I sometimes think that no one cares about online privacy, which makes me really sad, then I read this from @pluralistic - good to know!
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

So maybe people DO care, but just feel like they can't do much about it?

#surveillancecapitalism #dataprivacy #datarape #tracking

Pluralistic: The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it (07 Aug 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

@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...

@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.

@nyrath @axby @patrickleavy @pluralistic my grandfather did that! He had the first TV in their neighborhood and added the switch, and ran the wires under the living room rug. This would have been in the 50s.
@ajh @nyrath @axby @pluralistic I used to think such a switch would be possible, and automated because the volume levels for ads is higher than TV programmes...
But I had no tech skills so didn't make it 😂