• TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I’m all for reducing the number of cars on the road but IMO this is a poor attitude to have to a problem that exists right now and is ballooning out of control, but has a very easy solution.

    Moving away from cars will take a long, long time. Infrastructure doesn’t come from nowhere, and some places are so sparsely populated that public transport can be a very difficult proposition, or even an impossibility. Those places in particular will be stuck with cars for a while. Banning predatory data gathering on cars can happen right now if there is the political will to do so.

    I know it’s easy for some to say “well I don’t care, fuck anybody who drives a car, they’re evil and I don’t like them. Why don’t they simply be rich and buy a house in a city where public transport is usable?”, but I think everybody has a right to privacy, and the default shouldn’t be for our tools to spy on us and report it back to the OEMs. Particularly when a lot of car drivers don’t have any choice but to drive!

    You can work on strengthening public transport while at the same time improving privacy laws for cars. It’s not one or the other.

    • olympicyes@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Not to mention that even if everyone were to switch to public transportation, you’ve still got the issue of RFID cards that track every trip you take on the system. Far cry from subway tokens for privacy concerns.