Re:US vs. Google Amicus Curiae Brief of Y Combinator in Supp...
by 0xDEAFBEAD on Sunday May 11, 2025 @05:09PM
(#43957187)
>it's not possible to say they have actually given informed consent to it.
I assume you're a fan of GDPR banners?
>my viewpoint is actually in accord with a majority of people's values
It's not hard to install some privacy and adblocking extensions in your browser.
I think you're still doing that thing where you assume others share your values.
More insidiously, the proliferation of this type of "junk" crowds out other business models, meaning that increasingly people can't even "test" whether they would prefer something else. It's basically the tyranny of small decisions. It's not just a matter of "I will trade you five minutes of my eyeball time for 6 months of email", because every such transaction increase the likelihood that in the future you will find yourself with no option other than to engage in such a transaction in order to, say, pay your electric bill.
It's my claim that my viewpoint is actually in accord with a majority of people's values, in the sense that if we considered an alternate universe with less ad junk, more people in that universe would look at ours and say "Wow, I'm glad I don't live there" than vice versa. It's just that there are lots of clever boiling-frog ways to get people to act against their own values without their being fully aware of it. The mere fact that something has happened doesn't mean most people actually wanted it to happen, or are happy it happened, or even realize they would in fact be happier if it hadn't happened.