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Comment by idlewords | Hacker News Reader

This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving.

It's a little easier to stop visiting a website than it is to stop driving a car in US.

I wonder though! If you were to give every American today an ultimatum that they had to either (1) never drive a car again or (2) never use the internet again, what percentage would take each side of the deal?

Well, Uber uses the Internet to communicate. I know which one would be more useful overall to me.

I think not using a few websites who use scummy ad practices (of which there are sometimes ethically reasonable alternatives, like this site) is a lot easier than never driving again, though.

But websites are on the internet, they're not the internet.

Yes, thank you for using your Gopher client to post this highly relevant and on-topic comment that none of us had already known since forever.

Is it? There are numerous US cities where you can live comfortably without owning a car. Living without using the big five is all but impossible in part because you never know what they're doing behind the scenes.

For some, maybe. But not at all for me. I'd argue internet has greatly reduced if not almost eliminated need for driving car for many people. I could get by without car for week. Not having internet for same period much less so.

All my finances, banks, retirement, taxes, budgeting etc is online. most of my work (email, googling, tools) is only possible online, 90+ percent of my entertainment and social media is online. My maps, calendar, appointments, education, finding things out such as court houses address or phone number of restaurant is online. Much of my medical (presprections, appoint schedule, doctor/nurse correspondence) is online. Most of my shopping is on line.

The choice wouldn't be using the internet vs driving a car. The entire internet isn't using these tracking scripts. Boycotting websites for their tracking behavior is way easier than giving up a car.

> This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving.

If there were a real change in driving habits that the providers could trace to the presence of lead in gasoline, don't you think they would have taken it out?

No.

Just let them think GDPR is enforceable across the ocean.

Techcrunch has events in the EU (e.g. Disrupt Berlin).

In the 1950s was leaded gasoline illegal across a continent worth about 20% of gross world product?

Idlewords is arguing for legally enforced privacy rights, rather than consumer-led boycotts (or worse, non-organized individual picking and choosing of which privacy violations to tolerate).

> Idlewords is arguing for legally enforced privacy rights, rather than consumer-led boycotts (or worse, non-organized individual picking and choosing of which privacy violations to tolerate).

The context seems consistent with that being the intended thrust of the argument, but its literal wording (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19962410):

> This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving.

seems to claim, not just that enforced regulations rather than consumer-led boycotts were the right way to address the issue of leaded gasoline, but that boycotts wouldn't have worked.

If your gloss is the correct one, then I find the argument much more plausible than a literal reading suggests.

Thanks, I genuinely wasn’t able to see that interpretation until I saw this, and instead took it in the literal sense you’re giving here.

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