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> People who signup for this already know what they are doing

I've seen this argument a few times recently. It's not clear to most people what they're signing up to. They've clicked through a EULA, that somewhere in thousands of lines mentions a separate Privacy Policy which they would then have had to load, in order to decipher more thousands of lines of legalese to find the few lines of 'active ingredient' which would tell them what's actually being recorded.

Even when it does technically declare somewhere in there what "might be" recorded (usually in terms like "we record data such as [...]" which don't actually limit what they can record), the company itself will handwave it away as "we're just covering ourselves in case we have to write your name down if you call us for tech support" or similar inanities.

The fact that so many people were surprised about the Cambridge Analytica scandal when selling such access is explicitly Facebook's business model and everyone participated voluntarily should tell you everything you need to know about how much the average user of these services "knows what they're doing".

Devil's advocate is exactly the right word for defending these practices - they're like a Disney villain holding a giant contract scroll and a fountain pen dipped in blood. Don't worry about the fine print, just click ACCEPT, and I'll give you what you want, right?



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