Cory Doctorow

And I would follow up by saying like, let's not fall into the trap of vulgar Thatcherism.

You know, Thatcher's motto was there is no alternative.

And I think tech bosses would like you to believe that too, that if you're enjoying having a conversation on Facebook with your friends, which I stipulate lots of people do, I think that's absolutely the case and we should value and celebrate that, that you just have to accept that there is no way to have a conversation with your friends that Mark Zuckerberg isn't listening in on.

And that to ask for otherwise than that would be like asking for water that's not wet.

It's just like not possible.

And what I'm militating for is not you don't like that thing you like.

It's like I like that you like the thing you like.

I want to make it good.

And I also want to guard it against getting worse because just because it hasn't happened to you yet, it would be naive to think that it would never come for you.

I also wanted to react to something that you were sort of fainting at, Ezra, which is this idea of revealed preferences, which you often hear in these discussions, right?

That if you let Facebook spy on you, no matter what you say about how you feel about Facebook spying on you, you have a revealed preference.

And Tim used the word power when he responded to that.

And I think that, you know, if you ask the neoclassicals, they'll say, well, we like models.

And it's hard to model qualitative aspects like power.

So we just leave them out of the model and hope that it's not an important factor.

And this is how you get these incredibly bizarre conclusions, like if you sell your kidney to make the rent, you have a revealed preference for having one kidney.

But what we actually know when we give people choices, when the state intervenes or when there's countervailing power, is that often you get a different revealed preference.

You know, when Apple gave...

Facebook users the power to tick a box and opt out of Facebook spying, 96% of Apple users tick that box.

So the argument that Facebook users don't mind being spied on, I think is blown out of the water when you actually give them a way to express preferences.