Tech companies and their executives have, broadly, moved to align themselves with investors and adopted a posture of, often, disdain or outright hostility towards their users and employees. If tech companies don't value you, why provide value to them? If they back political positions hostile to your interests, why not return that hostility?
Like many of my fellow lemmings, I already do most of what he suggests. But I also realise I only do it out of principle. I’m not hurting these companies. I’m not costing them anything. A visitor who rejects cookies may not help their bottom line, but that handful of extra page requests isn’t going to cost them a single red cent extra. A GDPR access request may make a smaller company scramble, but the larger ones have systems in place to handle it, and very probably completely automatically.
Sure, stop giving companies your data if you’re so inclined. Just realise it is more of an inconvenience for you than it is for them - even if it’s not really inconvenient for you, it’s even less so for them. Unless a significant portion of users starts doing it, it’s mostly symbolic.
Online advertisement struggles compared to other forms because it’s hard to prove that anyone sees ads. If you pay for 1 million “ad impressions” how do you know if any of those are actual humans? How do you know your ad wasn’t buried at the bottom of a page where nobody sees it? Newspapers aren’t free and you can see what other readers see by looking at a page sample. You feel more confident that a subscriber actually sees your ad even if only for a moment. Online tracking isn’t just to find what you’re interested in but also whether you are engaging with ads. Advertiser confidence grows as they feel that Meta, Apple, Google, etc “see all” because they think the tracking stats are more factual.
When you avoid being tracked you actively harm this advertiser confidence. Ad block users are a minority but Google knows they are a threat. Advertisers can haggle by saying, “I’m not paying full price for 1 million ad impressions because I know those aren’t all humans.” Or even worse, “My target audience uses ad blockers.”
So even if someone doesn’t do any of these things, but says publicly that they do, that alone is harmful to these companies.
I agree. The solution isn’t to wish that everyone would suddenly change their behavior out of nowhere, the only real hope we have is government regulations.
Ok but what if everyone does it.
Yes but are they? What would it take?
People who lead by example while standing on business ten toes down and NOT self-deprecating?
Humility hurts more than helps in many situations, like here in this one. “I do all that but I humbly believe it’s pointless, it makes no difference.” That’s not the energy that gets things done or is appealing to watch or to join.
Assuming that enough people will come to a personal epiphany at the same time to make a difference hasn’t ever worked, though. There must be a catalyst if you don’t want individuals to do the right things years apart, ineffectually.
I don’t want to convince people that the good they do in the world is ineffectual. That is counter to my interests.
There is no poimt in waiting or hoping for a catalyst or even talking about it, since no one seems to know what this catalyst is, all it does is shift the initiative outward, makes people stall, makes people limp and faithless in their actions, wastes emotional energies, etc. I don’t see any positive effects.
Of course people need to organize. But how the fuck will anyone organize when even the prophets do not believe!
I’m happy to boost whatever it takes, but I’m too old and I’ve got too many medical issues to be the nucleation point.
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