I personally don't like that line of reasoning. If you start to justify abusive behavior in the name of making money you're not giving someone for a "service", it's a small leap to reach the conclusion that abusive behavior (and profiting from it) is justified no matter what as long as you've been provided some kind of service.
Either it's a gift, or it's a paid service. In neither cases does abusive behavior ever become justified, whether it's from a friend, a neighbor, or a multi-billion dollar company. If your company wants to offer me free donuts, that's your company's choice and does not grant you the right to follow me home and steal my books. Why would it be any different with Silicon Valley companies?
But it is absurd to insist the only two valid transaction models are offer paid service (which I assume means for money) or gift. Even in your hypothetical, it would not be unreasonable for them to give me a donut in exchange for taking notes on which donut I like and handing me a coupon for my next donut.
To me, the issue is not the data collection. It is the lack of transparency.
I don't exactly disagree, but it's hardly comparable. As a human being, i can grasp the notion of giving you 30 minutes of my time to try different cookie flavors and tell you what i think.
I could likewise understand the notion/consequences of filling a one-page questionnaire for Facebook's advertisement engine in exchange for free service. But i don't think implicit background data collection on anything they can (my phonebook, really?!) is a reasonable contract, because it's hard to comprehend what are the limits and consequences of that.
So it's not just "lack of transparency". I would consider it abusive behavior even if the sign up form read "I WILL FOLLOW AND WATCH YOU EVERYWHERE YOU GO AND TELL ALL MY FRIENDS ABOUT YOUR GREAT ADVENTURES"... especially considering they would probably make it look like a cute pet saying that. I would not consider it abusive behavior if their ad business was *not* collecting any information from the users (except maybe like i said a sign-up questionnaire) and was just doing advertisement.
Since everyone refuses to _directly_ spend money, companies just move to taking money from us indirectly. To me "free services" is like a casinos, its easy to say that you should "just not do/use it lmao" but its extremely hard to think back and consider why Reddit/Hackernews/Youtube/Twitter/Facebook is free and what are the consequences/incentives of it being "free" will mean to our society. It is simply too enticing.
And beside that I'd very much not want to give google money either. So I don't.
(yes, watching the ads gives them money, and blocking the ads and use youtube reinforces their monopoly. But it still feels better than also giving them cash directly).
Most of us don't. But we would like it to be:
- easy and anonymous: if i have cash i should be able to find a local reseller taking cash for a token of X€ (a token that's not specific to your platform would be even better)
- easy to decide where the money goes: i certainly don't want to give Google any money at all (and they don't need it), and i certainly don't want my money to be used against my will to finance a reptilian-aware neonazi whose video i clicked by accident (or because i had to debunk it)
But, to be fair, i would much rather prefer a system based on cooperation and free sharing. Is there a reason why we have to pay to live? The reason artists need money is the same reason bakers or FLOSS devs need money: because everyone else does and we're trapped in this nightmarish system. I feel that as a species we can do better.
And I hate it too, and for all the reasons given here. (Did not check them all, but it is a pretty safe bet.)
Hating it all means I am on board with activism, advocacy, law, whatever we need to do in order to establish / extend the Bill Of Rights into digital spaces.
Society, tech and the law have collided and that mess is ongoing and expanding. Imagine one of those cars smashing into a train with the dummy in it.
It crumples, folds, then pieces fly off, the dummy takes damage, and just down the track is a truck, and a bus with kids in it, and so on...
That train is heavy, well powered with spiffy tech, and it is powering right through the public!
Hate it, but I am quite sure I can't do much, even resisting, doing all the work to anonymize, is a total PITA. Drains the value right out of it all, out of me, my life, and I just do not have time for it, unless a lot of us have time together somehow.
And I think dollars are the only language our oppressors, abusers, and the like will both hear and act on because they must!
Lessig wrote about things that regulate our behavior:
Norms. They do not prevent anything, but do reward or punish.
Law. Like norms, but with real teeth well beyond praise and shunning.
Physics. The rules of the world will prevent actions. The more we understand, the more this world permits.
Money / markets. These also can prevent things. If we cannot afford an action...
It will take a lot of us setting norms, doing things that cost, and all of that rolling up into law more relevant than this current "wild west" is.
I really like it because I get to do things, have access to information that was the stuff of dreams not so long ago.
It is all as empowering as it is exploitative.
Yes, let's do this. Let's get together and create new, more humane standards. Get involved with an educational/cultural copyleft non-profit like Framasoft, a legal/lobbying organization like LQDN/EFF, a local hosting cooperative that provides GAFAM alternatives with a sustainable model (libreho.st/chatons.org networks), a local self-organized/DIY ISP (guifi.net/ffdn.org/freifunk.net networks), a self-organized FLOSS coop, etc.
That aside, yes! In my view, right now those of us able to do what just happened here need to continue. More will pick up on the, to us all too obvious dark patterns...
What to do in order to have this aspect of tech make better sense, augment, empower, add value, serve, rather than enslave, exploit, diminish, create dependence, is going to be the product of discussions we will not have, unless enough of us arrive at this all being an priority and understand the time is now, ish.
New law, and in that place where tech, law and society collide.
We are the ones, and we are because many remember times before all this, many may know nothing, this being all they have known.
It is the timing, mix of perspectives, newness of the tech and more which make this time special. We go too long and the inflection points may just evaporate...
A very similar thing happened with labor, resulting in the likes of the New Deal, by way of what I am trying (poorly, I feel) to get at here.
When we attempt solutions, those form a basis to build on and momentum to get it right, and have it work better for everyone. That matters.
The law is well behind, like we are leaving a "wild west" kind of time and that exit could have us see far worse before people move to address it. Or, it all could go better, sooner too.
I agree! Getting involved matters. Sharing it, particularly among "normies", who sense real trouble,,but do not understand well enough for that momentum to build matters too.
Great comment. Wish I had more and better answers. They will come as more of us seek them and amplify the good potential more than we currently amplify the growing bad.
Google Rewards
I use both and am yet to find the "monetise your data" stuff abusive. It's mostly things like trying to show an ad for mortgages if they figure you need a mortgage. Honestly with the various forms of death and hunger and real bad stuff in the world I'd feel a bit of a snowflake freaking out over someone trying to show me an ad for something they figure I may need.
Fair point, but it's all related. The global wealth we have as a planet could provide everyone with decent housing, food and healthcare. Instead it's being owned by a minority who dedicated resources to making things worse for everyone else.
The IT industry in particular largely benefits from human rights abuses in mining operations and in the factories on the hardware side, and from big contracts with tyrannical regimes on the software side (Amazon + ICE? Google + China?).
The problem is we largely live in a globalized culture in which "exploit others before they exploit you" (the paradigm we're taught in schools/media) is the norm. We are enough technologically-advanced to have a world without war and hunger, but not as long as psychopaths are socially rewarded.
Although I've become more privacy conscious in recent years, I'm not even sure I can agree that the bargain offered by the ad tech companies is objectively unreasonable. What I can conclude is that it is highly opaque, many people are sleepwalking into it without fully considering its ramifications, and I personally am not comfortable with it.
Samsung's practice of taking your money, offering you a product and then taking your data as well is a particularly dark pattern because it strays even more from the reasonable expectations of consumers.
I don't know where you live, but here in France it's the other way around. You can pay with cash pretty much in any shop, but it's expensive on vendors to provide card payments. And the real problem is millions of people don't have a credit card due to being blacklisted (for debt) or undocumented immigrant. That's why for example Lycamobile/Lebara are the most popular phone service providers among the lower classes in France: you can find SIM cards and "tip-up" cards pretty much everywhere.
Of course, this raises the question on how to pay on the Internet with cash as i know a lot of people who can't buy stuff online. For people who want to pay online (and have a bank account), taler.net seems like the most promising R&D in the field of "digital cash". For the rest, i can't see why we couldn't have a tip-up card system like we have for phone providers, but as a generic means to pay for online services with cash.
I had a samsung active2 watch. It advertised ECG, which didn't materialize until almost 2 years after the device was launched. When it finally got released you were only allowed to use that feature if the device was paired to a samsung phone.
For the longest time Samsung Pay was showing ads inside the app, like some random third party play store app.
Then, one day, I decided to go for a swim and the watch crashes, the speaker sucks water on boot and the device bricks. No button combination allows you to turn off the device without the touch screen. Even though it was an issue for the (IP68 rated) device samsung wanted to charge me $180 to repair it. Basically the price of a new watch 1.5 years ago.
Nowadays I look at Sony and Samsung devices and think, man such great looking devices, but wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.
EDIT: some people say that in the EU they cannot lock you out of warranty for rooting the device, because non hardware modifications are not cause for warranty removal. But I haven't tried that, so I don't know.
Even if it’s not allowed in Europe, IIRC, unlocking and tripping the e-fuse comes with a new boot screen with a huge "unsecure device" that you can’t get rid of. And you are also definitely locked out of device encryption and Samsung Pay.
So even if warranty is not void, you are paying it by not being able to resell your phone (at least at a normal price).
Doing so would be comitting the cardinal sin of "leaving money on the table".
The only way to deal with this is to accept that the only calculus these companies make is a calculus of tradeoffs.
Then make sure that the tradeoffs are correct.
Do they collect and monetize data beyond those ads? Not that I've heard of.
does apple make money off your private data now or will it ever try to do so in the future?
I stopped buying Samsung after two phones. About 18 months or so after I got them, some update would make things so slow I needed a new phone. Second time I figured it wasn't the phone being old, it was the update slowing it on purpose.
Other phones I've had don't seem to have this problem, updates seem to not change the speed of the UI at all. But I also don't appreciate the customised Android, there doesn't ever seem to be a benefit.
My Note 8 is going on a lot of cycles. Have had it for too long probably. Battery still holds up solid.
Older device, Note 5 had a 5 percent warning. Battery went to crap quickly.
Avoiding the fast charge helps too. I use it when I need to and just go normal otherwise when I am not time constrained.
No charging port trouble. Wireless charging just works.
Recently, I got a battery back. Doing it now before I really need it. So far, a year in and a lot more plug in charging and I cannot recommend one more highly.
I find I can often run the phone off the back and pretty much never have to allow a deeper discharge.
Battery time leveled off and is in a very, very slow decline.
YMMV, of course.
What is really annoying though is that you are their customer. It's sort of understandable when Google or Facebook spy on you and monetise your data to profit from the services that they provide you free of monetary charge to you. With Samsung, you've already handed over a few hundred dollars at least for the product. Spying on you as well is like having their customer and eating it.
I've always used Samsung's flagship smartphones, since the Galaxy S4. However, as I've become a more conscious consumer in recent years, I've decided that my next phone won't be a Samsung.