Ask HN: Anyone else depressed by the relentless monetization and spying?
Almost every facet of human life in our current civilization is being funneled through corporations trying to watch and make money from everything we do.
And the average HN user seems to support it, likely because they work for those companies.
For the most part I have adopted the trope of 'the only way to win is not to play'. By that, I mean checkout of online life as much as possible.
The issue is that if 95% of folks decide against building these systems of oppression, that 5% remaining will still build it. And then the other 95% will justify it as "If I don't, they will". The sign of moral corruption at work. And those that do it will always have a 'claim to virtue'. They are innovating this that and the other under the disguise of progress. The real question is, was it worth it?
The weirdest part is that Richard Stallman essentially spelled it out in full back in the late 1980's and almost nobody listened.
Sadly you'll have to checkout of more than just "online" life if you want to avoid "corporations trying to watch and make money from everything we do."
Newer model car's track your driving, and most manufactures sell it to insurance companies. I'm not sure I read it anywhere but I bet they sell your location data as well and not just driving habits.
For the longest time stores have loyalty discount programs to track your purchasing behavior.
The cellphone is the one that concerns me personally the most. Even then I have locked that down as much as is viable. No needless apps. Deifnetly no social media. But there is still just the fact a locked baseband processor, operating system that you cannot fully verify and that mobile towers literally need to vaguely track you to function.
I also don't drive (never have) or have any loyalty programs. Only pay in cash unless forced otherwise. That said here is Australia some stores just use facial recognition - so that sort of defeats that a little. They paused it for a little while a few years back but I believe it is back in action now.
I'm not saying everyone can do this, far from it, but I choose to live by example. Maybe show others that you can at least shift your wants slightly. You move towards the ideal of utopia but do not expect to arrive there.
I've been looking into replacing a very old vehicle and it's super disheartening seeing all the telemetry and shady communication you have no control over on new vehicles. And it seems 100% across the board if you look at EVs. As appealing it might be to have an EV, the telemetry, snooping, forced updates, etc. are an immediate turnoff.
I know a few people with EVs and it seems like I'm always hearing "the latest update broke X" or "all my settings changed again"
Its not weird. People have different needs. The needs of the cactus and the redwood are not the same. But they both can get effected if shared scarce resources are squandered. And Learning that takes time cause the cactus and the redwood are busy focused on their own needs.
People are learning Attention is a scare shared resource. And once it get squandered at population scales, it effects everyone whether they are making bank or not. No one is going to escape learning that lesson.
> The weirdest part is that Richard Stallman essentially spelled it out in full back in the late 1980's and almost nobody listened.
A lot of things were "spelled ... out in full" back in the 70's, 80's, and 90's that "almost nobody listened" to (and even actively harassed, ridiculed, and otherwise hated the people giving the warnings), and now you can't see or hear the news without seeing the inevitable consequences of that ignorance playing out "in real time". Yay, humans, for being the most "advanced" species in the Universe. \o/
You've got an idealized version of humanity in your head. Don't get me wrong, there are many real things to be deeply worried about (e.g. overshoot, nuclear proliferation and the relegitimisation of eugenics) but the monetization and commodification of 'private spaces' are not historically unusual, not worsening and not inherently wrong.
Some suggested reading - Bataille, Foucault, Negri and any social histories of the 1800s.
It might not be unusual, but it does feel wrong and worsening. Wrong because it feels like we should have security in what we consume/how we spend our attention. Worsening because more and more places commodify their private spaces, both critical to most western human life (the gas station, by law you are supposed to monitor the gas pump) and noncritical (the pause menu of a video player)
People saying, and believing, this, is exactly why it's depressing. At the least. Infuriating and disgusting really.
Imagine your ex or some other person you don't like, you don't consent to, peering in on you right now, watching everything you do, selling information about you to other people.
It's disgusting to think about when it's an individual who does it, right? Why do you put up with the exact same shit if a corporation or government does it? Often with the threat of violence and seizure.
If you haven't got anything to say about it? Anyway, to reply to the rest of your critique, the scenario you describe (that happens often) only feels wrong because it implies that one party has an inability to retaliate (which isn't true).
Personally the despair isn't from bad things happening on their own.
Rather it's from a sense of alienation from how those results suggest most other people in the clique/industry/civilization didn't appear to have the values or priorities I thought we were all gonna use.
New business models come around very rarely. In the mean time, existing companies optimize everything they can relentlessly - that's why people own their stock.
First you should really think about it. Check if your depression is really from corporations, and monetization. Maybe you lack self-confidence, or are overworked, etc. etc.
I am to disappointed with companies, sure. I have not yet surrendered. I do not use facebook at all. I seldom use google, when I have to. But I am also disappointed with people trying to monetize everything. Blogs are on substack, so even smallest amount of their creativity can be milked.
Not everything is doom and gloom. There are many open source projects. It is really simple just to host something by your own. Self hosting is really booming.
Changes are done through mental attitude. If you are tired of being spied, then stop using such services. More often than not, you can change your life. People do not choose such life because they want smart vacuum cleaner that has a camera. People want to see funny pictures on TikTok. If you don't want to be surveilled, then do not use services which spie and track. It is that simple.
For me, the method of coping was to create my own rss/news client. It gave me a feeling that I control my information flow. Google may try to moderate the Internet, but maybe I will be able to resist some more. Being self sufficient gave me a feeling of freedom. Nobody is stealing my attention. Nobody redirects me to ads. Nobody rewrites my search queries.
I truly despise what Microsoft has become. I rarely even use Windows but the amount of monetisation that has occurred has degenerated a somewhat acceptable product into something that is bloated spyware trash.
I’m honestly surprised that there isn’t more government intervention - the productivity loss of the useless features, constant prompting to update to windows 11 or mode to edge and potential data spills caused by OneDrives absolute persistence is mind blowing.
If anyone reading this works at Microsoft as part of a team complicit in this behaviour: fuck you.
Going back to Windows XP is wild. Just how clean and pure it is. Clean boot and fire up the network connection. It check for an update... and that is it. Nothing more. My last daily driver Windows was 7 in about 2009 and now my only hands on experience with it is via work.
I run Triquel one of the few FSF approved linux distro's and it still has that kind of vibe but its hardware limitations basically eliminate most people from using a system like that. But that is another side of the same issue of monetisation.
> the productivity loss of the useless features, constant prompting to update to windows 11 or mode to edge and potential data spills caused by OneDrives absolute persistence is mind blowing.
Presumably this should lead to a shift to Linux or Mac machines if it were really all that noticeable among a myriad of other productivity drags.
It's not bad advice, but it's becoming increasingly difficult as the front of surveillance capitalism[1] advances to capture more territory. The opt-out options we have are disengagement and legal requirements, both unsatisfying. The latter because territory advancement outpaces legal countermeasures, and because legislatures are in bed with the very corporations who create these systems. It's a broken system because it's prone to this type of exploitation. Before we switch to solutions, I rule out moralizing their behavior, it rarely works, but developing a more nimble conceptual antithesis is required.
1. sorry I don't have a better term. this seems to be the most prevalent name.
Feels like there's more depressing stuff than that going on in the world. Sure, it's a constant struggle against government overreach and most of us live in a capitalist society, but it's not war or famine. On the other hand I'm optimistic about the fact that there are a lot of people out there--in software and otherwise--who do stuff just because they care about it.
Whataboutism - 'The technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.'
Take notes of what annoys you the most and get even.
Find a phone number or email the company must answer. It can be billing support, legal, or investor relations. Then fill it in on forms in all the worst parts of the Internet: gambling, porn, and hacking sites easy go-tos. Use an immutable OS and go through a VPN. They will give up answering it, and this will kill them.
Get even enough and a Fortune 100 company goes bust from a few dozen hours of ine person's determined effort. I killed a company that everyone on this thread has heard of, and that 2/3rds of you did business with this way.
There are those who would say this is wrong. They would argue the companies never asked to receive phone calls about gambling apps. I reply that I never asked for the spam they forced on me either.
Some would say this is an attack on our electronic communications infrastructure. I reply that the real attack on our electronics infrastructure comes from call centers full of telemarketers and scammer. If you want to stop spam, do it. Ycombinator companies run most of those call centers. Shut down your outbound call centers, and go after every single telemarketer and scammer. It will not take long to shut down the few scumbags that make all of our lives hell.
Some will argue the call centers are outside our legal jurisdiction. I reply: That's why we have the Air Force.
I’m not sure that there’s much relationship between the two properties - if anything the seediness of current behaviours costs me, you and the wider economy via highly strategic profitization of us.
We are the cattle, complaining about how green the grass could be doesn’t stop us from ending up slaughtered for meat.
They did, but those companies who don't do it today are doomed to fail because the other companies that do will sell more, including both products and users' data.
Well... if the company's main activity is refining oil, cultivating corn, or trawler fishing, then maybe it doesn't need to buy and sell user's data, because, you know, there aren't any...
Also, there are companies like FairPhone and System76 that (probably) don't buy and sell user's data. But they aren't exactly thriving.
Those are not investments because you do it out of obligation and necessity.
You are not allowed to work if you don’t have a bank account.
And also you loose value from these. Cash loose value thanks to inflation money spent on nsa.
Banks not only dont pay you for the money you have in the bank but also charge you a lot for a digital transaction they spy and use.
> can blockchain technology or more generally any other not fiat money help somehow the situation?
Yes it can, but existing governments will not cut off their own limbs (give up their current power over currency management and tracking) by adopting a true blockchain.
right now we have US ( and dollar ) hegemony. What if we will end up in multilateral world. What would be the new currency if no one will win current wars?
There is the possibility for there to be a non standard valuation. A few decades where neither the US or another currency is dominant. Personally I still see the US dollar as having a lot of strength but that can change surprisingly quickly once the flip happens.
I'm not worried about that at the moment but I have said, once the US dollar is no longer accepted at a random Thai street market that is when the US dollar is done.
The issue is that if 95% of folks decide against building these systems of oppression, that 5% remaining will still build it. And then the other 95% will justify it as "If I don't, they will". The sign of moral corruption at work. And those that do it will always have a 'claim to virtue'. They are innovating this that and the other under the disguise of progress. The real question is, was it worth it?
The weirdest part is that Richard Stallman essentially spelled it out in full back in the late 1980's and almost nobody listened.
Newer model car's track your driving, and most manufactures sell it to insurance companies. I'm not sure I read it anywhere but I bet they sell your location data as well and not just driving habits.
For the longest time stores have loyalty discount programs to track your purchasing behavior.
The cellphone in your pocket...
I also don't drive (never have) or have any loyalty programs. Only pay in cash unless forced otherwise. That said here is Australia some stores just use facial recognition - so that sort of defeats that a little. They paused it for a little while a few years back but I believe it is back in action now.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-15/choice-investigation-...
I'm not saying everyone can do this, far from it, but I choose to live by example. Maybe show others that you can at least shift your wants slightly. You move towards the ideal of utopia but do not expect to arrive there.
I know a few people with EVs and it seems like I'm always hearing "the latest update broke X" or "all my settings changed again"
People are learning Attention is a scare shared resource. And once it get squandered at population scales, it effects everyone whether they are making bank or not. No one is going to escape learning that lesson.
A lot of things were "spelled ... out in full" back in the 70's, 80's, and 90's that "almost nobody listened" to (and even actively harassed, ridiculed, and otherwise hated the people giving the warnings), and now you can't see or hear the news without seeing the inevitable consequences of that ignorance playing out "in real time". Yay, humans, for being the most "advanced" species in the Universe. \o/
Some suggested reading - Bataille, Foucault, Negri and any social histories of the 1800s.
People saying, and believing, this, is exactly why it's depressing. At the least. Infuriating and disgusting really.
Imagine your ex or some other person you don't like, you don't consent to, peering in on you right now, watching everything you do, selling information about you to other people.
It's disgusting to think about when it's an individual who does it, right? Why do you put up with the exact same shit if a corporation or government does it? Often with the threat of violence and seizure.
>not worsening
If you haven't got anything to say about it? Anyway, to reply to the rest of your critique, the scenario you describe (that happens often) only feels wrong because it implies that one party has an inability to retaliate (which isn't true).
Rather it's from a sense of alienation from how those results suggest most other people in the clique/industry/civilization didn't appear to have the values or priorities I thought we were all gonna use.
I am to disappointed with companies, sure. I have not yet surrendered. I do not use facebook at all. I seldom use google, when I have to. But I am also disappointed with people trying to monetize everything. Blogs are on substack, so even smallest amount of their creativity can be milked.
Not everything is doom and gloom. There are many open source projects. It is really simple just to host something by your own. Self hosting is really booming.
Changes are done through mental attitude. If you are tired of being spied, then stop using such services. More often than not, you can change your life. People do not choose such life because they want smart vacuum cleaner that has a camera. People want to see funny pictures on TikTok. If you don't want to be surveilled, then do not use services which spie and track. It is that simple.
For me, the method of coping was to create my own rss/news client. It gave me a feeling that I control my information flow. Google may try to moderate the Internet, but maybe I will be able to resist some more. Being self sufficient gave me a feeling of freedom. Nobody is stealing my attention. Nobody redirects me to ads. Nobody rewrites my search queries.
Ok maybe not nobody, but to a lesser degree.
I should have added that it’s not even that the monetization/spying makes the products any better: It actually makes them WORSE.
Like YouTube not allowing background playback, even artificially gimping OS features like Apple’s Picture-In-Picture.
Facebook tracking your phone even after you delete the app and wipe the device!
Or Tinder etc artificially and mercilessly crippling even the most basic features such as charging money for Read Receipts!!!
I’m honestly surprised that there isn’t more government intervention - the productivity loss of the useless features, constant prompting to update to windows 11 or mode to edge and potential data spills caused by OneDrives absolute persistence is mind blowing.
If anyone reading this works at Microsoft as part of a team complicit in this behaviour: fuck you.
I run Triquel one of the few FSF approved linux distro's and it still has that kind of vibe but its hardware limitations basically eliminate most people from using a system like that. But that is another side of the same issue of monetisation.
Presumably this should lead to a shift to Linux or Mac machines if it were really all that noticeable among a myriad of other productivity drags.
But Microsoft have such huge vendor lock-in within big business that moving to an alternate would be a significant cost.
1. sorry I don't have a better term. this seems to be the most prevalent name.
Whataboutism - 'The technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.'
Find a phone number or email the company must answer. It can be billing support, legal, or investor relations. Then fill it in on forms in all the worst parts of the Internet: gambling, porn, and hacking sites easy go-tos. Use an immutable OS and go through a VPN. They will give up answering it, and this will kill them.
Get even enough and a Fortune 100 company goes bust from a few dozen hours of ine person's determined effort. I killed a company that everyone on this thread has heard of, and that 2/3rds of you did business with this way.
There are those who would say this is wrong. They would argue the companies never asked to receive phone calls about gambling apps. I reply that I never asked for the spam they forced on me either.
Some would say this is an attack on our electronic communications infrastructure. I reply that the real attack on our electronics infrastructure comes from call centers full of telemarketers and scammer. If you want to stop spam, do it. Ycombinator companies run most of those call centers. Shut down your outbound call centers, and go after every single telemarketer and scammer. It will not take long to shut down the few scumbags that make all of our lives hell.
Some will argue the call centers are outside our legal jurisdiction. I reply: That's why we have the Air Force.
We are the cattle, complaining about how green the grass could be doesn’t stop us from ending up slaughtered for meat.
OP doesn’t like privacy invading capitalism
Yet OP wants his investments to go up in value.
Personal data has value. Those who use it will outperform those who do not.
Also, there are companies like FairPhone and System76 that (probably) don't buy and sell user's data. But they aren't exactly thriving.
They did. But not in 2024.
Did you read his personal data?
You telling me he doesn’t have a bank account, cash pile under his mattress, or piggy bank (if a child)?
You are not allowed to work if you don’t have a bank account.
And also you loose value from these. Cash loose value thanks to inflation money spent on nsa. Banks not only dont pay you for the money you have in the bank but also charge you a lot for a digital transaction they spy and use.
Yes it can, but existing governments will not cut off their own limbs (give up their current power over currency management and tracking) by adopting a true blockchain.
I'm not worried about that at the moment but I have said, once the US dollar is no longer accepted at a random Thai street market that is when the US dollar is done.