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Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

How much does that matter? Like, if you had to choose between being old and lonely or being old with a digital friend and some megacorp having more of your data... Which would you choose?

I notice a lot of people who use the phrase "selling your data" seem to think that you can't actually sell your data. As in, it's not a good choice to say "I want this service and am willing to share my data to get it."

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You may be underestimating the power of a $500bn corporation (small nation scale) with access to personal secrets of millions as machine learning gets ever more powerful, the same corporation who is trying to be the arbiter of everyones friendships. A corporation that lives in a regulatory capture environment. It is black mirror at that stage, just without the more interesting stories they have on that series.

But like anything your individual opt in doesn’t matter, similar to how your vote probably doesn’t make a difference. In aggregate it does.

Companies like Facebook and Google can provide the government agencies unfettered access to anyones information, and pedos and terrorists etc. will be used to justify it. Guess they can now also say “suspected Russian nukes” and tap anyone.

This is a false dichotomy. We can have - and should fight for - digital services that don’t siphon our personal info for other purposes.

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