I sometimes think that no one cares about online privacy, which makes me really sad, then I read this from @pluralistic - good to know!
So maybe people DO care, but just feel like they can't do much about it?
@patrickleavy @pluralistic from conversations I've had it's definitely a lot of feeling helpless that your privacy will be ignored regardless so might as well go along
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@patrickleavy @pluralistic I enjoyed this article, and I didn't know this and found it interesting:
> ... the advertising industry has been repeating since the days when it was waging a massive campaign against the TV remote on the grounds that people would "steal" TV by changing the channel when the ads came on.
I'm not very familiar with life before cable TV, but it seems especially offensive since cable TV is both paid and has a ton of ads. I hope this was at least before paid TV...
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@axby @patrickleavy @pluralistic
When I was a little boy, in the 1960s, an issue of MAD magazine showed how to splice an on-off switch on a long wire to the feed to your TV speaker. DIY ad mute button.
The article mentioned how smug you'll feel defeating a TV ad that took millions of dollars to make with a 15 cent switch.
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@nyrath @axby @patrickleavy @pluralistic My dad built his own Heathkit valve-based (vacuum tubes) TV and later hooked up a 'commercial killer' switch. My mother's sister complained during one visit that this was antithetical to the American way, and that we should be listening to the advertisements because they were paying for the shows. The brainwashing runs deep.
@mtconleyuk @nyrath @axby @patrickleavy @pluralistic
I believe it's no coincidence that the mute button is the only remote control function that is not reliably propagated through my HDMI setup. The TV will sometimes just show the flashing mute symbol, but the sound bar doesn't actually mute.
@patrickleavy@pluralistic Wasn't Apple collecting that information themselves behind the scenes regardless of the setting?
Your point still stands though.
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