In my book I address precisely this. What I found in my research is that this is a driver in the privacy crisis, but it's a distorted account.
The software industry is enormous. The vast majority of it still delivers traditional value. In automotive, medical, military, civic infrastructure and commodities, space, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, education and much, much more - the majority of working programmers build benevolent utility for a fair days pay without compromising their morals.
The disease is in the smartphone/web ecosystem (I am simply paraphrasing it's creator Sir Tim Berners Lee), and we should not confuse that with the wider project of computing in general.
What is called "Silicon Valley" (The Californian Ethos) in the vernacular, is an aberration. Its culture is disproportionately supposed to operate throughout "tech". Part of this operation, and power, is indeed rooted in it's mythology, and the projection of its ideals, that there is "no alternative" and that the grotesque exploitation of other peoples private lives is somehow a natural, evolutionary condition of networked digital technology. It's insistence that "this is how we pay for free" is victim blaming.
> or simply people's continued computer ignorance.
Yes, but there's more to it than you surmise. The ignorance has overtaken the creators and investors as much as the users ("consumers in a marketplace"). We were long ago swamped in the complexity and uncontrollable churn of our own creations. Not to realise this is to set up a Machiavellian "us and them" schism, to put too much blame on ourselves and users as exploiters and victims respectively. The way out of this to admit that we don't have the first f-king clue what we're doing with technology and haven't for almost 30 years. The tech revolution has never had a telos, and is mostly the product of bored mathematicians creating solutions looking for problems.
To escape that spiral we need a new revolution of digital literacy. Digital Literacy 1.0 was all about discovering what amazing things computers are, and what they can do. Having now explored many the dangerous things computers shouldn't do, Digital Literacy 2.0 will be about figuring out what we really want them for, and why.
> It is remarkable how developers commenting on HN are so willing to speak on behalf of "normies".
Absolutely. I'm sorry that I too fall into that, and using that word. The arrogance is astonishing. Many of us are still stuck in a down-talking mansplaining way of seeing the world and have a good dose of "saviour complex".
> If normies were given a vote how would they exercise it?
The problem I am alluding to in my original (sardonic but hopefully not disparaging to TFA) comment is that right now it's not fair to even invoke the concept of choice. The greatest triumph of SV tech this past couple decades has been creating the illusion of unprecedented choice while stymying it and boiling down the market to a handful of near monopolies. These contradictions run deep. It's there in the distance between Apple's 1984 SuperBowl Ad, and its bid to introduce mandatory client-side content scanning almost 40 years later.
> laws that regulate online advertising and the privacy-invasive practices used to support it.
I am against regulation as a rule. If we're going to have it I see mandated interoperability and a legal support for radical consumer choice as a better way. The most powerful choice people may still have is non-participation.
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