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Comment by F3nd0 | Hacker News Reader

Since the whole idea of ‘opt in’ is choosing to do something, the only reasonable interpretation of ‘opt in by default’ is that the default state requires you to make the choice yourself. However I try to bend my brain, sing the term ‘opt in’ for the exact opposite makes no sense whatsoever.

Note that I’m not using English grammar as my argument; human language (and English especially) has plenty of exceptions and expressions which make little sense, and if people were to adopt this phrasing en masse, it would naturally become a part of the language, whether it makes sense or not. My argument is that adopting this phrasing is a terrible, user-hostile decision and in my honest opinion we really, really, really ought to avoid it.

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I read it as though he was trying to say '[you are] opt[ed] in by default'.

Now granted, he did not say that, and I only reached that conclusion by the rest of this conversation, but I think to have meant that and said '... was now also opt-in by default...' isn't unreasonable.

Just sharing since you mentioned you couldn't see how using that term for the opposite would make sense.

Even read this way, it doesn't make logical sense. It's a great example of newspeak - corporations know people use "opt-in" as a purchasing signal, so they're trying to redefine the word by abusing it enough times.

"Opting someone else in" is essentially the same category of error as "consenting for someone else". People can only consent for others in specific circumstances and even then only for specific people (e.g. legal guardians), trying to argue "but I consented for them!" in front of a judge usually ain't gonna work.

Thank you. However, assuming you mean ‘an affirmative choice is made for you’ when you say ’you are opted in’, that use really takes the ‘opt’ out of the ’opt-in’. You can opt in, but you can’t have someone else ‘opt you in’ for you; that seems to go against the very core meaning of ‘opt-in’ (i.e. having to explicitly choose something yourself).

In other words, you can explicitly choose something by yourself, but if other people (in this case companies, service providers) choose something for you, it’s no longer your explicit decision made by yourself. Hence why I believe we can’t consider that ‘opting in’.

Here's the dictionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/opt-in

> The property of having to choose *explicitly* to join or permit something; a decision having the *default option being exclusion or avoidance*; used particularly with regard to mailing lists and advertising.

You're just using the term wrong. That's okay, I've used words wrong before, and it just means you've been presented an opportunity for learning a new fact.

But there's no argument to be had except with the dictionary.

My use seems to be perfectly in line with the given dictionary definition, though? Did you perhaps mean to address a different comment?

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