10+ years ago you were considered a lunatic if you told people that putting internet-connected cameras and microphones everywhere is a bad idea because their TV would be used to spy on them, that their cameras would be accessed by the police without their consent for surveillance, or that car company employees would watch them walk around naked through the cameras on their car.
Any data on that? Because to me it sounds like “because they are sometimes true, we should assume they are always true”
But I’m open to data.
The only anecdata I can give is "look around you", how all major (and many smaller) companies are implementing invasive spying tech into their products, harvesting our personal information, selling it, or abusing it any way they can. They sell the products as one thing then shaft their customers and change the terms overnight at their earliest convenience.
What you call "a conspiracy theory" is just "following clear market incentives". There's a clear motive for doing everything with a clear track record of doing so in the past.
If someone made a derivative financial product that roughly equated to the prediction "Big tech will use any means to expand their access, to invade and abuse our privacy, and generally be willing to do anything in pursuit of profit" I would be willing to invest my life savings into it.
Superstition in pigeons: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1948-04299-001
Interest groups and politicians DO conspire.
Governments DO conspire.
Big corporations DO conspire.
When you have the mix of everything above, they definitely conspire.
“Theory” part is only about finding out WHAT the actual conspiracy is. That can be reasonable, or outlandish, facts based or fantasy.
Are you capable of identifying dystopian movements the single moves of which get justified as "for people's good"?