Every site is trying to pull a Bonzai Buddy now.
"We need all your info for advertising, not you can't opt out unless you make an account and give us your email. Oops, looks like I hid the opt-out under a subheader. Amazon is now profiling you."
WE USED TO CALL THAT SHIT A VIRUS.
ITS EVERY. FUCKING. WEBSITE. NOW
"Hi I'm going to block this entire site until you give me your info, this is very cool and normal."
Capitalism ruined the internet. The whole thing is malware now.
I think this is a very common pattern. Some new social or technological space opens up that allows people to collaborate and create something actually valuable together, and then hordes of capitalistic parasites come storming in to set up as many fences as possible so they can charge tolls and harness the new kinds of art and tech that was created for advertising, extraction, and rentierism.
Humans create value by organizing and capitalists are privatizing the means by which we organize. This is true of third spaces IRL and it’s true of social media.