> spend more money

We're talking about a companion app for one of the most expensive consumer headphones you can get ( $350 ).

I don't think this is about money, this is about using dark patterns and morally questionable behavior to get user data.

Yes, if you're older and wiser you can work around these, disable the app location data, etc. But a lot of people are oblivious to this, not because they don't care but because they are being purposefully deceived.

>That sounds like you do have a choice: spend more money.

This is not an option for everyone. Don't poor people deserve privacy too?

Sure, but they deserve to be able to make the choice too. So if you move to a world where selling your data for services isn't available, then you're forcing them to pay and since we've determined they can't pay, all you're doing is removing the choice from them and forcing them in to the no-service option.

And I know how it is because I was once affected by this. All these "but the poor people" folks disappear when the poor actually ask for help. It's like this:

Poor people: Hey, can we get the right to work for a living in a dignified way and use the same services as everyone else?

The Privileged Protectors: Okay, how about I make it so you can't work for more than 20 hrs and umm... I'll throw in some privacy

Poor people:...

You can't eat privacy.

>So if you move to a world where selling your data for services isn't available, then you're forcing them to pay and since we've determined they can't pay, all you're doing is removing the choice from them and forcing them in to the no-service option.

Like this is the only option... We already see a lot of services that sell multiple tiers of their products, with power users or larger companies paying significantly more.

Oh and now they don't deserve this better service and you've made the choice for them. No thanks.

So eager to remove choices from someone else.

>So eager to remove choices from someone else.

Oh people can't afford a car if it has seatbelts? Poor people should be able to buy unsafe cars! It's their choice!

Well, yes, obviously.

Bose and Sony, 2 of the most expensive tech product companies, are the example here. The option is buy your sub $10 wired skull candy earbuds and ignore anything that's more expensive because it isn't an option. It's the same reason recent generations grew p on fast food, it's cheaper and easier and all some people have resources for.

I’ve lived in a world similar to that. It was called the 1990s. It wasn’t particularly expensive, it wasn’t that hard to book hotels and, amazingly, people also got invited to parties and events. Also, your headphones didn’t spy on you.

This is how you know you were wealthy. Everything was so much more expensive then. I remember even trying to get maps or a digital marker for where you were required so much money. Noise canceling headphones? Forget about it.

And if you weren't in America with money, you could barely do anything online.

Hotels, air travel? So expensive. Way cheaper now. TVs? So cheap now. And where I lived you couldn't even book your own flights at the time. You needed a travel agent. Up costs. Nightmare.

I can assure you I'm not wealthy and never have been, other than in the sense of me living in the west (though not the US). My point is that life can be pretty damn decent without digital markers for where you are, constant air travel and a new TV every other year.

Yes, certain things have gotten more affordable. But is affordable noise cancelling headphones and cheap air travel really the result of apps and websites crawling up our backsides with a microscope and shuffling that data to some unknown other?

Air travel in the 1990s was much cheaper than, say, in the 1950s, much like computers, TV:s and headphones. In fact, the price of air travel dropped by roughly 1/3 between 1980 and 1995[0].

Evidence suggests that happened completely without constant digital surveillance.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...

> Assuming things about me

Off to a great start there, champ.

> Huge TV

Just like with air travel, TV:s have gotten larger and cheaper for a long, long time before data harvesting even existed as a factor. Yes, the price of TV:s are continuing to drop. Mostly because of cheaper panels. Of course manufacturers claim that TV:s would be unsellably expensive without telemetry, but then again, they make lots of money off it and "cheap" is a neat way to justify that.

Current prices might've taken a bit longer to reach without telemetry - although the latest most significant price drops occurred a decade ago or more, well before spy TV:s were baseline models.

Today, you can buy a 32" monitor for $200, and they've not yet begun spying on us. For pure screen real estate, yes, it costs more than a 55" model. But is it "expensive"? Heck, would it be "expensive" if it was a 28" CRT, like the one my current LCD TV replaced a decade ago?

Sacrificing privacy for constant upgrades to something bigger and ostensibly better is, to reply in kind, if anything a kind of wealth blindness: What could possibly go wrong to anyone who owns a 55 inch TV?