alt Hacker News>I keep trying to explain to people that private companies harvesting your data, while not good, is done solely for the purpose of trying to get you to voluntarily buy more toilet bowl cleaner.
I keep trying to explain to people that any data companies harvest, for whatever purpose, can then be accessed by the government, and that trying to draw distinctions in what is a big massive ouroboros is irrelevant.
Even if you trust the company AND trust the government, the data exists forever, and no one can trust all future governments and all future corporations.
The root issue is still government having absurdly asymmetric power over you.
If the government weren't legally able to use the toilet bowl cleaner companies data against you, it wouldn't matter.
The problem is us giving governments the right to use this data against us (passports to access the internet, messages being under constant surveillance, etc.)
In Europe we're happily handing over our rights every day so that governments have more power over us (supposedly to "protect" us from the big bad evil American tech companies).
Except, Google just wants to make $100/yr off me instead of $50/yr by me voluntarily choosing to use them.
Meanwhile, EU governments want to literally control what I think and feel and do, and take out $100,000 in debt on the backs of each of my children (we're at 115% debt-to-GDP in France) to fund this nightmare surveillance state.