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If the thing you’re making wouldn’t exist if people had to opt in instead of having to opt out, maybe the thing you’re making shouldn’t exist.
@aral I disagree. There are many cases where obtaining the consent of a extremely large number of individuals for something seemingly trivial is impractical (e.g. web indexing, the internet archive). The problem that people have had recently with tracking cookies and AI trained on public data is that there's no perceived benefit for them so they would never consent if asked.
@chucker @aral no, my conclusion is that it's not that simple. You could use the same #humanrights hashtag to argue donating your organs after you die has to be opt-in, but you'd have a lot more organs to save a lot more people if it was opt-out.
@chucker @aral Also, I don't want to sound elitist, but you can't make generalizations assuming every person will be capable of making an informed decision, because, iirc, a large % of the population literally lacks the level of LITERACY required to read about complex things and come to an informed decision. If you assume most will be uninformed or uncaring, then the default no matter which way will be the prevalent option, and so it becomes a question of utilitarianism vs. individual rights.
@chucker @aral about the cookie thing, for example, it's easy to spread scaremongering about cookies for average web users. Doesn't take a lot to understand that. What's complex to understand, and most people won't bother to even think about, is what happens when all those ad-supported websites can't get enough revenue without personalized ads. The indirect consequences of opt-in cookies may be way worse for the health of the web than opt-out cookies but it's too late to talk about it now.
@lazyq2 Bloody hell, dude, can you please stop explaining the status quo to me? It’s not that I don’t know it. It’s that I don’t agree with it.
Yes, you’re right, the people who do the horrible things they do to make money today have their reasons. I neither agree with nor care for them. Nor is it my job to fix their shitty business models. In fact, I don’t even think their shitty businesses should exist.
So for the love of fuck, please go away.
@aral as opposed to... what you think is best? It has to be what SOMEONE thinks is best. There has to be a default. Saying you have to opt-in to everything would be just saying opt-in is always best. I disagree. In my opinion this opt-in to everything comes from a way of thinking that every interaction is transactional between two actors (hence why it's popular in privacy focused circles) instead of you existing as part of a larger ecosystem where your contribution by default is assumed.
@lazyq2 the default is to not do something someone didn’t consent to, whether that’s adding their data to an index, using cookies to collect PII or harvesting organs.
@chucker I've never consented, never signed a contract, saying I'd abide by the laws of my country, and yet I'm subject to them, because I live in a society. Why would the web not have its own set of norms that participants are implicitly opted into? When you publish a book it's implicit that archivers may keep a copy in a library for eternity, but somehow when it's a public webpage you need consent for that? You walk into a shop and you're casually filmed, but on a webpage you need consent?
>You walk into a shop and you're casually filmed
I don’t know about where you live, but where I do, it’s mandatory that a shop has a sign at the front if they film you. Therefore, you get to make an informed choice.
@chucker when you don't have the option to opt-out and every service requires it, it's not a matter of consent anymore, and yet nobody is arguing that if your business requires filming your customers you should be out of business.