Literally every single HN thread these days mentioning big companies the top comment is some cynical conspiratorial nonsense. Say Big Tech is out to get you in any way possible no matter how outlandish and people eat it up. Nothing can just happen for good or neutral reasons it's always tied to some master plan.
Just as a curiosity, have you ever worked in big tech yourself, spoken "off-the-record" with managers or executives at these places or know closely people who do/have worked there?
Yes, except these kinds of fears related to big tech/surveillance end up being true more often than not. Unsurprising given the profit incentives and the total lack of ethics in the industry.
10+ years ago you were considered a lunatic if you told people that putting internet-connected cameras and microphones everywhere is a bad idea because their TV would be used to spy on them, that their cameras would be accessed by the police without their consent for surveillance, or that car company employees would watch them walk around naked through the cameras on their car.
Is anyone tracking every prediction ever made in a spreadsheet that you could use to verify that the rate is literally >50%? No, not that I'm aware of.
The only anecdata I can give is "look around you", how all major (and many smaller) companies are implementing invasive spying tech into their products, harvesting our personal information, selling it, or abusing it any way they can. They sell the products as one thing then shaft their customers and change the terms overnight at their earliest convenience.
What you call "a conspiracy theory" is just "following clear market incentives". There's a clear motive for doing everything with a clear track record of doing so in the past.
If someone made a derivative financial product that roughly equated to the prediction "Big tech will use any means to expand their access, to invade and abuse our privacy, and generally be willing to do anything in pursuit of profit" I would be willing to invest my life savings into it.
Maybe we travel in different circles. I still hear about Covid vaccines having 5g chips in them and all sorts of other crazy stuff. Rough guess, maybe 10% of what I hear is plausible, and maybe a quarter of that is likely.
It is not conspiracy theory. Optimizing for profit (which includes not crossing regulators/governments) is a good enough explanation usually. Big (and most small) companies put profit above anything else, so this is usually the right angle to approach anything they do.
Hah, if anything does happen outside of expected conspiracy, it happens because two conspiracies just happenened to nullify each other's outcomes. Some of the people here even made some of the ridiculous choices that shape our lives today:D Just sayin'
