Ask HN: Anyone else depressed by the relentless monetization and spying?

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.

aerojoe23 · 2 years ago

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 in your pocket...

VelesDude · 2 years ago

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.

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.

blackfawn · 2 years ago

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"

qp11 · 2 years ago

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.

blooalien · 2 years ago

> 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.

cobertos · 2 years ago

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)

Razengan · 2 years ago

> not worsening and not inherently wrong.

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.

OgsyedIE · 2 years ago

Why did you quote

>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).

Terr_ · 2 years ago

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.

orph · 2 years ago

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.

renegat0x0 · 2 years ago

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.

Ok maybe not nobody, but to a lesser degree.

> corporations trying to watch and make money from everything we do.

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!!!

hsbauauvhabzb · 2 years ago

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.

MattGaiser · 2 years ago

> 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 wouldn’t, as soon as the movement resulted in a cost which impacted current Microsoft products, Microsoft would scale back.

But Microsoft have such huge vendor lock-in within big business that moving to an alternate would be a significant cost.

andrei_says_ · 2 years ago

I spend as little time as possible interacting with these systems. That’s all I got.

kelseyfrog · 2 years ago

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.