this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Privacy
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Devil's advocate:
Have you guys ever considered that the information these companies are making off of you just isn't that valuable? Your phone number, email, house address, skin color, sexuality, height, gender, fashion, job, and friends are not secrets. Anybody can know these things about you. We're on the Internet and web-based companies want to interact with people, if you don't like that go to a different website. But you'll never have a privacy agnostic internet experience because PEOPLE KNOW THINGS ABOUT EACHOTHER. That's one of the things about being people.
I remember reading somewhere (years ago, too lazy to find a source) that Google might take in $30/year off of a single Google user. That's absolutely pennies, that's not worth anything. Google only works because of their scale, and I bet a tiny drop in user activity of like 10% would destroy them. Most tech companies are just trying to make up more things to base promises on for their investors, those companies have no real value, they're all basically theoretical. So who cares? Just use them while you need it and if they fizzle out then all the data they had on us is worthless if not gone and the opensource community will step up like it always does.
The devil's advocate forgets why the data has a value in the first place. It is used to control and manipulate to the point where elections can be won by the party that has a better understanding of advertisement and the value of the data of their costumers/voters. Thinking you are immune to manipulation because you know you are manipulated sadly doesn't work. Don't use free services if you know they act in bad faith.