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by takluyver 4929 days ago
I'd like to see people become more aware of this sort of risk, but I don't think that slogan will take off outside geeky circles, and I don't think we want it to.

There are companies which - by most people's standards - quite reasonably make money from free services. Telling people that they're all stupid sheep for using Google isn't going to get much traction. We need to highlight real problems, like this move by Instagram.

Lots of us also work on open source software, in which case telling people not to trust anything that's free is shooting ourselves in the foot. I don't pay for Linux, Libreoffice or Firefox, but I'm not 'the product' there.

1 comments

It's not really calling them stupid sheep, but rather a reminder that they are interacting with businesses and they should pause to think about the business model when they do that. It's really about educating, not name-calling.