Comment on Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, corporations treat you like a product. Whether you buy something from them or not. People are becoming the product that they sell.
I usually don’t care very much until it starts to affect pricing for stuff based on some algorithms impression of how desperate you are. That algorithm started with travel (airlines, online booking fees for hotels and stuff) and has expanded.
If I need a new computer because mine isn’t working, I don’t really care that advertisers come at me with ads for their computer products. I need one, they want me to buy one, it’s marketing. No worries.
If I need a new computer and suddenly all the prices for new systems goes up by $100 because it thinks I’m desperate enough to pay that, now I have a problem.
I still don’t like them selling my data, and I’ll do what I can to avoid it, but marketing is going to do marketing things.
hume_lemmy@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
The problem is, you don’t get a say in the matter. If the marketing company sells on your data, you don’t get to say no.
If Ford wants telemetry on your car (and they do) and they sell it to your insurance company who raises your rates because you don’t drive in a manner approved by corporate, you don’t get to say no.
If you search for wigs and antinausea meds, and Google sells that to health insurance who guesses you’ve got cancer and are a financial liability, you don’t get to say no, and you don’t get to argue that you were planning for a party.
If you’re a fifteen year old kid and your browser starts showing gay dating ads to your extremely homophobic parents, you’d better hope they don’t put it together because you don’t get to stop any of it.
You can control how your data is gathered, but you have ZERO say in how it’s distributed and interpreted.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I agree. And that’s problematic. Each company will have different policies, so it’s important to know what companies do with your data, at least for the subset of companies that you actually use.