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posted by takyon on Monday December 10 2018, @04:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the giant-leap dept.

Aral Balkan has a blog post about taking small steps to end surveillance capitalism. In particular he focuses on the need for federated services. He points out that the move to re-decentralize the WWW is difficult and needs to start at the beginning, using a comparison of Apple's original computers to their latest generation of tablets as an illustration.

Five years ago, when I decided to devote myself to tackling the problem of surveillance capitalism, it was clear what we needed: convenient and beautiful ethical everyday things that provide seamless experiences1 on fully free-as-in-freedom stacks.

This is as true today as it was then and it will remain so. The only way to compete with unethical products built by organisations that have control over hardware + software + services is to create ethical organisations that have control over hardware + software + services and thus have at least the possibility to craft competitive experiences. We remove our eyes from this goal at our peril.

Related: Tim Berners-Lee Launches Inrupt, Aims to Create a Decentralized Web


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @09:55PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @09:55PM (#772582)

    That may be so, but that's argument applies 10x to Democracy; the question was "What is a better way to measure consent?" The point stands: Capitalism.

  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:18AM (7 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:18AM (#772658) Journal

    Capitalism can only measure the consent of the well to do, one dollar, one "vote". The election results measure a far wider range of the population. But likely in both, the bottom 49% are screwed. The more you think about it, the most similarities you will find.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:48AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:48AM (#772709)

      Your comment makes no sense.

      Not only does capitalism measure the consent of the poor (better than democracy, mind you), but it also measures society's consent to the poor; under capitalism, if you're poor, that's a signal that you're not much worth to society—the few who can't help it will be helped by those who have compassion, and the rest should change their ways.

      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:07AM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:07AM (#772769) Journal

        Capitalism (and most of society) sees the poor as a mule. Its consent (or lack thereof) is irrelevant.

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:22PM (4 children)

      by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:22PM (#772842) Journal

      Capitalism has a good bit of control over the election results though. Poor people tend to vote less, because they can't get off work to go stand in line at the polls, or because they can't get a ride to one of the two remaining DMVs in their state to get a newly required photo ID.

      And that's not even getting into the long-term structural issues...for example, corporations lobby for laws, those laws make people who oppose the agenda of the corporation into convicted felons...who then often lose their right vote. Once the ball gets rolling it gets harder and harder to stand up against it, because the people who would most want to would also be disqualified for that very reason.

      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 11 2018, @03:41PM (2 children)

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @03:41PM (#772891) Journal

        Submissiveness is not an option if they want anything to happen. It's still up to the voters. You know, with all the excuses being made, I really wonder what people have to offer in place of voters taking their own initiative.

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
        • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 11 2018, @03:56PM (1 child)

          by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @03:56PM (#772901) Journal

          Oh, I absolutely am not suggesting "submissiveness" as a viable option; I'm merely pointing out that voting isn't necessarily a reliable indicator of peoples' preferences any more than a random sampling of TV commercials would be.

          Plenty of alternative means of taking action are still available though...organize, unionize, and strike is one which has worked pretty well so far for my family in both the past and present...

          • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:23PM

            by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:23PM (#773055) Journal

            Random TV samples involve maybe up to a thousand people. Voting counts over 200 million, including the non voting block (which can either be taken as consent, or 'no confidence', something we should demand on our ballots). I will take those numbers more seriously.

            All those "alternative means of taking action" still comes down to us and our own ability to delegate. I don't understand the difficulty here. What do people expect? I mean, is everybody looking up to the sky, or what?

            --
            La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @04:48PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @04:48PM (#772931)

        I do not think it means what you think it means.