That's probably why they're proposing it now, there's very little risk in proposing something the average use at worst won't understand and at best will assume you had good faith in suggesting.
I don't see why people who opt out of paying the toll should be allowed to use the service. Nobody complains if a walled garden membership fee costs dollars why should data be different as long as you're aware up front of what is collected and that it's the method of payment?
> I don't see why people who opt out of paying the toll should be allowed to use the service.
Nothing wrong with charging for access to a service. If the web service isn't free, then don't give access to people who haven't paid for it. If the site isn't free, then require payment before serving the web page. This is reasonable.
What happens instead is:
1. I make an HTTP request
2. The server sends me the page with the content I want for free
3. The page comes bundled with ads and tracking malware
That's unacceptable. They shouldn't be allowed to "charge" anyone by including javascript malware to collect and sell private information. If they add useless noise to the content in the form of ads, users are entirely within their rights to delete them. People can rip out and trash the ads of a printed magazine.
They don't want to do the reasonable thing because they'd make less money that way. That's not our problem though. They need to deal with it and stop abusing our trust or one day people will make laws to criminalize it.
> why should data be different as long as you're aware up front of what is collected and that it's the method of payment?
Because nobody knows what that data is going to be used for once it's in a database and up for sale. Nobody is made aware "up front" of the risks of data collection. It's impossible to determine the long term impact of this. It could amount to nothing. It could end up being leaked because of some intermediary's poor information security practices. A government could get access to it and start building dossiers on people or share it with other governments.
At that point, they can simply charge their users a small fee. I remember reading once that Facebook makes something like $12/yr/user by exploiting their privacy.
I'd gladly pay $15/yr to use that service if I knew they weren't tracking my personal info and the service was ad-free. As it stands, I haven't been on the platform for nearly a decade now, and I'd return tomorrow if this were truly an option (and I actually knew I could trust them to honor the agreement).
IMO, that's how you strike a balance - use for free and we exploit your privacy, or pay a fee (preferably regulated to be similar to the average profit made on a user's private information) and no data will be collected or stored on you, except as is necessary to make the site work (for instance, setting times to your local timezone).
Ha! Facebook currently doesn't get any income off of me since any information about me is years out of date due to my concerns of how they handle data. I'd come back for $15/yr merely as a nice convenient way to keep open communication with relatives.
My thoughts exactly. I haven't been on any social media in probably 6-7 years now, and I got serious about my privacy a couple years ago, but I'd gladly pay that small fee just to keep in touch with people that are otherwise a bit difficult to contact, honestly.
You sidestepped my question though, why shouldn't they be allowed to refuse service if the toll is clearly explained? There are plenty of users who are content to receive $free services in exchange for their data, why shouldn't they be allowed to spend their data if they want to and why shouldn't services be allowed to cater exclusively to them? I'm not trying to come off aggressively so I apologize if I have, but to me this just seems like you're unhappy with how other people are choosing to transact. If $free services are so dominant in the market, not saying they are but now I'm speaking hypothetically, that people like yourself can't find alternatives then isn't that really just an indication that the traditional business model has been thoroughly outcompeted and should be moved away from since it's nonviable by comparison?
>why shouldn't they be allowed to spend their data if they want to
I think they should be allowed to. I just think companies should be required to provide consumers a choice.
>why shouldn't services be allowed to cater exclusively to them?
Because many of the companies that exploit their users are monopolies. There are no real competitors to YouTube, Facebook, Google, etc. (yes, I know alternatives exist, but when you have 99% of users on your platform, the others don't quite matter).
Since there's yet to be any regulation to stop this monopolistic aspect, the next easiest thing would be to force them to adopt a slightly different, relatively painless business model.
I don't think you came off as aggressive - don't worry. People should, imo, be free to choose how they want to transact. On the flipside, though, a standard business model would be a benefit to all - those who care about privacy get what they want, those who don't see zero changes. The companies will make the same money off of either, so the only real cost is in developing the tools necessary to accept payments. Those aren't particularly hard to integrate into most websites, though.
>isn't that really just an indication that the traditional business model has been thoroughly outcompeted and should be moved away from since it's nonviable by comparison?
I'm not so sure. I've never seen a YouTube alternative with even 1/50th as many videos which has some kind of cash-based revenue model. I've NEVER seen a search engine which does that, and the same is true for social media (among other things, this isn't meant to be an all-inclusive list, of course).
I'm a bit of a privacy nut, so feel free to disregard this next part, but I honestly think targeted advertising is the source of a huge number of problems. For instance, it's used for highly targeted political ads, which I believe is the root of a lot of the division in the US political scene. This got so bad that Google felt the need to ban their tools being used for highly-specific targeted political ads. Unfortunately, others have not followed suit here.
Your shitty business model isn't morally entitled to be viable. If you can't figure out how to operate a business without hoovering up tons of PII, then your business deserves to die.
This can easily be turned on its head though. Clearly, your desire for privacy is far larger than everyone else. Why should they have to suffer for your desire. You could use privacy oriented services instead.
> Clearly, your desire for privacy is far larger than everyone else.
Is it? How do you know? Most people don't have even a partial understanding of the risks associated with personal information collection. Most people don't even read terms of service and privacy policies. How many users even know what a cookie is?
The fact is people trust the service providers with the data. They assume that their data will be used responsibly for their benefit. Recent history shows that this assumption is completely unfounded.
> Why should they have to suffer for your desire. You could use privacy oriented services instead.
The fact is the vast majority of services are not and never will be privacy-oriented. Paid service or not, they'd make more money if they sold people's private information. Not doing that is a wasted opportunity to them, it's as if they were actively choosing to make less money. So instead of excluding people who don't agree with surveillance capitalism, it should be impossible to collect any information to begin with.
Besides, we should not be ostracized and be forced to live off-grid as if we were in some cyberpunk story just because we value our privacy.
You don't need to live off grid. You just have will get more expensive tools and services because of the smaller size of your niche and the lack of ad money.there's a seemingly sizable crowd out here that is highly invested in such. Would targeting them make as much money? Probably not. But would this be a sustainable market?
'Your PII' is also the PII of other people. Consider Facebook's 'shadow profiles' of people who don't use its service, constructed from the address books, shared photos, and other information of Facebook users around them.
If you don't force that then users will simply say "well I really love Instagram..." and click ok. An average user can't place a value on their privacy because they can't see the long term threat from using these services. This is where we need regulations in the same way that we needed cigarette regulations back in the day to deal with long term health threats.
Pricing a good out of someone's budget range seems entirely like removing them from the economy. What's more, your tax will hit the most economically vulnerable people in society the hardest. It's hard for me to believe people won't feel ashamed when the things they enjoy are suddenly beyond their reach.
>You might think of the US as one of the most advanced mobile markets.
Advanced and quality aren't strictly synonymous. Going by the chart the article references, Canada crushes us in terms of quality but I still wouldn't want to move from an unlimited plan in the USA to a Canadian equivalent due to pricing schemes (the business kind not the conspiracy kind) for unlimited plans in Canada. In that sense I'd argue the USA offers more advanced market choices, but not necessarily a plethora of high quality ones.
