[jcgrillo]

You can't actually push back as an IC. Tech companies aren't structured that way. There's no employment protection of any kind, at least in the US. So the most you can do is protest and resign, or protest and be fired. Either way, it'll cost you your job. I've paid that price and it's steep. There's no viable "grassroots" solution to the problem, it needs to come from regulation. Managers need to serve time in prison, and companies need to be served meaningfully damaging fines. That's the only way anything will get done.

[philipallstar]

> There's no viable "grassroots" solution to the problem

Does something like running the duckduckgo extension not help?

[jll29]

I'm hoping the Ladybird project's new Web browser (alpha release expected in August) will solve some issues resulting from big tech controlling most browers.

[philipallstar]

Yes, that might be good. I use Firefox with the dog plugin, and Proton login aliases, and hope for the best.

[worik]

> There's no viable "grassroots" solution to the problem, it needs to come from regulation. Managers need to serve time in prison,

No, yes

Yes, giving these people short (or long, mēh) prison sentences is the only thing that will stop this.

No, the obvious grassroots response is to not use LinkedIn or Chrome. (You mean developers not consumers, I think. The developers in the trenches should obey if they need their jobs, they are not to blame. It is the evil swine getting the big money and writing the big cheque's...)

[jcgrillo]

Yes, what I meant was there's no way ICs will change any of this. Using this or that extension, or choosing not to use some service won't really change anything either. The popular appetite just isn't there. Personally I use a variety of adblockers and haven't had a linkedin or anything for many years, but I fully accept that's an extremist position and most consumers will not behave that way. The only way these companies' behavior will improve is when they are meaningfully, painfully punished for it. There's very little we as consumers or ICs can do until then. Unless of course their risk management fails and they alienate a sufficiently large number of users that it becomes "uncool" to use the product. But all we need to do is look to twitter to see just how bad it'll get before then...

[worik]

> The popular appetite just isn't there.

Cory Doctorow, if he is to believed, states 50% of web users use ad blockers. So maybe?

[jcgrillo]

That's really interesting, I had no idea it was so prevalent.