<story><title>Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product</title><url>https://odysee.com/@CyberLounge:a/even-if-youre-paying-youre-still-the-product:7</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pdpi</author><text>The next to last paragraph bothers me:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    On Hackernews, they think it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;entitlement&amp;quot; to think that you can use free email
    and search engines and expect not to be tracked. The main problem with this line
    of thinking is that even if you had the option to pay for your email and for your
    search engine, some G**gle executive somewhere would mention during a meeting that
    they could add an extra $X million of revenue if they started using data from it
    from targeted advertising.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Expecting a valuable service with absolutely no consideration in return absolutely &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; a case of entitlement. If that consideration isn&amp;#x27;t cash, it has to be something else. If you&amp;#x27;re paying cash for the service, though, you&amp;#x27;re well within your right to set expectations on the terms the service is provided on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nonameiguess</author><text>That doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like a fair representation. The quote there isn&amp;#x27;t saying you should expect totally free services. It&amp;#x27;s saying you have the right to expect &lt;i&gt;not to be tracked&lt;/i&gt;. Advertising up until 20 years ago relied entirely upon context and behavioral and engagement studies were conducted on an opt-in basis on Nielsen families and focus groups composed either of volunteers or people being compensated for participating in market research.&lt;p&gt;It is quite different to say you have a right to no advertisements on free services, which is not what this is saying, and to say you have a right to expect not to have your every digital action surveilled and studied 24&amp;#x2F;7 for the purposes of advertisers getting free research subjects who often don&amp;#x27;t realize they&amp;#x27;re being used as research subjects, which is what this &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; saying.</text></comment>
<story><title>Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product</title><url>https://odysee.com/@CyberLounge:a/even-if-youre-paying-youre-still-the-product:7</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pdpi</author><text>The next to last paragraph bothers me:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    On Hackernews, they think it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;entitlement&amp;quot; to think that you can use free email
    and search engines and expect not to be tracked. The main problem with this line
    of thinking is that even if you had the option to pay for your email and for your
    search engine, some G**gle executive somewhere would mention during a meeting that
    they could add an extra $X million of revenue if they started using data from it
    from targeted advertising.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Expecting a valuable service with absolutely no consideration in return absolutely &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; a case of entitlement. If that consideration isn&amp;#x27;t cash, it has to be something else. If you&amp;#x27;re paying cash for the service, though, you&amp;#x27;re well within your right to set expectations on the terms the service is provided on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>raxxorrax</author><text>If you are strict with this argument, there would also be no free internet sites to visit.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t need to use any of Googles services to be tracked by Google, although Facebook is probably the largest offender here.&lt;p&gt;In social networks, friends of mine have shared my contact information without me even knowing it. So other people might pay with your data.&lt;p&gt;And I believe the text is correct. You would pay and be tracked. Companies found out that the mass of users is pretty uncritical and if they are allowed to do it, they will do it.&lt;p&gt;Also, websites could be financed through advertising that doesn&amp;#x27;t rely on tracking. A simple policy change and you blow a lot of mostly useless ad company out of the water.&lt;p&gt;I think that would be good.</text></comment>