Kommentar | Sorry I hadn't responded sooner; I'm not boycotting the forum, I've just had a problem with my phone line & therefore my internet access. (Rain, rain, go away -- but actually we needed it.)
I'm not saying that this is more important than child abuse, Third World poverty and religious fundamentalism. I agree that those are much more serious. I'm against all of them too. Not only that, I assume that 99% of LEO users feel the same, so mentioning them in this context seems a little beside the point. In fact, almost like an effort to evade the real question. (Using similar logic, we could argue that mugging, for example, isn't really so bad at all, since it's positively pleasant compared to rape or murder.)
What I am saying is that, unlike those issues, this is something we can (or LEO could) do something about. Here we have a chance to make a positive difference (albeit a small one). To me the question is not, How great is this harm on an absolute scale, but, On which issues can our protest make the most difference? (The most bang for the buck, so to speak.) It just seems to me that this is one case where just saying no would be both feasible and at least somewhat effective. At the very minimum, it would protect the (how many thousand per day?) users of LEO, and it would send a sharp message to the advertiser that such ads are not welcome on respectable websites.
Even if the difference were as minor as negotiating with the advertiser to rephrase the ad more honestly, that would be a significant (if small) positive step. dirk's suggestion in #24 was probably not meant seriously, but in fact, yes, I think it would be better. At least it wouldn't start out with a flagrant lie.
And no, I don't think the lie is all that obvious -- or at least, it's only obvious after you've seen it unchanged for an entire day or week, not if you're a casual one-time visitor.
Nor do I think we should tolerate even obvious lies on the excuse that they're good training for the cold, cruel real world. (On that kind of theory, getting mugged would be good for us because it would teach us hard truths about living in big cities.)
What would really help would be a wording that said up front '... if you agree to let us send you spam and make telemarketing calls to you.' That is, the truth would also entail honesty about the real cost of participation, which is to volunteer to abandon one's privacy.
I do, by the way, think that loss of privacy is genuine harm. A lot of Europeans have been concerned lately about government-sponsored invasions of privacy in the name of counterterrorism. Those worry me too, but I have the feeling that intrusion in the name of commerce is more insidious, and probably more harmful in the long run.
I do agree that it's not life-or-death harm, not comparable to famine, war, or terrorism. But that doesn't make it right. And it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do whatever we can to prevent it. That's all I'm saying.
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