Data privacy is all the rage and people want to have an internet where companies need permission to sell your data and where you can use the FREE service without letting them tell advertisers what you actually like.
There are only 2 possible models for the internet
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A free internet where websites, browsers and search engines make money by selling your data to companies who want to sell their products to users.
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A subscription based internet where you companies don’t use your data but charge a fee to use a specific website, browser or search engine.
I can guarantee that all these people complaining about “muh privacy” would not like having a paywall restricted internet.
As one of the privacy zealots on the internet, I’d gladly pay for services if it avoids advertisements. But I should get a choice in who gets my information.
As things are now, I’m not in control of any of it unless I fight tooth and nail to retain it, and even then I can only limit what they have access to. Facebook tracks my browsing habits and builds an advertisement profile based on it even though I explicitly deleted my accounts almost 10 years ago.
And this information isn’t just kept by Facebook. They have the right to sell it to anyone, including the government. Who needs a warrant when your local PD can just pay a data broker and get access to your GPS logs? After all, you consented to that website’s EULA that said they can sell that data to any other entity.
People who don’t care about data privacy don’t understand how much you can learn about someone just from ‘anonymized metadata’.
If it was a person wanting to know that much about you, you’d call the cops for stalking. But because it’s a multimillion dollar company with a profit motive, it’s suddenly okay?
The cost to run a server is between $0.50 to $2.00 per month depending on how complex it is. So Imagine you had to pay $2.50-$3.00 per website in a patchwork of subscription based sites.
Every .com or .net site that wasn’t selling a product would now require that fee, .gov .edu and .org would likely still be free.
I don’t care about my data because I get to use a free internet with at least ads that are relevant to me and adblocker works relatively well
You don’t care about your data because you don’t realize how valuable it is, and how bad the deal is that in exchange for not being able to control your data, you get to see some cute cat memes.
We’re headed to a world where your health insurance company can pay a data broker to get access to data Kroger collects about what you buy when shopping. Imagine your health insurance going up because you buy real butter vs margarine. Or not enough vegetables.
But hey, at least you get to see your friends vacation pictures for free on Facebook. Totally worth it.
Most people don’t understand that we are headed for discriminatory pricing where everyone pays the maximum they can bare up to ensure everyone stays in poverty in an endless consumption loop. Shit we kinda are already there.
Think RealPage and rental markets in REIT owned corporate ghettos.
And the normie still got nothing to hide clearly.
States will ban the practice quickly if companies start price discriminating, the only reason insurance companies have gotten away with it is because they have justified reasons if they started using precision with our data it would be quickly outlawed.
The internet has only been allowed to be a free market because we agreed to be the product. Imagine a world where Google isn’t free, where you are charged per usage like the old phone plans that cost money per amount of letters typed.
You have a lot of faith in the US government’s willingness to solve problems for people vs for companies.
We have a gun violence epidemic because gun manufacturer profits matter more than children’s lives. Forgive me if I’m skeptical that congress would do anything other than protect big business. Health insurance lobbyists will make sure of it.
I have faith in the states/city I live in lol. Maryland/DC will ban the practice, probably the while North east VA upwards, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, West coast, Colorado, and New Mexico would stop this, the feds MIGHT but probably not.
The health insurance lobbyists won’t hesitate to inject money into a local election for a candidate that agrees to keep things as they are.
But hey, I remember being naive and idealistic once, too.
Have you seen our government lately? That’s not fucking happening. Maybe in the furthest left states. But even that is a huge maybe.