That’s a great post, thank you. Just want to comment on your first paragraph:
To begin with, I want to address people saying 'if you have nothing to hide it doesn't matter',
and I'd like to respond to that with a quote from Edward Snowden
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."Most people are pregmatic more then they are idealists. They can support the right to privacy by principal, but when it comes to take actions that would make their lives less convenient, they will most likely forget their ideals. That is not necessarily a bad thing. People know their personal data is collected when they use the services of Google/Microsoft or social media (I am not talking about services that secretly collect your data without any noticr, which is illegal in most countries). They know that and still choose to use them as they give them value.
Without collecting data, most if not all of those services would no longer be free. Moreover, ads would be less effective and companies would waste money on ads that wouldn’t reach the relevant audience. They would make less profits which usually results in their products becoming more expensive. Finally, people won’t stop seeing ads, they would just see more irrelevant ads (wouldn’t you prefer seeing ads that might interest you and make you buy their product rather than ads of products which are completely irrelevant to you?). I can’t say with complete confidence of course, but I believe most people would rather share their personal data than pay to use their everyday services.
This is only relevant to data being collected for marketing purposes. If the data is being used by the government that is another story. However, government that collects data on civilians and use it against innocent people, is probably not democratic anyway, and can abuse pretty much everything.
You're definitely right! I never really calculated that part in.
However, I have to add something to this:
facebook, google, all their data collection stuff: it's too "shady".
we can disable facebook, but we can never leave? (can't delete account permanently).
it's never clearly told, what
exactly they are doing with our data. "oh we're using it for personalizing ads". right.
it's naive to believe that is all, and as an example in the thread start about the Windows "terms of use", they intentionally make it difficult to clearly understand what the data is being used to.
I'd "lay down my sword" in this fight if I could completely and entirely and irrevokably(no data backup), disable and delete all type of tracking related to me.
I can still see ads on google and facebook, just not personalized for me. is that such a big problem?
it could be an "opt-out" type thing, the majority of people still would be part of their monetization program.
They'd still earn money "by me" due to me still seeings ads.
an example is, you can "pause" google's data gathering, such as "dont have video history", "dont give me personalized ads" and so on,
same (iirc) with some of facebook's stuff..
but does anyone genuinely believe this actually does anything except not display the data?
it's still being gathered, no doubt. not a single doubt in my mind that it's all actively gathered.
if I could be 100% convinced that google and facebook and windows and all the other services, completely stop analysing me - then I'd be fine with their privacy intrustions, aslong as it's a CHOICE to give them data.
I don't care if Google can't give me as relevant youtube videos or google links, that's an OK expense for this.
I mean, how many people do you think actually know even 10% of what data is being gathered and what it can be used for?
here, on this forum, people are still, at the very least slightly above average of a regular computer user(since bitcoin isn't "every day life" for most people).
so it seems like we could assume we know a little bit more, and I still admit I know next to nothing of the depth of our data use (and I've still been doing programming and general computer things for a long time, not an expert tho).
If we could get it black on white, what these big corporations actually do, I'm sure people would leave.
That's all I want - if we are told the truth and can choose, I don't mind then if everyone except me still wants to use these services.
sorry, my post sounds a bit .. repetetive.
