You’re infantalizing people by assuming everyone who doesn’t know how the internet works lacks critical thinking skills. Do you ever interact with non nerdy people? Additionally, some people do genuinely lack the capacity to understand how systems like the internet work, are we supposed to just let them get taken advantage of or exclude them from society?

I’m ignoring your last sentence because its entirely irrelevant to the situation, the data that Google was collecting from people using incognito mode is not data that they needed to make their services work.

I understand how the internet works but you apparently don’t understand how people work. Normal people have absolutely no concept of how the internet works, they don’t understand what data servers need about them to function, or what a packet is. They need to be explicitly told that even though they’re using a privacy mode Google is still collecting data on them, especially since they’re collecting data even if you are not going to google hosted sites.

I’m seeing a lot of people make arguments like this and I just don’t get it. Is your point that its okay for tech companies to prey on the ignorance of nontechnical users? We can’t expect everyone to know everything about every service they interact with.

What? I’ve exclusively used Linux since 2006 and gaming outside of retro emulation was absolute trash until proton. Of course WINE and code weavers were doing great work but it was overly complicated to use and the compatibility was abysmal.

Yes.

I assume the user data like traffic and OSM contributions adds value to their paid SDK.

I mean, it lets you post pictures and videos you take with your phone. That’s like the least concerning thing about it.