Information Anxiety

Leo

Well-known member
Gus, much of your reasoning is valid. But part of the problem I believe Version is referencing is there's little-to-no option to opt out of some tech at this point. You said consumers voted with their feet (or clicks), but it now seems impossible for them to reverse course. That ship has sailed, toothpaste out of the tube, etc.
 

version

Well-known member
It's cos we are now ambivalent about the Web generally and concerned that our heads are being shit into too much. And the payment model that is not advertising does not make sense to anyone. I don't know why that is. I agree if everyone paid a little, you'd probably have a better product and less shit to deal with. But for some reason the upfront ongoing payment is not what people go for. Maybe if it got bundled in at Internet service provider level or something and that was regulated but we are too far gone for that. Something like a licence fee as you have for the bbc but nod even that is very contentious here.

I think it's also that we're used to it being free, so suddenly having to pay for the same service feels like being ripped off.
 

version

Well-known member
Gus, much of your reasoning is valid. But part of the problem I believe Version is referencing is there's little-to-no option to opt out of some tech at this point. You said consumers voted with their feet (or clicks), but it now seems impossible for them to reverse course. That ship has sailed, toothpaste out of the tube, etc.

Gus also just reduces everything to advertising and doesn't mention stuff like stalkers, identity theft, crime prevention software and so on.
 
‘users have already voted their preference’ kind of glazes over the dominance of the advertising model in every form of media in the west for the past 100 years does it not? And how that inevitably shapes preferences, politics etc especially when tech, media and govt work in cahoots to make it so

There are consumer choice tipping points that sink platforms and yes many of us don’t care or even want to know where our data is held but ‘customer indifference causes low wages’ is a bit reductive! you’d have to presuppose a world of extremely well informed and rational customers, who have the time and budget to make choices based on complex business practices, work though marketing bullshit and disinfo etc, and you’re ignoring choice limiting effects of monopoly or centralised power, especially when it comes to companies who sit across media, tech products and provide services etc

it’s the same logic as the ‘don’t like it, go somewhere else’ from landlords and the ‘ah you criticise capitalism on an iPhone’ thing

We don’t have a clue wtf is going on, overwhelmed, anxious, ignorant and surfing on a wave of convenience oblivious to the currents below and nerds like you exploit that don’t you?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
You’d have to presuppose a world of extremely well informed and rational customers, who have the time and budget to make choices based on complex business practices, work though marketing bullshit and disinfo etc

I dunno who it was that said that ninety percent of internet users see those info options you have to select when you enter sites as "Whatever, let me on the site" but it's very true.
 
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Leo

Well-known member
@suspended prolly not keen on this


The case hinges on how Meta receives legal permission from users to collect their data for personalized advertising. The company’s terms-of-service agreement — the very lengthy statement that users must accept to gain access to services like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — includes language that effectively means users must either allow their data to be used for personalized ads or stop using Meta’s social media services altogether.
have to say that doesn't seem like an entirely unreasonable clause, no one has an inalienable right to a social media platform, right? it's a free service, FB is saying give us data and we'll give you access. should people feel they can demand access without "paying" for it in some way?
 
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linebaugh

Well-known member
No one is 'voting' for anything. Its just large swathes of people following the path of least resistance towards the basic human need to be entertained. Feels disingenuous to say that the state of internet infrastructure has been 'chosen' by the people and it would be undemocratic to do it any other way.
 
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linebaugh

Well-known member
gus is probably right to say that theres really no other way of funding it though. A non toothless goverment body making sure things dont get too shameless is all we can hope for
 

sus

Well-known member
Gus also just reduces everything to advertising and doesn't mention stuff like stalkers, identity theft, crime prevention software and so on.
Well, I was tagged specifically about advertising, so that's what I talked about.

Your thread premise is perfectly reasonable version as is feeling anxious about our information "hanging out there" exposed. It's absolutely true that, if people (even amateurs, but especially pros) wanna sleuth up our identities, there's a lot more leads and clues for them lying around than we think or know. And the possible authoritarian appropriations of this data are... frightening. I'm very glad to live in the democratic West now—now that it's all wonderful here, but living under budding Chinese-style cyber-control sounds awful.
 

sus

Well-known member
Leo has been very kind to me in this thread, so I hate to disagree with him, but I'm not sure I agree that the web ecology is "settled" or irreversible. If giants like Facebook can die—and I think they can; certainly, having a Facebook account, among my peers, is nothing remotely close to mandatory in the way it might've been 10 years ago, and most of my friends haven't posted on Facebook in literal years. I don't check notifications or log on anymore, haven't since college circa 2017.

I think that people's frustration over data tracking is already shaping the types of tech and social media startups getting founded right now. Whether those frustrations are coherent in their concerns/priorities, and not just blanket reactionary, will have a real effect on whether tomorrow's solutions are coherent—like, IMO, Are.na—or incoherent, the way that New York's plastic bags ban has led grocery stores to give out quasi-totes (which are several orders of magnitude worse on the environment, & higher in greenhouse emissions, than the previous plastic).
 

sus

Well-known member
I know that expecting a huge, decentralized mass of consumers to come up with a coherent philosophy of their desire/values is a big ask, but that's why I push back on this stuff. Because "fuck companies for monetizing my data" side-by-side with "I'd never pay for a website in a million years" doesn't leave much room for economic maneuvering by tech cos, and you end up with lots of lip service, lots of PR nonsense about how respectful Meta is of your information, without substantial change, because substantial change is not economically viable. It's a dead-end. Non-starter. By making impossible demands of a company, you force them to bullshit you to appear compliant.

Consumers of these products are in a collective bargaining situation with social media providers. If we can figure out, and coordinate around, a specific set of grievances—types of data we don't want used, or ways we don't want it used—or come up with any plausible counter-proposal, then we'll end up in a better place than if we are vague and incoherent and contradictory in our collective bargaining. The more clear and coherent we are with our grievances and demands, and the more economically feasible these demands are, the easier it will be for startups that actually, substantially address them to emerge.

Instead we shrug off this coherence work and expect companies to not just satiate our desires, but to read our minds and figure out what are desires are for us. And we're outraged when they fail to figure out parts of our own psychologies and wants that we ourselves have failed to understand. It's this infantilism that led us to this place of data tracking and advertising to begin with.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I agree largely with your diagnosis of thd problem but I don't think the solution you are presenting is viable, if you get what I mean.
 

sus

Well-known member
One of the things that excites me about DAOs and smart contracts, pinging @Clinamenic, is they would enable people to easily financially coordinate to only put money behind services that meet certain group-agreed criteria. So that collective bargaining is more possible, similar to the way unionizing works. Imagine a million people (or a billion dollars of capital) who have all entered a voluntary agreement to only pay for products manufactured with, say $20/hr wages. Their money (token holdings) literally cannot be transferred to companies that aren't on a white list, or are on a blacklist. And a small portion of the treasury's money pays for auditing and accounting of these lists.
 

sus

Well-known member
@catalog I agree that right now, coherent collective bargaining is tough. But I think we here can at least take it upon ourselves to try to be rigorous and coherent, in terms of what we want and don't want, and to try to present this coherent vision to the world. Rather than just participating in reactionary incoherence. By elevating the discourse, and pushing for coherence, we speed up the whole process of evolving product-market fit to actually reflect consumer desires.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Well you might be right but I don't see it happening, maybe it will do in your sphere though, which is where it probably matters more.

Equality legislation type stuff is what is required, for the Web.

But it probsbly will just end in a cookies notice type thing, which like rich says, everyone just scrolls past. People satisfice constantly, always take junk food over proper food, get wasted on beer when they are really just thirsty
 

sufi

lala
I've been lobbying the xenforo devs for a while to include a GDPR compliant cookie notice on these forums.
I'm glad to report that they have finally agreed and it will be included in the next update.
But it probsbly will just end in a cookies notice type thing, which like rich says, everyone just scrolls past. People satisfice constantly, always take junk food over proper food, get wasted on beer when they are really just thirsty
 

version

Well-known member
I know that expecting a huge, decentralized mass of consumers to come up with a coherent philosophy of their desire/values is a big ask, but that's why I push back on this stuff. Because "fuck companies for monetizing my data" side-by-side with "I'd never pay for a website in a million years" doesn't leave much room for economic maneuvering by tech cos, and you end up with lots of lip service, lots of PR nonsense about how respectful Meta is of your information, without substantial change, because substantial change is not economically viable. It's a dead-end. Non-starter. By making impossible demands of a company, you force them to bullshit you to appear compliant.

The thing is companies like Meta and Google have a presence in your online life even if you don't make direct use of their services. They're collecting your data regardless of whether you have a Facebook or Google account.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
But it probsbly will just end in a cookies notice type thing, which like rich says, everyone just scrolls past. People satisfice constantly, always take junk food over proper food, get wasted on beer when they are really just thirsty
We make bad choices. We need someone to protect us from ourselves... but we fucking hate that. Or I do anyway.
 
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