“Users want control” is a shoulder shrug
It&#x27;s not about knowing better, it&#x27;s about actual conflict of interest.<p>Think about how much of the internet runs on advertising dollars.  This leads to a situation where much of the internet serves the interests of people trying to maximize profits when selling stuff over the interests of people wanting to be well-informed about stuff they buy and looking for the best possible deal.  -- When you search for &quot;usb stick&quot;, of which there are gazillions, in an online store, which one will you be shown on page 1?  The best product at the best price?  Or the product made by the person who payed them to show their product first?  (advertising expenses that they&#x27;ll have to recoup by making that stuff more cheaply or selling it more expensively)<p>Think about how copyright owners instrument digital rights management to try to maximize monetization of content over allowing users to make good use of rights in copyrighted material that they already possess.  -- If you&#x27;re 70 years old, and you&#x27;re into the beatles, you probably paid for that music at least four times.  You bought a record when it came out, buying the right to listen to that music for the rest of your life.  But for some reason, you paid for buying that right a second time when it came out on CD.  A third time when you bought an MP3 download.  A fourth time as part of a subscription package that you now have.  -- The development of the technology did not serve the interests of the user.  Otherwise, a RW-medium like minidisc would have won over CDs, allowing you to maybe record from vinyl to minidisc.  &quot;Copy Protected&quot; CDs would have never happened but instead ripping-friendly CDs would have been produced because this was what would have been in the user&#x27;s interest.  And streaming would have happened on the basis of making micropayments when streaming stuff you don&#x27;t already own instead of turning everything into a subcription package.<p>Think about how insurance companies might use the information gathered by the surveillance system which is the internet.<p>People THINK that when they are the ones paying for a computer, for an internet connection, etc that they are paying for technology that should now serve THEIR interests.  The fight for user control is the fight to actually make that happen.  And a fight it is.  It&#x27;s not a given that technology is made to serve the user&#x27;s actual interest.