[eue6e6ey]

Just because people don't understand all the technical details doesn't mean they are sufficiently ignorant to cash in on power words like consent. While I realize it's shortsighted reasoning, it's incredibly common to hear some variant of "x already knows everything about me so who cares" or "my stuff's already in the cloud, I bet x could get to it if it mattered". People in the mainstream are /already/ assuming the worst case scenario, they just don't care as much as we think they should and the only reason the Europeans do is because they're not the ones running the services so the power balance is different.

[some_random]

I don't really want to go through a whole sex analogy for consent, but suffice to say that "they consented once at the very beginning without an actual understanding of what was going to happen but it's fine because they're already assuming the worst case scenario" would get one thrown in jail.

[AnthonyMouse]

> People in the mainstream are /already/ assuming the worst case scenario

People in the mainstream don't understand what the worse case scenario is.

They give up their information and don't see any obvious consequences because they don't understand what the consequences actually are. The data gets used for things like price discrimination, which you're not even aware is happening, but then that "free" service ends up costing you $250/month.

Partisans spend all day calling one another fascists and communists, never thinking what would happen with the data in these companies if a government at the level of totalitarianism that existed in actual reality during the 20th century came to power in the 21st.

[nitrogen]

what would happen with the data in these companies if a government at the level of totalitarianism that existed in actual reality during the 20th century came to power in the 21st.

The past year should give everyone pause in this regard, no matter which side (or no side) you are on.

[rendall]

> the only reason the Europeans do is because they're not the ones running the services so the power balance is different.

My experience as an American having lived in Europe now for over 7 years is that Europeans (in general, particularly in the Nordic region) have a profoundly different relationship to their governments than US citizens do to ours. The will to protect individual users' data and privacy as expressed in the GDPR for instance is a sincere expression of European values, and would be as in effect if "the power balance" were tilted towards European companies. I know European companies who avoid Google services and all American companies to hold important data, as but one example