Submitted 6 months ago by mesamunefire@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
I hope people realize that the solution isn’t really to just not buy one, especially since this is the way the industry is heading. The solution is regulations, strict regulations.
Stuff like this should be a slam dunk for congress but we all know which side they are on.
Agreed. It’s really hard to understate how ineffective “voting with your wallet” can be. The fact is simply that nobody honestly cares. Even if you get 100 people to boycott a company, would 100 out of millions of consumers really make a difference? Of course not.
And of course, you always have cases like this where everybody does it. Same thing goes for TVs - if everyone spies on you, the only real solution is to not have a TV. Yes, I know there are exceptions here and there, but bad practices like these force buyers into making compromises that they shouldn’t have to. Capitalism should be predicated on companies offering the best product to earn their income. It should not be about companies having the least bad product and trying every terrible thing that they can get away with.
(Of course, we all know that capitalism is a farce.)
Well you are voting with your wallet, the only problem is you’ve been out voted. Honda makes good automotives and part of the “price” now is people giving them their data. People just don’t understand/care enough to not want to buy a Honda. If this were really a big deal to people it would open a place in the market for new automotive companies like Rivian, Lucid, or Polestar to gain massive ground by not doing this.
This is an education issue. We need to inform people about the dangers of a lack of data privacy. If they still don’t care, then so be it.
A system with the goal being best or even optimal for all involved would never be called capitalism, even if capitalism didn’t exist.
Even if you get 100 people to boycott a company, would 100 out of millions of consumers really make a difference?
There’s definitely an economic impact to a vehicle looking or driving like shit. And I’m sure you’ll see some amount of consumer migration higher than 0.01% of the retail base.
But there’s also a lot of obfuscation, deception, and outright lying in the automotive sales industry. So its less a question of “Will consumers reject this feature?” and more “Will consumers be aware of this feature?”
Capitalism should be predicated on companies offering the best product
What happens when the retail customers have be commodified? What happens when the product is Surveillance and the real big money clients are state actors and private mega-businesses that benefit from tracking rented vehicles?
As we move closer to a full Service Contract economic model - one in which individuals don’t really own anything and have to continuously pay to access even basic features of their home devices - I can see a lot of financial incentives in the system that preclude car dealers from leaving these features out.
Imagine a bank that simply won’t finance vehicles that can’t be tracked. Or a rental company that won’t add vehicles to their fleet without these always-on internet features. Or a car lot that uses continuous tracking to manage its inventory.
Very quickly, the individual consumer becomes a secondary concern relative to these economies of scale.
yOu ALwAyS HaVe A cHOiCe, sO It’S oKaY!
I read somewhere that the thought that you can vote with your dollars makes you feel good and empowered to make choices, but is overshadowed by the fact that doing so means that whomever has more dollars has more votes.
Regarding Congress, I was really hoping that this big fear of TicTok would result in some sort of GDPR type laws which empower the individuals to take control of our personal data, which could also be used to prevent our personal data from being used against us by foreign countries.
You made the mistake of believing TikTok was anything more than a paid hit by other Social Media corporations.
TBH ending car dependency is a major part of any long term solutions. Regulate this violent and planet wasting catastrophe out of existence.
I’m all for reducing the number of cars on the road but IMO this is a poor attitude to have to a problem that exists right now and is ballooning out of control.
The truth is, moving away from cars will take a long, long time. Infrastructure doesn’t come from nowhere, and some places are so sparsely populated that public transport can be a very difficult proposition. Those places in particular will be stuck with cars for a while. Banning predatory data gathering on cars can happen right now if there is the political will to do so.
I know it’s easy for some (and I’m not specifying you, you don’t seem rude at all) to say “well I don’t care, fuck anybody who drives a car”, but I think everybody has a right to privacy, and the default shouldn’t be for our tools to spy on us and report it back to the OEMs. Particularly when a lot of car drivers don’t have any choice but to drive!
You can work on strengthening public transport while at the same time improving privacy laws for cars. It’s not one or the other.
Then your E-Bike is going to require an online sign in every time you want to use it.
Cars are far from the only product that is actively destroying individual privacy in the name of corporate profits
Reducing the number of cars doesn’t fix the root problem.
The solution is regulations, strict regulations.
Regulation by whom? Dems are already deep in bed with the automotive industry and Republicans hate the government on a purely ideological level.
Who is supposed to write (much less enforce) these regulations? Nobody in government wants the job.
The solution is -besides regulations for that - have governments push for much MUCH more bicycle roads and same for public transportation. With great public transportation and bicycle roads, most people won’t need cars to begin with.
In the USA, that boat sailed long ago… most cities are too spread out to pedal anywhere
I mean, if we are imagining government doing it’s actual job, isn’t it easier to pass regulations then to change how North American cities work?
Like I support walkable cities, I’m just convinced regular people don’t actually want it.
We cannot stop collecting data about you because collecting the datum that you want to stop having your data collected failed.
fuckin europeans. safer and more free from the prying eyes of the data whores, whowouldathunkit. were gettin shafted over here.
How dare they have an election system that lets them elect politicians that are actually doing what the people want instead of having to choose between bad and worse! It must be some forbidden knowledge for sure.
We shoulda never left for Plymouth Rock!
Are any of you even able to afford new cars? Who the hell’s buying this shit? I probably won’t have a new car ever.
Also mind that soon these new cars will be used cars with the same bullshit.
Total new vehicle sales has remained roughly static for a little less than two decades. So yes, people can afford new cars.
For most, they can afford to finance them, but the rates aren’t looking too good lately
Buying a new car never really made sense to me even when you could afford it. 2 - 3 year old model is effectively brand new but a lot cheaper. Why pay more if you can pay less?
2 - 3 year old model is effectively brand new but a lot cheaper.
I’ve always heard this, but where is this actually true? When I bought a Camry like a decade ago, I could get a brand new one for $19.5k or used ones with 50k miles on them for…$18k. so yeah I paid the extra 1.5k to not have to deal with potential random shit.
When my wife bought her car a few years ago it was a similar situation. The only used cars that were “a lot cheaper” had like 100k miles.
People who have a college education and well paying jobs.
✅ well paying job ✅ Dropped out of college and went full time
I have a college education and a well paying job the monthly payment on a new car has doubled since I bought my last one in 2020. No way am I buying a new car at these prices/rates.
back in my day Spock had small hair
With my last raise I’m over 130k a year and I still don’t buy new cars. My 2010 Audi is still running just fine.
Yeah rates alone have made financing a new car pretty stupid. Save as much cash as possible and spend within your means
It made sense to me when I could take advantage of a tax credit for EVs in 2017. Now that car companies/dealerships simply jack up prices to eat that discount, it doesn’t make sense even in that case.
Yes
People are buying new cars. I’m guessing it’s mostly leasing.
I feel like not buying a Honda would be a pretty good way to opt out. In fact since the majority of car manufacturers are doing this bullshit I feel like simply not purchasing a new car is a great way to opt out of this.
Plenty of older not smart cars that are perfectly usable or fairly easily restored no reason to go dropping the money on a brand new one that’s not only a privacy disaster but a repairability disaster on top of it.
I think my favorite is how almost all new cars now come with a sealed transmission with absolutely no way to replace the fluid in it with the claims of it being a “lifetime fluid” there is no such thing as a transmission fluid that can last and do its job forever, what they mean by LifeTime fluid is that it will last long enough to satisfy the warranty. And what they have deemed should be the usable life of the car.
Shit I hadn’t heard about that sealed transmission thing, that’s fucked up. Transmission fluid replacement seemed pretty important on the maintenance schedule of all the cars I’ve had
It’s been happening for a long time, even some cars is far back as 2012 have a supposed lifetime fluid. Although they at least still have the drain bolt so that you can say yeah that’s cute and do it anyway. But lately the drain bolt has gone away and they are completely sealed meaning you can’t change it even if you want to
I believe Honda started this in the early 2000s because they found that transmissions were compromised at earlier mileages at a much more frequent rate from leaks, bad fluid changes, or missing the intervals, than were actually failing from use. So they designed the cars for how they were actually being used and maintained. It’s kind of a non-issue unless you’ve got 300k+ miles on your transmission, at which point you’d expect to potentially replace it anyway.
Cars are just catching up to HVAC systems… In the last 3 years I’ve had to replace both inside and outside fan motors because their (maintenance free) bearings failed.
It’s sad that you can’t replace the infotainment unit in a new car with an aftermarket unit anymore. I imagine 10 years from now we’ll have a fleet of cars with outdated infotainment systems that can’t connect with whatever future version of bluetooth/carplay/android auto anymore. Imagine driving cars with giant but useless infotainment screens that can’t do anything but playing mp3 off a USB stick because its outdated system can’t connect to your new phone.
can’t do anything but playing mp3 off a USB stick
i’d rather that then spyware
Playing MP3’s off of a USB stick is literally all I do with my car’s stereo, and in fact all I want it to do.
Car infotainment systems have always been outdated.
I don’t have to imagine, because I refuse to buy such type of car.
What happens when all new cars do this and the older used cars dry up? We need laws to prevent this, but i just don’t feel like that’s going to happen unless China is the one doing the data collection.
As long as it can play tapes, I’m okay. Still using a tape adapter to connect my mp3 player :)
Haven’t seen a new car that can play tapes in nearly 20 years. Got bad news, boss.
I replaced my car’s stereo with one that had an auxiliary 1/8" stereo jack.
useless infotainment screens that can’t do anything but playing mp3 off a USB stick
i had a similar thought a while ago and it feels like we’re regressing back to the 90’s
I liked my recently departed 2012 chrysler infotainment system quite a bit. The sirius/xm radio kept 50 favorite artist and 50 favorite song alerts, had 300gb of storage for mp3s and the DVD system with headphones for the kiddos while we could listen to something else. No newer car I’ve driven, borrowed, or owned had the favorite alerts, and I’m going to miss the hell out of that feature.
Oh, it did have an aux jack and USB input as well. It was the cat’s ass. For a grocery-go-getter, it rocked
Yeah, it was almost a rite of passage in my teen years - getting a decade-old used car and immediately replacing the crap factory system with some overmarketed, overpriced, but really cool kit. Of course nowadays the factory systems are better sounding at least, but you’re spot on regarding the out dating of software and protocols.
Yup, sadly you just have to replace the entire car. You certainly can’t attach an entirely new system with speakers and everything to any surface inside the car, just impossible.
I do agree that it’s not good, but it’s also going to be far less of an issue than you think.
It’s even worse when you have a new-ish car that can handle any size USB stick, but will only load the first 8000 files it sees…
Who wants to buy / drive a 10 yo car though…
LOLWUT, I only buy cars that old or older. Why would I spend an absolute fortune on a new-ish car that I barely use anyway when I can get a perfectly reliable older car fir a fraction of the price?
I don't think I'm going to ever buy a car made after 2020. Maybe earlier. None of the new features really appeal to me, and there are a lot of things like this that actively turn me off from wanting a new car.
If they could just give me an electric version of a 1985 VW Golf I'd be happy as a clam. But they want to put me in some lumpy, heavy, clumsy CUV with tracking technology and all the touchscreens and I don't like it.
EV conversions are definitely a thing. And the Golf platform seems to actually be one of the most popular.
After a quick Google, it looks like there are even some premade kits for the Golf specifically, even with installation available. Although I can only find UK/EU links quickly. May be more built-it yourself in the US.
For those who haven’t yet bought a Honda:
They’re basically all doing it, so make sure to research who is doing it the least.
I’m never buying a Honda again after buying a 2018 Civic model. Less than 10k on it when I bought it and the A/C went out. There’s an issue with the condenser on the 2018/2019 Hondas. They offered to pay HALF of what it’d cost to fix - I’d still be out more than a thousand. And from research online, apparently the replacements tend to fail too.
Pretty much every time I see the same model I ask if the owner has AC. They always have the same problem. It’s going to be real wonderful driving when it gets to the 100’s this summer…
You can opt out by simply not buying one :)
Remember when gov’t banned Furbies (sp?) in some places? Seems like they would make the same decision for a lot of people in important positions regarding their car purchasing.
Pulling the fuse that includes OnStar at least keeps it from calling home. But there’s usually some collateral damage.
That one is easy: do not get a new Honda.
I think there needs to be more government involvement and protection in how data is collected, shared, and consumed; however, I also think people don’t realize that their perception of ‘privacy’ has always had the major benefit of being from the perspective of an individual that largely is unprofitable.
Many celebrities would very likely tell the public that ‘privacy’ is largely a myth and the reason their perspective is that way is because their lives, activities, and actions are viewed as profitable to someone. A lucrative paycheck from acquiring that salacious photo in a vulnerable position, etc is a big motivator, and if the celebrity gets mad at the paparazzi, there’s even more news about how the celebrity lost their shit for all the world to see; however, if the celebrity embraces the media and tries to work with them to conserve what little ‘privacy’ they have, there is negative news about how the celebrity is fake or too controlling about their image. At the end of the day, these celebrities simply want to have dinner out with family or friends and they can’t.
The general public isn’t used to the idea that someone cares enough about every nuanced detail of their decisions that it would matter… but it does. Sadly, a celebrity must spend thousands of dollars to secure their privacy, and even then it isn’t a guarantee… what hope do we have? In today’s society we use debit or credit cards, but all of the transactions are data mined by the banks and privacy is non-existent; however, with cash you have some built-in ‘privacy’ because at its core it is not easily profitable to track.
And that is the point; Data collection is slowly bridging the gap between a celebrity’s reality and normal everyday human perception of ‘privacy’.
Anyone have any background on the source link author org/individual, haven’t seen this outlet before?
I’m missing something. How is the data actually collected? How does it get out of my car? My car doesn’t have any cellular features other than CarPlay. It has wifi, but I’ve never used it.
The headline photo for the article shows a camera over a road that likely is likely running number plate recognition software…
Honestly I’d be more worried about where that data is going than the tracking software in your car.
This needs to be fixed with legislation, and it needs to be fixed actively. For example by getting rid of number plates entirely and replacing them with something like the transponders used in aircrafts and ships, but with an encrypted rolling code that only shares your data with authorised parties.
It could work like the “Find My” feature on an iPhone, where your location is encrypted and uploaded to the servers anonymously… the decryption key is only provided when the actual owner of the device authorises a data lookup. E.g. in a traffic stop, police could ask you to tap a button on your car that sends the cops your insurance/etc.
Crap like this is why I ride a motorcycle.
Only one of my bikes even manages to have enough electronics in it to have a clock.
I was just thinking yesterday what car I would get if I had infinite money and while I’m sure such one probably exists I couldn’t came up with one that I’d like better than my -07 Nissan Navara. I mean yeah I would ofcourse do a total overhaul on it and add a bunch of offroad accessories and such but the truck itself basically has everything I need and switching to a newer one would just add stuff I dont want.
I like cars and trucks but I’m extremely uninterested in most of the new ones. Something similar happened with them as with smartphones when they turned from tools into fashion accessories you use to show off to your friends. Can’t we just have ones that are decent looking and come with the basic necesary features and nothing more? I want it simple, reliable and easy to fix. I don’t want a computer on wheels.
I really do hope that this crap is handled better in EU. At least theoretically it should be.
c/fuckcars
Please, Toyota, don’t do this. They refuse to go full out EV. Hopefully they too decide to keep some of these technologies away from their products.
buy an old Honda LOL
I know how to opt out! I can opt out of buying a honda!
You can rip out the cell connection
Call me an asshole but I think giving driving habit information to insurers is great, so long as good habits are given discounts and bad habits are punished.
I’m one of those people who would love automatic enforcement of driving laws as well as user reportable incidents of other drivers (given you can provide footage of something you’re reporting.)
If people don’t like living under the law… maybe the law shouldn’t exist. “That’s the way it is” is a terrible excuse for fucking anything.
Oh, and make audit trails for this shit public record. Someone creating AI videos or fake reports? Punish that too. It’ll never happen though. People want laws for others, not themselves.
The newer model CR-V doesn’t need an app, it’s just a toggle in the car settings. That icon at the top like the article shows is definitely annoying and I agree in calling it a dark pattern.
You could just not buy a smart car. There is a used market although it is a shrinking industry
The size of the title on that article is insane on a monitor.
Anyway.
Companies are quick to flaunt their privacy policies, but those amount to pages upon pages of legalese that leave even professionals stumped about what exactly car companies collect and where that information might go.
Does anyone remember that report about the university researchers who studied one of these smart thermostats and concluded that you would have to sign more than a thousand legal disclaimers to properly consent to have it in your home?
Solution: If it’s spy on you then don’t buy it.
Next problem.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Imo, the only solution is every device with an antenna must be legally required to put a manual off switch.
Cell service, wifi, Bluetooth, any future service. If it broadcasts it needs a physical off switch.
neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
The current generation of the ford mustang Mach-e has its mobile telemetry cellular antenna wired to an isolated fuse that you can just pull out to kill it. I was astonished to learn how straight forward the process is supposed to be.
barsquid@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I don’t trust that they won’t save the data and upload it during a servicing.
KeepFlying@lemmy.world 6 months ago
And each type of communication needs it’s own switch. Don’t let them pull some BS trying to make you enable all the hardcore tracking via a cell network just because you want to connect to Bluetooth.
laughterlaughter@lemmy.world 6 months ago
its* own switch.
aliceblossom@lemmy.world 6 months ago
For phones, Pinephone is very nearly this. The only thing is that GPS and cell service are on the same switch (because they’re handled by the same chip on the board)
LostXOR@fedia.io 6 months ago
There's always the carefully applied soldering iron.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If only I knew where.
aliceblossom@lemmy.world 6 months ago
For phones, Pinephone is very nearly this. The only thing is that GPS and cell service are on the same switch (because they’re handled by the same chip on the board)