Notices by Lazy Q (lazyq2@mastodon.social)

@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 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.