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Comment by senordevnyc | Hacker News Reader

Did you consent to every other feature of macOS, the many thousands of them?

This has nothing to do with consent. A product you use is going in a different direction than your personal preference. Nothing new here.

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No it’s the attitude of “I don’t know why you don’t want it” and “just deal with it” and “learn to love it” and all the other things they say to accept technology. There’s no reason to force a multi gig file on someone’s computer when it’s a purely optional feature.

Plus there was a way to disable it easily, now it’s gone. That _is_ a consent issue.

Intentionally eliminating a choice that they used to provide that many people would still like the ability to choose is not a new phenomenon, you're correct. That doesn't make it any less user hostile when it happens though, and I think plenty of people don't think "well plenty of other sucky things happen in similar ways" to be a good reason not to be upset when a new unnecessary sucky thing happens.

I agree, but labeling it a "consent" issue is completely stupid imo.

My instinct is that the use of the word "consent" is getting used a bit more aggressively lately with regards to AI features because of how pervasive they've become despite very often not having much user desire for them. It's certainly possible for someone object to something in a way that's worse than the thing they're unhappy about, but this doesn't seem anywhere close to that level IMO.

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