Of course, as AI reduces the cost to operate in niches, those small businesses who just gained the ability to build an app are also more likely than before to see a bigger player drink their milkshake.

Not to mention that small businesses will have a harder time absorbing the inevitable price hike that will come once everyone has made themselves completely dependent on AI to get any work done.

The cost ($$$, opportunity cost, and mental toll) of maintenance is very real. It can be hugely advantageous to outsource that effort to a professional, PROVIDED the professional is trustworthy and competent. To ensure that most professionals are trustworthy and competent two things need to be present:

1. A very high degree of transparency, so that it's very difficult for a service provider to act contrary to their user's interests without the user knowing about it.

2. Very low switching costs, so that if the service provider ever does act against their users' interests, they will be likely to lose their users.

As long as our laws encourage providers to operate in black-box fashion, and to engineer artificially high switching costs into their products, I believe there will continue to be a case for self-hosting among a minority of the population. And because they are a minority, they will be forced to also make use of centralized services in order to connect to the people who are held hostage by those high switching costs.

Somewhere in the multiverse, there's a world in which interoperability and accountability have been enshrined as bedrock principles and enforced since the beginning of the internet. It would be very interesting to compare that world with the one we inhabit.

Now exchange "car" for "OS" and "alcohol" for "age-sensitive content"

"What we've got" isn't "the best we can do". There absolutely are better possibilities that would protect consumers. The best way to ensure we never get to experience those better systems is to shrug our shoulders and passively accept whatever treatment we receive.

Yes, you can. Just like you can have a functioning grocery store without checking the identity of each shopper that walks through the door.

What you cannot have is a free and democratic society or an efficient free market without robust protections for individual privacy. Privacy is the best shield the less powerful have from being abused and exploited by the more powerful.

> We accepted the SLA for the "Business Internet" in exchange for free, billion-dollar tools.

No, we did not accept. There was no informed consent. The full consequences of our use of these services was and is still is kept hidden from us. Tracking happens invisibly, without our knowledge or consent. This deprives us of the opportunity to express our true preference and opt out and choose an alternative. It's employing deception in order to subvert the consumer's ability to make a rational choice that represents their best interests.

> on the modern web, anonymity looks exactly like a security threat

An anonymous user who just uses the service normally and does not attempt to access sensitive information without authorization does not look like a security threat.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860974

Points: 18

# Comments: 1

Ok, fine. I'll just drive classic cars for the rest of my life. Your location is still being leaked by a global network of automated license plate reading cameras https://deflock.me/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43230992

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

People's use of ad-driven services should not be taken as a true expression of their preferences, or as consent. The data that is collected in the name of ad-tech is used for many things other than to display ads. But most people have zero awareness of that. The true price we are paying is kept hidden from us.

People who would prefer paying with money rather than data are not given the opportunity to express that preference. There is no premium version of YouTube where my viewing history is not tracked. No "AT&T Platinum" subscription where my location history is not sold to third parties.

From my perspective, Apple's behavior indicates that what they want to maximize is their own control, and their position as the gatekeeper others must pay in order to get access to you.