Either people are broadly ok with being screwed (my personal experience suggests this) or there is a grand conspiracy to prevent anyone who is not screwing their customers from competing in the market.

Maybe it is the latter, who knows. But what I do know is that the non-screwing options exist, but are often less popular and more expensive (either in price, time, or effort).

And this annoys me to no end. Because _I_ don't want to be screwed. But whether I get screwed or not increasingly depends on how much those around me are willing to get screwed or not.

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account42 3 days ago | parent [-]

It's not that people are OK with being screwed over but rather that they have been conditioned into being helpless about it. Big corporations hire psychological experts that know exactly how to manipulate you into thinking you need their products or otherwise act against your own best interests, whether that's through advertisement, peer pressure or whatever else they can come up with.

You yourself admit that while you don't want to be screwed you only have the option of not being screwed if those around you also choose not being screwed yet somehow you conclusion that others are different and must be OK with being screwed. Presumably you also often choose being screwed over being socially ostracized? Do you really make sure that all those around you have options to still interact without without being screwed?

Yes people often technically have options of not getting screwed but those options almost exist in a different world and in order to choose them you have to abandon the one you are living in now. That people cannot afford to do that does not mean that they are OK with being screwed.

	▲	jonahx 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I am partially with you on this one. "Yes people often technically have options of not getting screwed but those options almost exist in a different world and in order to choose them you have to abandon the one you are living in now." But the question that remains is this: If the true situation is people who'd desperately like not to be screwed, and would pay the same or more for this privilege, but are made helpless by corporate propaganda and market dominance, why do we not see new players rushing in to fill this need? They could take massive amounts of market share. There are only two explanations I can see: 1. Monopoly forces or similar at work. 2. This is not the actual situation. Regarding 1, you can make the argument for a network effect/coldstart problem. That seems possible to me as an alternative explanation, and as a way out. Still, in my personal experience, 90% of people just don't care that much, and so are vulnerable to essentially being "bribed" by short-term corporate incentives. The free/privacy-respecting alternatives would have to match this force, and also match the marketing.
	▲	Arch-TK 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Presumably you also often choose being screwed over being socially ostracised? No, I only choose being screwed over being homeless, or jobless. Which didn't use to be a particularly likely scenario but the tides are turning. I don't care about being socially ostracised for refusing to ever use WhatsApp for example. We teach children not to cave to peer pressure as if it was a choice they could make, and now you're claiming that caving to peer pressure is not something people choose.