[Catsandkites]

I would happily pay for all of the services I use. The problem is that that isn't enough for them and it would still be an capitalistic greed anti-consumer shit show.

If I pay I want: No ads, no tracking, full access to my own data in sane export formats, schemas, no data mining, no data selling, no "sharing data with our partners", encryption options, no dumb hoops, no dark patterns, the ability to point a product at an API endpoint of my choosing, backup options that default to my infrastructure first and so on.

Actually let's add more: The data generated by my use of my data in the product. Non-canned support responses that don't ask for information I literally put in the ticket three weeks ago. Prominent indication of where (geographically and legally) data is stored and used. If/how often you do backups. If/how often you practice disaster recovery.

So really what I want to pay for is sanity and no bullshit.

Yet if I do pay, many services and companies will still do all of this shit in the background until midnight the day it's finally made illegal, all the while gaslighting me about "how much they value me as a customer" and how they "respect" our "relationship".

It's literally obscene.

[est31]

Yeah if you pay then they'll have strong identities linked to the accounts in addition to the tracking. Free services that can be accessed without a log in on the other hand have to correlate all the data. They are quite good at it, but not perfect.

[jhrmnn]

That’s not different from pre-Internet era, though. Subscriptions were never anonymous.

[Xelbair]

Without regulation that won't ever happen.

Because you, a paying customer, are worth the most to the advertisers.

[dtech]

I never buy this argument. If this were true, why aren't Tesla cars, Apple computers, Rolexes and other premium products plastered full of adverts?...

[scrollaway]

Good Lord. That wishlist.

If only...

Maybe one day these things will be standard. We have to convince the mainstream these are goals worth pursuing... As long as most people accept how shit the status quo is, it won't improve.

[TeMPOraL]

The game is rigged, though. Mainstream is not in a position to say anything against the kind of crap modern technology is full of - and those who speak up anyway get labeled as "whiny".

FWIW, I also share the GP's wishlist 100%. But we're a niche in our own industry these days. I'm not having hopes the market will deliver - on the contrary, all these points are things for unscrupulous vendors to control to extract more profit.

[lol768]

> Maybe one day these things will be standard

Many of these things already are standard for EU data subjects.

[pydry]

There needs to be some sort of institution that can verify these claims that these companies can use.

The reason all of these things happen is because it's easy to slip into them in a tight financial spot and there's usually no instantaneous backlash.

[ardacinar]

> There needs to be some sort of institution that can verify these claims that these companies can use.

A government?

[thetanil]

A search engine which only lists sites which adhere to a set of rules / quality standards is the only answer I see here. The question is would people use it? I don't think so. They won't even use DuckDuckGo and similar which attempts to address the issue for themselves but at the same time provide a complete index. Not enough care / awareness.

[s3tz]

Audits can do that. Maybe a voluntary audit where they can then say they're compliant with NoBullshitForYourMoney.org

[duanem]

I have a product that does of what you ask, e.g., no ads, no tracking, no "Dear valued customer".

Unfortunately: - competitors use revenue from ads, tracking, selling data to their advantage and undercut your value based on price.

- and free users love free stuff. I had a user ask me to include ads in exchange for paid features.

- and yet people still distrust you. Once I proudly posted a new feature to Show HK and the first response was "How does this post not qualify as 'spam'?". Some people automatically think you're a bad guy since you sell something.

- without advertising, how do you get the word out?

I rely on word-of-mouth, since it carries much trust, and news articles. This means it's a slow game.

It is very hard to find mutual respect (both ways) between user and maker. Most relationships start with distrust or "what is in it for me".

[a_square_peg]

Randomly saw this comment & your profile and just wanted to say hello and well done on the app.

I recently started a historical time-series weather data api based on ERA5/GFS and your story really resonated with me. Similarly, I don't come from weather background and initially built it for my work with building energy analysis, with service live but still at an extremely early stage.

Happy holidays. :)

[input_sh]

If I may add: stopping the payment should be as easy as it is to start it. Not "call us at this number in this time frame and jump through multiple hoops that we've set up to try to convince you to keep paying".

[throw0101a]

Or, if everyone (or at least more people) managed to have symmetrical high-speed Internet connections, self-host a lot more stuff.

[sbarre]

You're going to leave security, data integrity and privacy compliance up to random unaccountable anonymous strangers on the Internet who self-host?

You're going to trust them to have proper backups, proper disaster recovery, proper resiliency and scalability?

What you're describing works for small-time stuff like blogs, personal projects or other inconsequential things, but anything at the scale of Goodreads, where users are trusting years of data to someone just can't be hosted by random people.

I'm not saying I have the answer but "people should self-host this kind of thing on their Internet connections" is not it.

[m463]

Is the answer to patiently await the post-scarcity anarchist utopia?

[Catsandkites]

My main criticism is unfettered and immoral capitalistic behaviour. That doesn't automatically mean I want to replace it with a different unworkable -ism.

[jjbinx007]

Rather like those awful gdpr notices which use Orwellian doublespeak like "We value your privacy" while presenting you with a dark pattern dialogue box which you have to opt out of, rather than (as the gdpr stipulates) opt in.

Nearly every time I contact customer services these days I'm fobbed off with obnoxious PR speak instead of just telling me straight.

[lol768]

> If I pay I want: No ads, no tracking, full access to my own data in sane export formats, schemas, no data mining, no data selling, no "sharing data with our partners", encryption options, no dumb hoops, no dark patterns, the ability to point a product at an API endpoint of my choosing, backup options that default to my infrastructure first and so on.

GDPR's right to data portability provides much of the export functionality you're after. It must be structured, in a format that is commonly-used and machine-readable. The ICO's guidance suggests that CSV, XML and JSON best meet this requirement.

Tracking is something else that GDPR helps with. Tracking of personal information via e.g. cookies require active consent. Silence is not consent.

"sharing data with our partners" requires a lawful basis when dealing with EU data subjects. This will normally be consent where data is sold to third-parties for e.g. marketing, so data subjects will be able to make an informed decision and opt out of this. Again, silence is not consent - and burying data sharing in an unreadable legal document is not informed consent.

> the ability to point a product at an API endpoint of my choosing

The right to data portability includes this:

> Individuals have the right to ask you to transmit their personal data directly to another controller without hindrance. If it is technically feasible, you should do this.

> Actually let's add more: The data generated by my use of my data in the product.

This is in scope for a Subject Access Request.

> Non-canned support responses that don't ask for information I literally put in the ticket three weeks ago

This is difficult to solve with regulation but I think it's an entirely reasonable thing to expect for your money. GDPR does not help here

Hopefully if there are multiple competitors in the space, customer support is something that providers can compete on.

> Prominent indication of where (geographically and legally) data is stored and used

Privacy information already must contain a transparent list of data processors:

> This includes anyone that processes the personal data on your behalf, as well all other organisations.

What we really need is for other countries to start taking data protection regulation seriously.

[Razengan]

> I would happily pay for all of the services I use.

Idea: Move all online businesses to a new digital-only currency. Let people earn that currency by donating the processing power/storage/bandwidth of their devices, like the @Home projects. Of course people could always current existing currency to the new e-currency.

Let's say an hour of donating an average laptop = an hour of using Google, Facebook, etc.

[ddevault]

You get almost all of these things from sourcehut (my product). It is entirely possible, and you're right to demand it.

[glenstein]

>and so on.

Yours is a great list of stipulations. I would just add: support for open + interoperable protocols such as activitypub and RSS.

[riffic]

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/learnawesome-is-an-act...

[julianlam]

> If I pay I want

> Non-canned support responses that don't ask for information I literally put in the ticket three weeks ago.

No, sorry. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but you get this if you pay what I want, not what you want.

[mettamage]

What would you consider to be a reasonable price?

[john_minsk]

And who is going be able to provide for all this shit? I'll tell you who - FAANG. Good luck starting your company when all of the above is a law! I've had enough clicks on GDPR's "OK" buttons. What did it change?

All this crying about tracking - how else the owner of the place can make product better? If I own a store - I can see where people go, how they shop, how they walk around, which basket size they prefer, what they buy. If I don't collect data on my website - I can't THINK about how to make my service better. I can only GUESS. What about data collections for simple functionality - like, when you come back to the half-filled form and I remember the values you already submitted by matching your cookies. Are you against this as well?

Sorry, but if this is the alternative - I would rather have Google know everything I do online and hope that they honestly don't store data on my Incognito browsing. If they do - worse for them.

[forest_dweller]

I always hate the framing of something being "capitalistic greed". The market has decided that they don't care about their privacy. You are complaining about the wrong people, you should be complaining to your fellow consumers/users. I've lost count of the number discussions I've had with people where they said they don't care about their privacy.

As for legalities. It is a global world. There is no way to enforce this effectively globally. This is a pipe dream.

Also data in some cases must be shared with partners, those might be payment processor, ID checks etc.

[TeMPOraL]

The market is literally fueled by people full of capitalistic greed one-upping each other and forcing others to play by the same rules. It's a capitalistic greed optimization engine. For all benefits we yield from it, it's still fair to call it capitalistic greed and notice the ethical failures the market strongly encourages.

[dash2]

So you think it's obscene, but you still use them? Doesn't that suggest that you value your privacy less highly than you claim?

[gpvos]

Life is full of compromises; it may still be the best available service on balance.

[Catsandkites]

Use what? The jist of your argument here feels like it's heading straight towards "you are against foo, but you still bar, hmm interesting" meme.

[vmception]

Alot of blockchain services share that philosophy and have a decent revenue model with the tokens.

The only problem is that the consumers want to trade the tokens at a profit instead of as purchases.

But that isn’t really a problem for the service that sold them. It is revenue. But people have an uncomfortable relationship with other people making money when they can extrapolate how much and consider that a problem.

Many services now are completely client side and use the nearest node that you connect to as the backend. They store enough variables in their smart contracts on chain and do the rest of the calculations client side. So their web service isn’t tracking you. But if you reuse addresses other people are.