The beatings will continue until people actually modify their buying behavior on the basis of concerns like privacy and autonomy.
Right now nobody cares, where "cares" is defined as "alters buying behavior." If you don't alter your buying behavior in response to this stuff you don't "care."
If the world's largest window manufacturer added a clause that they could send employees to your home to look through your windows at any time, day or night, the government would likely step in and put a stop to it. I don't see how this is any different. We have privacy laws and consumer protection agencies. They are failing us.
The government wants to use the data collected by these giant corporations. At least in the US, third-party doctrine allows for the govt to snoop on people--esp useful if they want to go after opponents.
Yep. The solution is government regulation. Vote with your votes, not your wallet. (The latter is just pain for ephemeral gain, if any gain at all. Laws are actual gains.)
I feel like it would take years and much debate for most governments to step in to be honest. Just think of the stock market if the largest window manufacturer has an unprofitable quarter!
That's what Doctorow calls "a cartoonish vision of markets in which “the customer is king” and successful businesses are those who cater to their customers." In reality, the capitalists also don't care, _when they can get away with it._
"To understand whom a platform treats well and whom it abuses, look not to who pays it and who doesn’t. Instead, ask yourself: who has the platform managed to lock in? "
> Right now nobody cares, where "cares" is defined as "alters buying behavior."
You're assuming equivalents exist which don't have the downsides but to have the same upsides. They don't. When there's no viable alternative people are just forced to do things they don't like.
That's not what I mean. What I mean is that at least some people have to stand up to that unfairness and exploitativeness.
When blacks protested bus segregation in the South, they boycotted the busses. That meant they had to walk. It worked.
It would be a better more just world if people did not have to make these kinds of sacrifices to be heard, but we don't live in a utopia. We live in a messy real world full of people being assholes and broken systems.
In this case the sacrifice is not having to walk in searing heat in the summer while being jeered at by racist assholes. The sacrifice is having to learn a new image editor.
> That's not what I mean. What I mean is that at least some people have to stand up to that unfairness and exploitativeness.
How much is "some"? Lots of people bought Affinity products, despite them lacking some critical features that folks need. And now Affinity had been bought by another company that will likely take it the way of Adobe. None of this ever stood a chance of dethroning Adobe before, and it certainly won't now. What percentage of the users do you realistically expect should be willing to risk their income over this, and for how long?
> If people are not willing to make trade-offs or sacrifices, this also means they don't care enough for companies to listen.
"If you won't make sacrifices, you don't care enough". Nope. Some people care deeply and still need software that monopolized their workflow. It doesn't matter how much they care, if the VFX company they work in uses the Adobe Suite, it will not re-train all staff and rewrite all the work that's been done (plugins, assets) for the Adobe Suite.
I myself work in an adjacent industry - video games. Some 3D tools are as ancient as the civilizations they are named after and Blender has surpassed them in many ways. So much so that recently in AAA games, people have started using Blender a significant amount and many companies now allow a choice. But this is still impossible in many workflows. Game companies have written many plugins and integrations with their pipelines for the ancient software, they have hired staff qualified in this software. There is a very significant cost to switching that is beyond what is possible even for large studios, which I won't name, but I'm sure they made some of your favorite games.
Right now nobody cares, where "cares" is defined as "alters buying behavior." If you don't alter your buying behavior in response to this stuff you don't "care."