What Google’s multibillion payment to Apple says about privacy and power in tech
By Zeynep Tufekci
Companies expect users to accept what they’re given, not know their options or not have the constant vigilance required to keep track of the available options, however limited they may be. Since the power in the industry is concentrated among few gatekeepers, and the technology is opaque and its consequences hard to foresee, default settings are some of the most important ways for companies to keep collecting and using data as they want.
So, how much are default settings worth? Billions and billions and billions...
Even when you might think you know what your default settings are, you can be surprised. On more than one occasion I discovered that my privacy settings had changed from what I thought they were. Help forums are full of similarly befuddled users. Sometimes it’s a bug. Other times, when I dug into it, I realized that another change I had made had surreptitiously switched me back into tracking. Sometimes I learned that there was yet another setting somewhere else that also needed to be changed.
For the whole article:
https://www.twincities.com/2023/11/2...power-in-tech/
https://www.communicationstoday.co.i...and-antitrust/
https://dnyuz.com/2023/11/20/this-is...ingle-setting/