But the point is there’s always been a way to avoid ads, even while browsing sites with ads and browsing YT. Personally, if that ability entirely disappears, i hate ads, ad-voice, and the concept of advertising so much that I will stop and close a whole tab if an ad plays. I’m in the minority though. Because, I think you’re right, a lot of people just don’t even think about it and mindlessly consume. I can’t. When Reddit fucked us and showed us our opinions and feelings didn’t matter, I left. I will do the same to YT.
Apple has been trying to be the next advertising giant. They’ve been growing their advertising revenue and plan on doubling it this year. They went from $4b ad revenue to $7.5 2022/2023. And if you remember correctly, that was right when you started seeing all their “apple cares about your privacy!” ads and got into it with Facebook. They’re not out here to protect our privacy. They’re trying to take the advertising revenue from the other ad giants and corner that market for themselves.
Think about it. They have gotten people locked into their OS/ecosystem. They basically hold the advertising golden ticket. They’re not here to make your digital life more private. They’re here to get your data for themselves, locking out the competition. They aim to bring more people into the gate and shut it behind them while extracting all of our advertising milk with their more advanced data udder sucking machine. The pasture looks nice, but when those gates close, the skies darken and the farmer corners you with that look in his eye.
I don’t know where that metaphor came from. But that’s how I see it in my head. The moo cow with the pretty eyelashes and the shiny bell around her neck is pulled into a false sense of security by the smiling farmer at the gate, but that shit turns dark real quick when she’s locked in.
I gotta say, I’ve been anti-social media since its inception. People used to bug me about not being on instagram or Facebook. But…when I was traveling I just kept in contact via email or via text with the people I actually wanted to stay in contact with. I don’t think I’ve ever really noticed a huge hassle.
Um. I dunno what to tell you. I went through two android phones when I started the job. This was back when the screens were only really big. So maybe that was contributing more. But I couldn’t make it though half of the day before both android phones were dying. I can tell you as a person who exclusively used android phones since I had a smart phone (with one, maybe two exceptions I got as hand-me-downs), I’ve never felt any sort of “social pressure” to switch to an iPhone. This is an entirely new concept, because smart phones came out the year I graduated high school, pretty much. And I had never experienced it. Ever.
So are you sure this is a real thing? Not just one of those internet things that people swear they heard someone else say they knew someone who experienced it? Because I’ve been there for pretty much the whole thing. But maybe I aged out of that kind of stupid status shit and this only happens to kids in high school. Because I truly can’t imagine it happening anywhere else. Though I’ve never worked in an office setting, adults acting like clique-y it’s schoolers seem to flock to office spaces, so maybe that’s another reason why I’ve never had this happen to me.
Either way, don’t tell me why I got an iPhone. Who tf are you
I’m no fan of apple as a company, but I used android phones for a long time. Mostly because I didn’t want to jump on the apple train. But once I changed jobs and needed to be on my phone a lot more often, I switched to apple for the battery life. I was stuck carrying around an external battery with my android phones. Also, the longevity of the hardware. I’m still on an old iPhone and it still mostly looks and still operates as if it were a more current gen. I always buy used, and I would go through an android phone every year to two years or so. I changed to an apple phone about four years ago and I still have the same one.
I get it, the weird thing I only recently learned about iMessage being some status symbol for teenagers or whatever? That’s fuckin dumb. But there are reasons beyond stupid ones to use apple stuff. Fuck the company, though. I mean…fuck Samsung. And google. Fuck pretty much all companies. But brand loyalty for anything other than fitting your requirements in the product is weird.
That’s…what the article is about. The pay or consent trend is starting in Europe because of EU laws that forced companies to give people an option to opt out of tracking. Now the EU is looking at another way to force tech companies to offer a realistic option for avoiding tracking.
It kinda seems like you didn’t read the article at all.
I have aura for credit and data privacy stuff. My brother actually got it, I’m just a hanger on in his family plan, but I recently learned they do this data broker deletion automatically. I just started using their spam call blocker, which at first seemed like garbage, but then after it really started working properly, has been great. I just get a notification instead of my phone actually ringing, and it’s a silent notification.
My brother is in IT, so I’m just trusting that he’s done the legwork, which he always seems to do. He warned us about the Lastpass breach before I learned about it in the news. Now I use bitwarden for password stuff.
I’ve been wanting to get serious about my privacy, I’ve always been overly conscious about it, avoiding social media, trying to make my phone as safe as possible, reading privacy policies and reversing course on apps I wanted to use when their shit sucks…i want to get into more technical…hosting whatever…tech-mumbo-jumbo keeps my home network safe—is that self-hosting? Custom firmware…whatever. I’m not super technically proficient, but whenever asked I choose the most strict settings and go into all settings I can find to lock down my shit. To the point that it constantly breaks so many functionalities that I’ve just learned to live without lol
This comment screams “why worry if you have nothing to hide?”
I mean, I’m sure that wasn’t your intention, but that’s the sense I got from it. I think they were trying to find out from someone more knowledgeable on the subject why a privacy-centered cell company, selling a phone that doesn’t track you with bloatware, and the extra layer of software, as mentioned above, isn’t standard.
I mean, I think the answer is money and pressure from regulators. Any time a privacy issue comes up, they start handwringing about “a safe haven for terrorists” and shit.
Also, while more people are becoming concerned with their privacy, it’s met with a lack of technical knowledge from most people. The question definitely hints at a lack of technical knowledge, but most people don’t possess that that aren’t in IT/tech themselves. I think that’s completely understandable.
There are already talks of military use, reading all your texts, eliminating jobs with no plan to support those who lost them, AI driven cars killing people, taking all creative work from humans and leaving the menial tasks…that’s nowhere near a complete list and it’s already dystopian.
The thing is, when private companies are the ones that hold the tech and monetize it, shit is going to get dystopian before you can say “artichoke.” Capitalism is dystopian. Late stage capitalism even more so. And we are fast approaching a new frontier in which these same evil tech companies will wield this unbelievable power. I get it. There are good uses. But when the end goal is profit, our best interest comes second, if not last.
NOW privacy is a lie, but I don’t think the concept of privacy is a myth. On every single privacy policy, the first line is “your privacy is important to us.” But scroll down and actually read the relevant paragraphs and you’ll see your privacy is the least of their concerns.
You’re right, people on the whole generally don’t give a shit about their privacy. Look at the Snowden revelations. The country kinda went, “…eh…” and shrugged their shoulders. But there are plenty of us who wish that weren’t the case and do our best to stay private now. We are all complicit in handing over all of our most private data. Because we buy things and just click on the “accept” button.
But it didn’t have to be this way. Because privacy can exist. And did exist. But we signed it all away for cheaper tech and more “convenient” functionality.
Exactly. It shouldn’t be “what is privacy worth,” but more like what should you get in return for consenting to volunteer your privacy? Because right now the system is backwards. We are expected to give up privacy, are expected to have none. And we spend money and time to try to get it back with almost no guarantees.