As for legalities. It is a global world. There is no way to enforce this effectively globally. This is a pipe dream.
Also data in some cases must be shared with partners, those might be payment processor, ID checks etc.
Capitalism is about free market trade. You provide something and people choose whether they want to buy it or use it. People add greed qualifier in there so they can frame it as something illicit going on.
The fact still remains that if people cared about their privacy (and there is no evidence they do), they wouldn't use these sites.
Before it was done online. Store cards used to track purchases and spending habits in store in the same way that sites do today (however at a much greater scale) and customers were given vouchers in return.
In much the same way. Almost all the local stores have dissapeared to be replaced by large corps that can provide everything in super stores and in much the same way that is the fault of the consumer by not supporting their local stores.
> For all benefits we yield from it, it's still fair to call it capitalistic greed and notice the ethical failures the market strongly encourages.
No the failing is on us and the users of the site for using these services when we were warned by many people that this would be the case. Pretending otherwise is passing the buck.
But that does not absolve the producer. They are still using ethically questionable methods.
The market doesn’t get to decide the rights and wrongs. It just allocates resources. That we have to do collectively if we want to call ourselves democratic.
That food? Bad. Dead. That tool? Dangerous. Dead. That work on your house? Dangerous. Dead. That car? Unroadworthy. Dead. Those aircraft parts? Counterfeit and not to spec. 300 people dead.
Every single thing humans do is already regulated in some way. Why? Because humans in the end, like all animals, try to achieve the best least effort : highest reward ratio they can.
In the modern world, these regulations need to be extended to automatically cover modern technologies and prevent inherent harm. They shouldn't be overbearing. They shouldn't be pointlessly excessive. But they are required for all things.
Many people think capitalism is greedy because they have literally spent a lifetime experiencing greed fueled capitalism first hand, not because they sit on YouTube watching propaganda videos.
A sort of freedom. Not free from taxes, free from interference. But that's really never the case.
Say you buy something from a store, and you expect their use of your data to follow the terms on the loyalty card. They've got a bunch of commercial-code laws that protect them. You can't pay with counterfeit money, or give yourself a 2-for-1 discount. If you use credit and don't pay, men from the state with the right to use violence come and collect for the store. They're totally legally protected. But how are you protected? Only at the end of a hugely expensive court case in the best outcome, but probably not at all.
The potential risk to the store from you is limited to the cost of goods, the risk to you is almost unbounded. You might lose healthcare coverage, or your boss might buy your data and use the store to link your id to your pornhub usage and fire you. Minimal, limited risk for them, huge unbounded and unprotected risk for you.
But then you discover after buying your gallon of milk, that they (knowingly) sold your data to someone who then sold it to, let's say an insurance company, in direct violation of the words on the back of the card. Now, how do you get made whole?
So, no. I don't actually feel that the free market meets that description for 99% of transactions. Between two citizens over a used lawnmower, yes. Between Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, yes. But between you and the supermarket - not even a little.
Not really. My perception comes from thinking about the market as a dynamic system, and not a static picture described by pro- and anti-market propagandists.
> Capitalism is about free market trade. You provide something and people choose whether they want to buy it or use it.
That's a "motte and bailey" defense. Such a perfect free trade almost doesn't exist, and very few are privileged to partake in it. Market offerings aren't independent - they're in competition, which means a lot of possible products aren't provided, and those that are face competitive pressure to provide less value for more price.
The most important thing to recognize is that the market, as a dynamic system, optimizes for profitable companies. Not for maximizing value these companies deliver to their customers. Usually, providing value is the most straightforward way for profit. But there are other ways - ways to provide no value, or even negative value while still netting additional profit - and the market takes them as much as it can. Vendor lock-in and surveillance are just few ways of making money by providing negative value-add.
> People add greed qualifier in there so they can frame it as something illicit going on.
Not illicit. Immoral. Because after all is said and done, the market is still entirely made of people and their decisions, which get to be evaluated through the lens of ethics.
> The fact still remains that if people cared about their privacy (and there is no evidence they do), they wouldn't use these sites.
They care and they will use them anyway, because the market doesn't provide any other option.
> Store cards used to track purchases and spending habits in store in the same way that sites do today (however at a much greater scale) and customers were given vouchers in return.
In the store. Not across stores. And they gave vouchers back, not shoved extra ads in your face. And that's without touching the qualitative difference between a human clerk doing the surveillance and automated systems doing the same.
> Pretending otherwise is passing the buck.
I hate to invoke the concept of "victim blaming", because it's usually invoked very unreasonably, but - you can't expect individuals to be able to rationally make market decisions while working their asses off trying to make ends meet, having their attention DDoSed, and facing against compounding improvements in manipulation techniques (courtesy of the market). I'm willing to cut regular folks some slack, and instead focus on the people running these companies, who had a clear choice, and chose to engage in abusive practices. You don't impulse-adopt business models, so you can't excuse it as a moment of weakness either.
(But then I'm willing to cut these business folks some slack too; in many cases, it's the market pressures that force to choose the abusive option - which leads us back to my original point: the market is a capitalist greed optimization engine. It promotes business people who think that, much like your margin, your ethics are their opportunity.)
