[thmsths]

And of course "just avoid these services" is going to be difficult or near impossible. Convincing your friends, families, acquaintances to ditch zoom is hard enough. But what do you do when you get a zoom link for a job interview? Tell them you object to using zoom and basically cost yourself the job? Or do you only use it when you really have to? In which case, how many interactions do they need from you to collect all the data they need?

[doodaddy]

It seems like no one else is bothered by the fact that more and more we are being forced to interact with third party companies - companies with which the consumer has no direct relationship - as a precondition for doing things in daily life.

To eat at a restaurant you give a phone number and suddenly have an account with Resy. Renting an apartment means signing up for a service to access the move-in documents and then another to unlock the door.

These services rarely benefit the consumer. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much. Maybe it’s the erosion of agency. Maybe it’s the over-complicating of what should be a simple activity. But it’s becoming more frequent.

[suburban_strike]

It's up there with being forced to install random extensions to view any website. You trust the endpoint, not arbitrary middlemen they decide to bring into the transaction.

You don't need to look far to find a reason to abhor this. If you have a need to verify your identity on Twitter, you're handing your personal information to an Israeli firm (AU10TIX) beyond all accountability and reach of western justice systems.

[Gud]

I don’t trust the endpoint.

[sharts]

That’s always been the case with how supply chains work.

[52-6F-62]

It's already happening with AI interview tools. Some of them have god-awful privacy policies that, depending on the interpretation, allow them to retain and use your likeness and voice for training their models or even marketing purposes.

The move is to review those polices, and decline.

It's actively hostile.

It should be treated as such.

The pain of declining on the privacy or personal rights grounds is intentional on their part. They do not respond to inquiries. And in my experience, companies that just use those tools decline to answer inquiries about it.