuable is because of it's utility to extract value from you. Not just money either but for instance the power to manipulate.
It's not a scientific discovery.
15 days ago
The only reason it's valuable is because of it's utility to extract value from you. Not just money either but for instance the power to manipulate.
It's not a scientific discovery.
But something can be valuable to somebody without hurting you. For example if you participate in study as a member of control group. There is no impact to your life and huge benefit to whoever is producing the research. Similarly waste collection businesses take something that has no value to you and generate profit by modifying your waste into something valuable. That is to say - the fact that somebody gains value does not equate that you are loosing the same value.
A scientific discovéy is innately valuable.
THIS data has no value to the people collecting it except for the power it gives them to predict and/or manipulate you.
In the UK, google extracts one average lifetime retirement savings per person in revenue, on average. You could argue that Google’s customers, like advertisers, propaganda firms, etc, all overpay for the data.
That seems unlikely, since I don’t see how many of them could be profitable if they were paying Google more than their own revenue.
> In the UK, google extracts one average lifetime retirement savings per person in revenue, on average.
Those numbers don’t make any sense. Alphabet had 403 billion in revenue in 2025. The UK’s population is around 69,000,000. This amounts to $5,840.57 per person, which is nowhere near a lifetime of retirement savings.