Even if it happens within a platform it's still a very concerning problem.

If a company decided to put cameras in people's homes to improve "customer service" that business would be out of business the next day. And yet companies are able to get much more information about us by having access to what we do on the internet and everyone is fine about it.

I understand that this is a result of people not wanting to pay for access to websites and online-services but, in my opinion, that's because they don't understand the ramifications. I don't have a solution for this problem, but I hope we'll fine another way, one that doesn't involve companies knowing so much about you.

>Even if it happens within a platform it's still a very concerning problem.

I don't necessarily disagree, but "Xcorp is presenting personal data that you've released publically in a misleading way" very different than "Xcorp is giving personal data that you assumed was private away to third parties". I think the second is a lot more serious than the first.

>If a company decided to put cameras in people's homes to improve "customer service" that business would be out of business the next day.

I'm not sure I agree, given the popularity of smart TVs and the recently announced Amazon Echo Look. I make no judgement of whether this is good or bad (I personally don't have any always-on recording devices), but I don't think its true.

>I understand that this is a result of people not wanting to pay for access to websites and online-services but, in my opinion, that's because they don't understand the ramifications.

See, and I disagree here. There are certain kinds of services that money cannot provide. Google Now recommends news articles to me, it can give me reminders about upcoming events from my emails and Google gives me some personalized search features (ie. if I type "frequent flyer number" into the default google search bar, my number appears, scraped from an email years ago). Those features have a utility that I couldn't get from an application that didn't track information about me. Potentially I could self host something with that level of utility, but it would take a research lab and millions of dollars to create.

On the other hand, reddit, which tracks comparatively little information about me, reliably recommends trending posts that are of zero interest to me.

>Google Now recommends news articles to me, it can give me reminders about upcoming events from my emails and Google gives me some personalized search features (ie. if I type "frequent flyer number" into the default google search bar, my number appears, scraped from an email years ago). Those features have a utility that I couldn't get from an application that didn't track information about me.

And I think that's the main difference between our viewpoints. Personally, I'm not ok with a company having so much information about me just for the sake of convenience. I'd rather have to write my own scripts to scrape through news feeds or just continually check blogs that I like rather than a company having all that data about me.

We are living at a time, imo, when data is the most important asset. And companies like Google are one of the biggest purveyors of it. It's dangerous when a company could have enough information about you and have the tools to know exactly what makes you "tick". They could provide services to make "specially crafted" advertisements that would manipulate you at a scale even more than they do now. "You like tall blondes? Here's a computer generated tall blonde that talks about the new eau d'toilette and how it seduces her! Buy it!"

It's bad enough that companies are using methods to addict their users to make their apps more profitable now, imagine what a world it'll be when they'll have the technology and ability to do it to the point that no one could possibly refuse their advertising.

Now I realise that this is taking it to the extreme, but my point here is precisely that we need to consider these possibilities in case they don't catch us unaware and when it's already too late to do anything.

>And I think that's the main difference between our viewpoints. Personally, I'm not ok with a company having so much information about me just for the sake of convenience. I'd rather have to write my own scripts to scrape through news feeds or just continually check blogs that I like rather than a company having all that data about me.

This is a fair view to hold (I think the rest of your post goes off into slippery slope land, but its based on a realistic fear), but at the same time, I think you need to be aware that you (or I) won't be able to recreate some of the things that these companies can do, no matter how much time or effort we invest.

Its also worth realizing that you're essentially stating that these experiences should be inaccessible to those who are nonexperts. That is, if in your perfect world, MiGooBookZon doesn't exist, and you make due with a set of scripts that you wrote that scrape some RSS feeds you care about and order articles based on some ratings you hardcoded for personal use, where does that leave all of the people who don't have the technical chops to write a set of personal scripts to scrape the news sources that interest them?

Ideally, they should be packaged in an accessible format. Sort of like how in the Linux world Ubuntu is doing pretty well with making Linux accessible even to people who are not technology-inclined.

The problem in "my perfect world" would be not that people with less technical ability won't have access to the tools, but that the tools would be less efficient(but as I've stated in another comment, a program being (F)OSS doesn't necessarily mean it's worse, sometimes quite the opposite), due to not having all that integration.

And I consider it to be a good deal. If some people don't then I'd like for it be an option for both parties to make their decisions based on pros and cons, however, the issue with monopolies/oligopolies is that too often they don't leave you a choice. They'd buy up all the small companies that have good ideas, integrate them into themselves and so on, until there's realistically no other option but to actually start using them.