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quoting naddr1qv…tnm9

As mentioned in the previous article, accepting the terms and conditions is this obligatory accept-clicking-hoop we jump through. Nobody reads it, and nobody has to in order to know that it is bad. Generally people don’t agree with the terms; the only thing they accept is their fate of the soft coercion of the network effect.

In a way this was always the plan. The pitch the investors of the major platforms got was that the eventual gravitational forces of the network effect would pull the remainder of the people, and keep everyone there inside. With their competition successfully undermined, and the barrier to exit in place, they would have a position they could leverage for monetization purposes.

That monetization happens mostly via advertisements. These advertisements need to reach their intended audience, and so these platforms got into the business of profiling. They want to get to know you, which in first instance is easy enough when the nature of the activity that occurs on these platforms is disclosing who you are to more or lesser extend. But on this level, you don’t just hand them, but the world at large this data.

Sure the data is on their infrastructure, but that is only a minor part of the privilege they enjoy in regards to figuring out who you are. Next to all those seen, public, behaviors, there are all the unseen, not so private, behaviors. What you are looking at, for how long; what you search for, what you click on after suggestions are provided. This surveillance domain will attempt to extract every possible bit of data.

Prime tool in this extraction operation is the app. Smartphones have become the dominant system people use to interface with platforms, and the app is the convenient option provided to you. If for some reason you had this crazy idea to use your browser instead, they will endlessly harass you with pop-ups, bullying you into downloading and using the dedicated app instead.

The app supercharges the privileged profiling position of the platform. Not only does it increase its capacity to track your behavior, it has no qualms about attempting to extract everything present on your smartphone, be that your contact list or files.

In response this predatory behavior has been made more apparent with an ongoing barrage of permission prompts. Of course you could argue that it gave the user some control back, but in the context of this piece I would like to ask why you invited such a bad actor into your domain in the first place. Yes, you can stop it, but is not the primary question here why it acts like a proper asshole in the first place?

It is like saying that we solved the problem of a bad guest, because you are kindly prompted at each instance of its terrible behavior: ‘Do you allow him to break your vase? No, only while you are next to him or always?’, ‘Do you allow him to piss next to your toilet, steal your silverware, harass your wife?’.

Excuse me for my silly analogy. The app obviously needs all these permissions to optimize your user experience, surely, my fault.

So long as there is no real, practical, alternative to using a particular app, these terms and conditions are a mockery. A technically correct excuse, where you cynically got handed a shield in the shape of permission controls and have to not mind that your own phone has become a battleground.

Don’t feel bad you never read anything before accepting, although since the latest update you gave them permission to claim your dreams and your first born-child.