I do not fundamentally disagree with you but it's also an extremely well known phenomenon that average non tech users, in the aggregate of millions of people, will click almost any "yes/I agree/continue/Next" step on a software installer or new user sign up workflow for anything, without reading the ToS. People blithly sign up for all sorts of cloud based things and services without understanding their full ramifications all the time.
I also wonder at the specific level of aggression and the tone of your comment which does not seem to be an appropriate response to that person's specific comment.
People such as you are describing and rightfully criticizing are knowingly taking advantage of that. Indeed it's how a lot of malware gets installed too.
The person you're responding to is pointing out that a lot of people at the surface level do only appear to care about the results. They put something into google translate, it works, they gets results they are pleased with, they don't put a lot of thought into the fact that the data is going to an external service. That's not an inaccurate description of how a lot of people use their computers these days. Look at how many people signed up for ChatGPT accounts and put the chatgpt app on their phones and talk to it all the time. That's the level of critical thinking a lot of non tech users have about their personal data.
The fact that people will click yes/agree/OK on almost anything is how Windows computers got Bonzi Buddy installed on them back in the day, and now it's continued into the cloud-everything era.
> it's also an extremely well known phenomenon that average non tech users, in the aggregate of millions of people, will click almost any "yes/I agree/continue/Next" step on a software installer or new user sign up workflow for anything, without reading the ToS. People blithly sign up for all sorts of cloud based things and services without understanding their full ramifications all the time.
I would put a lot of that down to learned helplessness.
A lot of non-tech people tell me that "they already know" and that it is impossible to avoid. I have been told I am naive to think its possible to keep data private.
It's almost as if outside the tech bubbles most people don't understand the tech or implications. HN posters who live and breath in this space are so smug to pretend this esoteric knowledge about networking identifiers or fingerprinting is simple and that anyone can get it. These are the same people who will throw their hands up on any other esoteric topic and give up on it equally. For example, tech people so easily decry how "stupid" the law and legal jurisprudence is (because obviously if they don't understand it, it must be bullshit) but see zero irony in being smug pretentious assholes to regular people who didn't happen to major in computer science.
We shouldn't all have to be PhDs in law and jurisprudence to trust a legal system to look after our interests just like we shouldn't all have to be computer scientists to trust that technical stewards are not exploiting people's lack of knowledge.
Sick of this mentality. Oh these people are sheep idiots who don't understand the EULA euphemisms of "improved user experience " means adtech and behavioural tracking.
and at least one more in another thread today. This is not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for. You may not owe Mozilla better, but you owe HN better if you want to participate here. This is only a place where people want to participate becuase enough people make the effort to raise the standards rather than drag them down. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That's a lot of words and assumptions, when a single check of my posting history would show that I despise the HN bros as well. Jumping on a tangent about libertarianism when you could have simply called them retarded and saved a lot of time.
Anyways, no, I'm talking about the average person, the public worker, the person that thinks the internet is the funnily named Safari app, the elderly: they give zero fucks about it going to some service online. They used to search for Google translate before, whether or not it goes on someone's server, they do. not. care. You're not going to win them over with "it runs on your device". Their device is a crappy laptop that barely runs excel, and if they can offload computing, they will.
Whoa - you can't attack other users like this on HN, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
We ban accounts that post like this, as you surely know. We don't want to ban you, so please don't post like this!
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I do not fundamentally disagree with you but it's also an extremely well known phenomenon that average non tech users, in the aggregate of millions of people, will click almost any "yes/I agree/continue/Next" step on a software installer or new user sign up workflow for anything, without reading the ToS. People blithly sign up for all sorts of cloud based things and services without understanding their full ramifications all the time.
I also wonder at the specific level of aggression and the tone of your comment which does not seem to be an appropriate response to that person's specific comment.
People such as you are describing and rightfully criticizing are knowingly taking advantage of that. Indeed it's how a lot of malware gets installed too.
The person you're responding to is pointing out that a lot of people at the surface level do only appear to care about the results. They put something into google translate, it works, they gets results they are pleased with, they don't put a lot of thought into the fact that the data is going to an external service. That's not an inaccurate description of how a lot of people use their computers these days. Look at how many people signed up for ChatGPT accounts and put the chatgpt app on their phones and talk to it all the time. That's the level of critical thinking a lot of non tech users have about their personal data.
The fact that people will click yes/agree/OK on almost anything is how Windows computers got Bonzi Buddy installed on them back in the day, and now it's continued into the cloud-everything era.
https://geekhack.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=21140.0...
> it's also an extremely well known phenomenon that average non tech users, in the aggregate of millions of people, will click almost any "yes/I agree/continue/Next" step on a software installer or new user sign up workflow for anything, without reading the ToS. People blithly sign up for all sorts of cloud based things and services without understanding their full ramifications all the time.
I would put a lot of that down to learned helplessness.
A lot of non-tech people tell me that "they already know" and that it is impossible to avoid. I have been told I am naive to think its possible to keep data private.
It's almost as if outside the tech bubbles most people don't understand the tech or implications. HN posters who live and breath in this space are so smug to pretend this esoteric knowledge about networking identifiers or fingerprinting is simple and that anyone can get it. These are the same people who will throw their hands up on any other esoteric topic and give up on it equally. For example, tech people so easily decry how "stupid" the law and legal jurisprudence is (because obviously if they don't understand it, it must be bullshit) but see zero irony in being smug pretentious assholes to regular people who didn't happen to major in computer science.
We shouldn't all have to be PhDs in law and jurisprudence to trust a legal system to look after our interests just like we shouldn't all have to be computer scientists to trust that technical stewards are not exploiting people's lack of knowledge.
Sick of this mentality. Oh these people are sheep idiots who don't understand the EULA euphemisms of "improved user experience " means adtech and behavioural tracking.
I think youre right. The least techy people I know where the first to ditch Mozilla when they started to see ads in Firefox.
Can you please not go on enraged tirades on HN? You've posted several fulminatory comments in this thread alone:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49729021
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49728539
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49728246
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49728175
and at least one more in another thread today. This is not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for. You may not owe Mozilla better, but you owe HN better if you want to participate here. This is only a place where people want to participate becuase enough people make the effort to raise the standards rather than drag them down. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I love this site
PREACH
That's a lot of words and assumptions, when a single check of my posting history would show that I despise the HN bros as well. Jumping on a tangent about libertarianism when you could have simply called them retarded and saved a lot of time.
Anyways, no, I'm talking about the average person, the public worker, the person that thinks the internet is the funnily named Safari app, the elderly: they give zero fucks about it going to some service online. They used to search for Google translate before, whether or not it goes on someone's server, they do. not. care. You're not going to win them over with "it runs on your device". Their device is a crappy laptop that barely runs excel, and if they can offload computing, they will.