> I really feel like "grab" is quite condescending

By all means, let's use a more appropriate term, like "abuse" or "misappropriate". It's not sufficiently condescending for a company that's trying to train AI on people's private health data.

Do you think those services are “free”? If you want cloud storage and syncing, it comes at a price. If you’re not paying with money, you’re paying with your privacy and freedom.

I sorta assumed they were making money from selling you the device.

We are not required to permit every possible business model to exist. Companies are desperately trying to get their hands on every piece of data they can get to train AI, hence the abominable use of "opt out", which is already horrible even without the added bait-and-switch coercion of "or we'll make the device you already purchased worse".

"pay or consent" stunts have already been ruled illegal under the GDPR. This goes even further than that, where you don't even have the option to pay.

I think syncing kilobytes costs next to nothing and if they can't manage it then let me put in my own URL and I'll host it myself.

(And "my own URL" realistically includes Google and Dropbox and OneDrive and iCloud, not just nerd stuff. And even without automatic backups it should hold on to everything and give me an export button.)

> condescending

How can you be "condescending" to a company?

Same way as towards a natural person, I recon?

Samsung can mitigate the harm and frustration by providing users options. Would you prefer this pathway of their way or the highway?

> I really feel like "grab" is quite condescending to a company (Samsung) that provides services at scale (upon/after consent) to help you.. "be better" (simplified..), with direct customization and tailoring.

The headline as described sounds to me like they're violating GDPR by tying to force "consent" for a not-strictly-necessary-for-functionality use of health data. The European Data Protection Board has repeatedly stated that consent is (generally) not considered to be "freely given" if there is a significant detriment for refusing it or if the user has no genuine choice.

Note however that caveat: as described. There may be some more details which make this not unlawful. Also, actually deleting your data if you don't consent is the kind of thing GDPR requires.

"snatch with their spider leg like fingers that are dripping with digestive fluid"