Microblog Memes

Using usage data to improve user experience and similarly worded sentences are in pretty much every apps "Terms of Service". They record what music I have listened to and compile playlist for me, so what? In similar manner navigation apps like Waze collect data about your driving habits to offer better routes.

It becomes an issue when:

1. They collect data irrelevant to the user experience or not connected in any way to the services the company provides.
2. They record activity for people who don't even have an account through third parties (looking at you Meta)
3. They scan every local network I connect to and collect detailed information (again... Meta)
4. They sell the data about what I listened and/or any other collected data to third parties
5. They use the data to train LLMs without my knowledge and approval, or opt me in by default and bury the option to opt out of this deep in the settings.

I haven't used Spotify for a long time, but I use YouTube. YouTube ticks most boxes of that list. I bet Waze do too, and Spotify maybe. That are for me the problematic areas we need to be discussing. Collecting data is not entirely bad. It is a good thing when that data is handled only in the user's interest, it's bad when it's being abused, which unfortunately is the norm rather than exception nowadays.