Absolutely.
Note that the debate is now framed around the degree of advertising or the degree of tracking that comes with their paid subscription, and the entire conversation is about whether a service is reasonable in their fee and business practices.
The entire landscape of conversation has been profoundly shifted from whether we should even allow this kind of tracking in the first place to how and what degree of tracking are we allowing.
We didn’t need any of this when Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent ruled — and it was pretty damn efficient at digital entertainment distribution. People forget, all of these services launched to unseat that system because it was kicking so much ass. It’s not like we need streaming services — these are designed replacements for non-tracking systems.
There is absolutely no reason a copyrighted entertainment system has to become streaming or come with truly VAST troves of data collection that gets sold en mass to every third party imaginable with no transparency. The technologies exist to do this in so many other ways.
Yet, that point is rarely discussed anymore — the entire debate has been quietly reframed to a question of degrees.
Now, to suggest that such a system isn’t necessary or even good elicits nothing but “it’s not a problem if you pay for an account,” and “it’s not like any other services are better about it.” The entire landscape has moved.
There is a notable shift from individual consumption through direct ownership and the general assumption of the rights of ownership to individual leasing with intensive surveillance by proxy for the exchange or consumption of what I can only refer to as “entertainment commodities.”
It’s rather insidious.
Remember Winston’s lesson: The large mass of common people do not find in themselves the need to think independently, to question or to investigate what they have been taught.
And then consider that the most powerful tool in the arsenal of power to influence humanity has convinced everyone that in order for them to be entertained they need to submit to constant surveillance and tracking in their living rooms and on their mobile devices everywhere they go. Social and streaming are the coin that is offered for this contract.
It’s very literally big brother. And the debate has been reduced to what you will pay for the privilege of watching the latest Game of Thrones episode or whatever.
It’s just becoming so conditioned that it’s becoming invisible to people.
If this sounds conspiratorial, it’s not. It’s just a statement of the value proposition that’s being offered by these platforms and what they are trading for it. And people seem to be willing to foist over every last tidbit of information about themselves to be entertained.
It’s the way that things are shifting in the debate — the classic reframing of the debate to degrees of surveillance capitalism — which is challenging.
“Simply paying for an account” is actually opting in to a massive surveillance system that has deep implications to the future of society and the AI future we are headed towards. Read the EULA on one of those streaming services sometime, and then go look at what the data brokers have on you (and yes, they have PII they just can’t sell it, but state actors can access it).
It’s interesting to me to see how the frog in the pot is getting boiled — it sounds fringe and makes me uncomfortable to even write this response because I feel like such an outside in raising these points these days.
Forgive the long response. Just trying to give you a substantive answer, and certainly not trying to be aggressive in doing so so forgive.