That's why "opt out" is not an ethical or practical solution. There needs to be a (legally mandated and enforced) requirement for such things to be opt-in.
Any opt-out agreement puts the user signing the contract at a disadvantage; the opt-out could be 'lost' and then the upper-hand in the agreement prefers the service providing the contract, the same party which has the most to gain from the 'loss'. Whereas an opt-in agreement defaults to the upper-hand in favor of the user if the contract is lost, forcing the owning party to keep careful track of the signature.
Of course this doesn't preclude forged signatures/agreements.
I've opted out of Verizon's spam texts, which I would get 3-5 times per day. But I didn't get the text offering me the ability to opt out of this shit, because I opted out of their texts. Cool.
Every year I opt out of emails from Elsevier. Exactly one year later I get spam from one of their journals. I've taken to grabbing a screenshot of the opt-out screen before submitting, and writing them vaguely threatening emails over it.
More than this, I was not even notified by VZW that I was being opted in. I've used VZW for many years, have opted out of surveillance for many years, then suddenly my mom texts me an NPR article and I check to find that I've been opted in to more surveillance? If companies are not legally required to inform me when details of a contract change, what else am I consenting to without my knowledge?
Comments
That's why "opt out" is not an ethical or practical solution. There needs to be a (legally mandated and enforced) requirement for such things to be opt-in.
Any opt-out agreement puts the user signing the contract at a disadvantage; the opt-out could be 'lost' and then the upper-hand in the agreement prefers the service providing the contract, the same party which has the most to gain from the 'loss'. Whereas an opt-in agreement defaults to the upper-hand in favor of the user if the contract is lost, forcing the owning party to keep careful track of the signature.
Of course this doesn't preclude forged signatures/agreements.
I've opted out of Verizon's spam texts, which I would get 3-5 times per day. But I didn't get the text offering me the ability to opt out of this shit, because I opted out of their texts. Cool.
Every year I opt out of emails from Elsevier. Exactly one year later I get spam from one of their journals. I've taken to grabbing a screenshot of the opt-out screen before submitting, and writing them vaguely threatening emails over it.
More than this, I was not even notified by VZW that I was being opted in. I've used VZW for many years, have opted out of surveillance for many years, then suddenly my mom texts me an NPR article and I check to find that I've been opted in to more surveillance? If companies are not legally required to inform me when details of a contract change, what else am I consenting to without my knowledge?
Even opt-in is not always the solution:
https://stevestreza.com/2020/02/17/ios-adware/
Discussed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29356496
Agree with you completely, but companies/governments do not. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_paternalism