I think people here are misunderstanding reality evaluation with judgement of value.
Every time you sign up for something without understanding what it is exactly, they are setting themselves up for failure. This doesn’t mean that the company is right, or what they are doing is fair and just. Microsoft is clearly morally dubious, but they did technically get you agreement with it. The one who signed up is wrong, not in valuing privacy, but in expecting, even for a single moment, that a corporation would have their best interest in mind. They only have revenue growth in mind, and that’s bu the very nature of how their business is organized.
That’s why zero trust systems are important, and FOSS is a way of getting it. Being open source allows for anyone with enough technical knowledge to audit every part of the system, so you don’t need to trust a businessman
So what you’re hand waving away here is legalese and how no one can understand much of it even if they did read it. Absolutely no one reads every page of the 50 you’re required to sign when buying a house, for example.
But we have trust that society wouldn’t allow us to buy a house if people are hiding sneaky shit in the contractual language. Yes we have a few things like variable interest rates but no one is signing away their privacy rights in perpetuity in exchange for the chance to buy a home. We have a society that gives us certain expectations, and quite often those are met.
No, to use a computer we should not have to read 100 pages of documents and understand all of them. It’s impractical and that’s illustrated by the fact that billions of people so far haven’t read any of that shit.
You are right that we ought to be more careful signing stuff, but that’s a separate discussion imo. We shouldn’t even have the option legally of accidentally agreeing to such self sabotage
I think people here are misunderstanding reality evaluation with judgement of value.
Every time you sign up for something without understanding what it is exactly, they are setting themselves up for failure. This doesn’t mean that the company is right, or what they are doing is fair and just. Microsoft is clearly morally dubious, but they did technically get you agreement with it. The one who signed up is wrong, not in valuing privacy, but in expecting, even for a single moment, that a corporation would have their best interest in mind. They only have revenue growth in mind, and that’s bu the very nature of how their business is organized.
That’s why zero trust systems are important, and FOSS is a way of getting it. Being open source allows for anyone with enough technical knowledge to audit every part of the system, so you don’t need to trust a businessman
So what you’re hand waving away here is legalese and how no one can understand much of it even if they did read it. Absolutely no one reads every page of the 50 you’re required to sign when buying a house, for example.
But we have trust that society wouldn’t allow us to buy a house if people are hiding sneaky shit in the contractual language. Yes we have a few things like variable interest rates but no one is signing away their privacy rights in perpetuity in exchange for the chance to buy a home. We have a society that gives us certain expectations, and quite often those are met.
No, to use a computer we should not have to read 100 pages of documents and understand all of them. It’s impractical and that’s illustrated by the fact that billions of people so far haven’t read any of that shit.
You are right that we ought to be more careful signing stuff, but that’s a separate discussion imo. We shouldn’t even have the option legally of accidentally agreeing to such self sabotage