> Philosophical question: is it really your life, if your software may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if it hadn't been making the suggestions to influence you?

No less so than if your friends, family, coworkers, and society at large may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if they hadn't been making the suggestions to influence you.

Does only the hermit truly own his own life?

> There is no doubt it will make things easier for you if all you do is effectively accept and follow everything others want you to with no resistance.

While that may be a danger to keep in mind, that's not what's being suggested. In fact, I'd argue much the opposite is being suggested.

Instead of being told what we want and adapting to our corporate overlords, would it not be preferable to communicate what we want, and have the companies adapt to us instead? To service our wants and needs?

>No less so than if your friends, family, coworkers, and society at large may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if they hadn't been making the suggestions to influence you.

In spite the fact that in the case of friends, family, coworkers I can be the one persuading them in a different direction and I also know a bit about them (you cannot suggest that in the case of person-company relationship both are as strong in influencing each other, maybe in large numbers of people protesting and that's a huge maybe):

The thing is, there are 5 billion people on Earth but far less operating systems. So, when they tell you "my way or the highway" while at the same time more products support their way, you'll eventually end up stuck somewhere in the past, like the old nut in the hut living on top of a mountain, while everyone is throwing their personal data to Microsoft and friends telling me that it's going to be ok because "the functionality provided is convenient". Which makes zero sense.

> In spite the fact that in the case of friends, family, coworkers I can be the one persuading them in a different direction and I also know a bit about them (you cannot suggest that in the case of person-company relationship both are as strong in influencing each other, maybe in large numbers of people protesting and that's a huge maybe)

Companies, in many ways, strike me as amazingly straightforward to manipulate. So easily swayed by the almighty dollar that such trite as "the customer is always right" gets dolled out as actual management policy at times.

We block company ads, our eyes scan past the ads that remain, we spam-list their emails and rip into them on our various review sites when they wrong us.

Companies realize, though, that talk is cheap, and see through our bullshit a little better. And, sadly, there's very little self control by consumers at times.

> you'll eventually end up stuck somewhere in the past, like the old nut in the hut living on top of a mountain

It's not so bad here. I don't even have a Facebook account. There's enough ad blocking options out there to kill several news companies several times over. That's before installing a proper separate firewall box.

> while everyone is throwing their personal data to Microsoft and friends telling me that it's going to be ok because "the functionality provided is convenient". Which makes zero sense.

It makes zero sense if you lack agency and choice. You have an opt out. It makes zero sense if you provide what you didn't will to. Opt ins are superior, I'll certainly grant. It makes zero sense if you haven't recognized the full ramifications and potential impact of sharing the data you share. They don't know what they're getting into.

But it also makes zero sense to dismiss "convenient functionality" as a reasonable rationale to give data freely, by choice, if you understand the impact and potential ramifications of it. There's a reason this stuff works. Ignoring that merely blinds you to the beast, and robs you of taking as much advantage of it, or to defend against it's detriments.

This discussion is such a deja vu. I had this exact back and forth with a colleague the other day (them on the give-away-all-data side). I have a reply based on this comment, thank you.

> No less so than if your friends, family, coworkers, and society at large may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if they hadn't been making the suggestions to influence you.

I'd add to that list things like Toxoplasma gondii.[1] Who knows, maybe it is the viruses controlling us all. Maybe there are behaviour modifying viruses that cause little to no overt symptoms of infection, or maybe the viruses are changing the DNA of bacteria that impact all living creatures microbiomes. Scary stuff.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii

At least it isn't Cordyceps Fungus.

"No less so than if your friends, family, coworkers.."

There is a difference between those and MS.

Pedantry about "MS" being different than the "software" aside - Microsoft consists of a specific sub-sampling of those people.

So I challenge you: How? In what way? Does it meaningfully change the calculus of your total life ownership? Why?

Along those lines, how dangerous is the "filter bubble" effect? Totally a reasonable social psychological/philosophical question, IMHO.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

How's that different from listening to any other human you interact with? Is it somehow worse because it's a computer rather than a human? That's the kind of bigotry that gets you robot uprisings.

I'll bite.

Your mind is wired by evolution to assess, evaluate and react to human behavior. It is equipped to defend you another humans' attempts to influence your behavior for their own ends when you interact with them in person. Software that you run daily should be able to bypass those built-in protections in a more subtle and personalized manner than traditional advertising or propaganda could ever dream of. In an untrained mind it won't meet resistance but the mind can be trained; the "bigotry against 'robots'" (really, human organizations acting at a distance) on the part of humans who read enough stories like this one emerges as a result and is completely justified.

By evolution, or by socialization?

And if it is by evolution, that immediately presents the trivial solution that we will naturally evolve to relate better to machines, making this a nonissue.

It's different in the sense that you know that your firend cares about you, where as for software you can't be sure if it's in your interests.

People also lie. A lot.

If you were a woman, you'd have two dozen kids by now.

Are you saying that listening to what you have to say and writing what you have to say on wikipedia is the same thing?

Are you hung up with the speech vs text thing? Because that's so not the point.