Can't you trivially reframe the initial purchase as being subsidized by that license? Your $200 smart knife sharpener would be $300 if it weren't recording audio 24/7 (for VAD, surely!)
Then I invite them to offer such a product. I would love to buy e.g. YouTube premium, but as far as I know they still collect my data for advertising purposes, they just don't show the ads.
I think you frame it that way you need to offer the other version.
I do wonder how many people would buy non-spy versions of devices given the option. More specifically, what that differential in price would be too. At worst it would be interesting to have a price explicitly stating what our data is worth. Many people actually internalize that it's not that valuable, but doing this would make it explicit.
> I do wonder how many people would buy non-spy versions of devices given the option.
Depending on the discount for the spyware version, I'd guess close to zero. The general public has become completely numb to being spied on. It's hard to get someone to give up $50 (a real cost) for something nebulous like "very slightly less of your life is known by marketing companies".
> It's hard to get someone to give up $50 (a real cost) for something nebulous like "very slightly less of your life is known by marketing companies".
I'd gladly pay that price. I'm pretty sure there's a large number of us that would.
It's easy to make claims like yours without the real world data. To believe that things are the way they are because that's the most efficient way. Back justification is not logical. Idk about you, but I frequently make mistakes and need to redo things. I'm pretty confident it's just because I'm human and not an omniscient god.
Also, I'd suspect it might be more than $50. We didn't create a surveillance capitalist economy with trillion dollar businesses that resulted in everything including your vacuum spying on you because your data isn't valuable. Clearly it is...
The problem more is that people don't understand how that data is used and can be used. Which I don't blame anyone for that. It's abstract and honestly sounds like the stuff of tin foil hat conspiracy theorists. But at the same time, here we are. The point of ads is to manipulate you to buy things. Which isn't always bought with money. We have several multi trillion dollar companies and I'm pretty sure they don't exist for nothing
Sure, that's basically how Kindle pricing works ($X with ads, or $X+$Y without ads) and it's infinitely better having the choice. If Amazon ever gets rid of the without ad version they will lose me as a customer overnight.
Likewise, there are a whole lot of products that don't have an "unsubsidized" version that I simply refuse to purchase (or have purchased and returned after confirming that they will not work when locked in IOT jail where they can't talk to the internet.)
I would encourage you to partake in sharing files with your neighbor, and on the occasion you feel strongly you want to support something, get that subscription for a month or buy some merch or similar to show you really appreciate what you watched.
It's what we've come to. If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't theft. And in a market where data theft is built into the price, well... you are the one to set the price and the recipient of who you deem deserves it.
>If Amazon ever gets rid of the without ad version they will lose me as a customer overnight.
Didn't they already remove the option for a completely ad free prime video experience or am I hallucinating that? They have such a ridiculous hold on the e reader market I feel like it is just matter of the next down quarter.
They seem to own 75% of the market, and I think you can get pretty much every book on every device, right? Of course your existing library is locked-in; ideally, that'd be illegal.
Worse - they actually can remove books that you've purchased. Not only revoke license for future downloads - but actually remove them from your device.
Does it actually make a difference?
I have an old Kindle (from 2013 I think) and I opted for the ad version. I only see ads on the lock screen, which means I never really read the ads. The few times I’ve looked at them intentionally, they were books I’d never consider reading, just from the title and cover; in other words, a terrible ad for the recipient.
Does the ad-free version not collect your data too?
I don't actually care if they collect my data in that particular case. There's really nothing of significance that Amazon gets from my reading habits that it Visa doesn't already get from my purchasing the book in the first place.
I care if I see ads, even if I "don't read them". And when it comes to other devices, like IP security cameras I might care a lot more about whether the manufacturer has access to the device once it's set up.
My goal was just to point out that there is at least one existing case where you can pick between a subsidized and unsubsidized (or less subisdized if you prefer) product, and having the choice is strictly better than not having the choice.
> I don't actually care if they collect my data in that particular case. There's really nothing of significance that Amazon gets from my reading habits that it Visa doesn't already get from my purchasing the book in the first place.
Visa knows you bought a book. That's all they know. Amazon knows that you actually read the book (or didn't), how long it took you to read the book, how many times you read it, every date/time when you opened it, what specific pages you flip to and re-read later, etc. Maybe you consider that data to be "nothing of significance", but Amazon doesn't see it that way. They spend a lot of time and money collecting, storing, and analyzing that data and it isn't because they didn't think it's worth anything.
That has been the way things work since the early 2000s. PCs started to come loaded with junk malware, and what those malware makers were willing to pay was the only profit the PC makers were making. Modern smart TVs are exactly at the same place; everybody is adamant that the only profit in TVs is with the sale of the usage data.
I do not think the value difference is $100 ;-) In fact, the longer you use it, the more money they can make off of you. (In that sense, that $200 is already WAY too expensive to start ;-) )
So yeah, reversing this would make the most sense. The default is: local data only and not connected. They need to pay me to get data.
Just like car companies, phones, etc, should be forced to do that as well.
And no, they shouldn't be allowed to set the price. If I buy a license from Steam, I can't name my price, so I don't see why these companies should either. If they want my data, then they'll either pay the money I demand or they won't get the data at all. Cutthroat, perhaps, but necessary.
We’ve lived with companies that didn’t need to take pics of my dick while I’m shitting to subsidize their operation for as long as companies were a thing. Anyone saying this dick pic status quo is inevitable and necessary is too VC-brained to be allowed to run a company.
Once again, I'm amazed some HN readers, like yourself, are unfamiliar with the basic tenets of the GDPR. (Hint: A company cannot provide a service on the condition that you provide unnecessary personal data or consent to spying)
If you work in a tech field, there is simply no reason for such ignorance.
It's adorable that you think every company actually abides by these rules. There have been class action lawsuits recently against the largest tech companies. Why wouldn't the smaller ones break the rules too?
It's akin to cheating in financial markets. Hedge funds will gladly commit fraud or other cheating methods as long as the fine is less than the income gained.
It's not, things haven't gotten that much relatively cheaper (have you looked at phones? The biggest pieces of spyware you can buy?). This is a line corporations like to feed us so we feel guilty about being bad instead of putting that where it belongs: every CEO.
I don't like it either but here we are