In old days (before the internet), if I buy a PC from Apple or IBM, you get what you pay for. Besides the cable companies / newspapers / magazines bombarding ads, everything back in the day was 1:1 - you pay for something, you get value for it.
Now a days, we have large companies losing money while killing competition (Uber), large companies in bed with government, and large companies in bed with advertisers and marketing agencies.
Fuck the world. I can't wait to see Dieter Rams' documentary premier this October. From the trailers, it looks like it is addressing the very fabric of today's society than talking about industrial design. [1]
I don't want to be a product. I want to be a loyal customer.
This is one side of the coin, the other side is that for economic activity to take place, advertising must be available. People need to be informed of services and consumption needs to be encouraged to grow economic activity. How would that happen if companies locked down their platforms altogether? Would P&G, J&J and all the other conglomerates just shrivel and die in a world where they can't access consumers?
As to Google--I'd pay $500 per year not to have it constantly barrage me with reminders to use Chrome instead of Edge (so it can steal my apparently valuable browsing data). But, 90% of everything is crap. Crap is what the market wants, whether it's pop music or USA Today or advertising-based software. Who am I to argue?
The Internet was built on an advertising monetization model, and you could argue that the penetration of computing devices to our lives wouldn't be nearly as far reaching without the Internet. In other words, non-tech people buy iPhones to access the ad-sponsored Google, YouTube and Instagram.
No, it wasn't; the internet was built long before that. The advertising monetisation model didn't become significant until the internet was established as a popular mass venue.
Which makes sense; the audience drew advertising, not the other way around.
Think I can get them to stop datamining/tracking me?
Here goes: it seems like that model doesn’t work anymore. People look for what it costs on paper. You already here people talking about Apple as if it’s some impossible luxury standard. Can you imagine if computers became £5,000 for the base model again? I can’t imagine anyone paying for email in this day and age. And I certainly can’t imagine people paying for operating systems. Windows only has market dominance because it comes pre-installed and is effectively free.
That’s the issue. If you’re competing in this market; then you’re competing with “free” from the consumers eyes.
Stopping invasive user tracking would make internet advertising less effective, sure, but it wouldn’t prevent it completely. Ad Words doesn’t fundamentally depend on user tracking to associate search terms to advertisements for example.
https://www.howtogeek.com/163303/how-computer-manufacturers-...
The cost of a pre-installed license is cost neutral in most cases due to the crapware they add.
My overarching point is that 99% of consumers are cost-conscious. They look at the price in paper and rarely weigh anything else, especially a fuzzy notion of privacy. We are the 1% and we should be mindful of the 99%