A financial, legal, or even just a tit-for-tat incentive is realistically all it would take. You assume that some utopia that has shed those ideas is the only one capable of such technology.
In reality, it's greed and self-preservation that is running this show, and this is all that is needed to produce awe-inspiring feats.
Asking your employer for more compensation because you are exerting more effort due to inexperience isn't so different than a AAA studio charging high fees for a crappy product because of corporate bullshit and inefficiency.
In fact, these two things tend to be two sides of the same coin.
I have a more realistic description of "Dead Internet Theory" that involves no conspiracy theories:
The Internet is becoming a monoculture, which is killing the vibrant, diverse, resilient, innovative space it used to be. Manifestos about a better way of life, and creative personal websites have been replaced with vapid social status posts in bland bootstrap layouts that double as data collection schemes. Technology that empowers people has been replaced with technology to restrict people. Bots masquerading as people is just the cherry on the sundae, the inevitable outcome of having created such a monoculture, a place where large orchards of content are so easy to pollute. The modern Internet ducking sucks, it has been ruined by people.
I do OOP because it naturally encourages me to do this sort of thing: abstract complicated logic into inspectable, reusable, testable properties of an object.
You correctly answered OP's question. But the question was irrelevant to begin with. The ban on TikTok has nothing to do with data collection. It's about controlling potential sources of foreign interference: controlling what is said or how platforms (pick and choose what to) broadcast what people are saying.
knows me extremely well, is able to tirelessly work on my behalf, and has a personality tailored to my needs and interests.
Those may still be ANI applications.
Today's LLM's marketed as the future of AGI are more focused on knowing a little bit about everything. Including a little bit about how MRIs work and a summary of memes floating around a parody subreddit. I fail to see how LLM's as they are trained today will know you extremely well and give you a personality tailored to your needs. I also think commercial interests of big tech are pitted against your desire for "tirelessly work[ing] on my behalf".
The big problem with AI butlers for research is, IMO, stripping out the source takes away important context that helps you decide wether the information you are getting is relevant and appropriate or not. Was the information posted on a parody forum or is it an excerpt from a book by an author with a Ph.D. on the subject? Who knows. The AI is trained to tell you something that you want to hear, not something you ought to hear. It's the same old problem of self selecting information, but magnified 100x fold.
As it turns out, data is just noise without some authority or chain of custody behind it.
They've stubbornly not gotten an SSL because they transact 0 data beyond band name searches.
Even if sites do not store user account data, such as passwords, ALL websites, and I mean ALL, handle user data, because merely accessing pages (urls) is user data.
Stubbornness is not a good reason not to setup SSL. Encryption should always be on, all the time, for everything.
You deftly evaded the leading attack vector: social engineering. Root access means any app installed could potentially access sensitive banking. People really are sheep and need to be protected from themselves, in information security just like in anywhere else.
You don't get a "accept the risk" button because people don't actually take responsibility, or will click on those things without understanding the risk. Dunning Kruger at play.
Why is this prevalent on Android but not desktop Linux? Most likely a combination of 1) Google made it trivially easy to turn on, and 2) the market share of Android is significantly large enough to make it a problem warranting a solution.
The fact that you know how to circumvent it is inconsequential to the math above. Spoiler: you never were nor ever will be the demographic for these products, in their design, testing, and feature prioritisation.
Capitalism has a lot of problems, but the freedom given to a seller to set their prices to whatever they like and watch the buyer decide it is not a fair price and go buy from someone else is not one of them.
There are legitimately situations where a meritless person is mooching off of an organization because of corruption (e.g. cronyism, nepotism, abusing union). And then there are situations where a person appears completely incompetent, but has this one unique skill or asset that makes them absolutely invaluable to the company (e.g. savant, schmoozer, someone with connections). It's important to be able to tell them apart.
I'm pretty sure Windows is a key part of their "cloud stuff" strategy. You are right that consumers are not the direct focus of Windows, since they are not the direct paying audience, and that shows in the direction Windows is going, but getting consumers to use Windows is a big part of creating corporate buy in for Microsoft cloud services. Corporate environments will shun Microsoft cloud services if employees can't use Windows, or Windows features run afoul of corporate policies (like blanket LLM bans).
A financial, legal, or even just a tit-for-tat incentive is realistically all it would take. You assume that some utopia that has shed those ideas is the only one capable of such technology.
In reality, it's greed and self-preservation that is running this show, and this is all that is needed to produce awe-inspiring feats.