If you’re a developer in 2021 and you’re adding tracking devices from Google, Facebook, etc., to your sites and apps, the one thing you can’t do any longer is to feign innocence. You know exactly what you’re doing and you’re complicit in perpetuating surveillance capitalism.
@aral
> Surveillance Capitalism
I hadn't heard that term before, but it's the perfect word to describe the business model of Google and Facebook
@Christian @aral Read the book. It will freak you out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism
@aproposnix @Christian The place where we differ with Shoshana (she coined the term) is that while she sees it as a corruption of capitalism, I see it as the natural evolution of capitalism in the digital and networked age.
@aral @aproposnix
"Corruption of capitalism"? Yup, I think that's redundant lol
@aral @aproposnix @Christian 》the natural evolution of capitalism《, if not the nature and essence of capitalism. That's how I would put it.
@aral I am at a webinar now, they are talking about developing skills, some are based around data collection, data analytics, allowing a business to improve their service. I don't have the heart to give them the news that for me that is zero effective and that I block facecrap, block google anaytics
We do need to develop an alternative privacy focussed education solution.
Business needs to be on the fediverse but on our terms.
@zleap @aral "We do need to develop an alternative privacy focussed education solution." do you mean like Moodle? https://moodle.org/
@aproposnix @zleap @aral got 5 trackers blocked on moodle (when Im just using a lame blocker such as Brave Browser) — and looks like you need to pay 150-2000 $ / year for the service. Far from a FOSS spirit I guess
I wonder if / what trackers are installed on individual installs then..
@aproposnix @diarra @aral yeah,
I think this is the issue we will have as trackers = ads = revenue for developers. Not a model we like but they still need to eat.
@aproposnix @diarra yes but it is not a good advert if people are picking up trackers,
@aral One question. No offense. Just want to understand your thoughts.
You always complain about FLOSS conferences and stuff being funded by Google, Facebook etc. I see this with pain, too. You are using Let's Encrypt for your website, which is / was funded by Google. Where do you draw the line between acceptable or not?
@marco I will happily use their stuff if it doesn’t come with strings attached. What I won’t do is legitimise them. A privacy conference sponsored by Google legitimises Google on privacy just as a conference on healthy living sponsored by Philip Morris would legitimise them or a conference on environmentalism sponsored by ExxonMobil would legitimise them. I draw the line at not taking money from and legitimising surveillance capitalists.
@aral hard agree.
@aral I generally agree, but some caveats:
If you're an innocent/beginning Android developer, it is very easy to have Android Studio "helpfully" include all kinds of tracking and nonfree libraries.
You just want a website. Let's take Hugo for example. A fast static site generator; what could possibly go wrong?
Except that the official "themes" page you're shunted towards has tons of themes which include google tracking and may not even work without javascript. They are not marked in any way.
@Coffee Yeah. And add to that the deafening silence or outright complicity of experienced devs, dev evangelists, etc., and what’s pushed by educators, etc., and yes… that’s what happens when the mainstream is surveillance capitalism.
@aral I have begun deciding that parsed server logs using something like GoAccess is enough for most peoples needs.