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But the goal of that optimization is not to make your life better, it's to make money for them. They may be pretty bad at it now, but one thing about technology is that it gets better and better, and their goal is to encourage consumption of their product. I'm thinking about buying a new laptop right now. I'm trying to make a smart choice, weighing the funds I have available, my need for it, the options available, my preferences for various brands and features, and my own desire to have new shiny stuff. The advertisers can distort this rational decision. Right now they just have a poorly-targeted generic bit of text that I don't really read in the sidebar of certain websites, and I feel comfortable with this level of influence. If they were super-persuasive at selling their product to me Present Me would consider that theft. Future Me would probably be grateful to the advertiser, and that's terrifying. A Self-Driving, Self-Selling Tesla might show up at my door, perform an inspection of my current car, and, in its silky voice, deliver an irrefutable argument why I must never get in that car again and should instead hop in for a free ride across state lines so I can take out a home equity loan and cash in my 401k to buy it. Yikes! The optimistic side of this is that maybe they'll eventually move beyond market research and on to individual research to give us stuff that we actually want. "Oh, LeifCarrotson is filtering out our 1366x768 TN panels, doesn't seem to care about thickness, has recently read about the Samsung 960 Pro? Let's build him one with a big 9-cell battery and longer travel keyboard, a good screen, and one of those SSDs. And he seems to be running Linux? Let's swap our default touchpad for one with an open driver, and donate a few percent of the profits to the EFF, that's sure to make him happy." |
I don't pay to use services online. They somehow have to make money. Until we start donating/paying for each service we use, we have to expect that people will make money otherwise.