> Not really. My perception comes from thinking about the market as a dynamic system, and not a static picture described by pro- and anti-market propagandists.

Nonsense. Your framing is exactly the same. Don't gaslight me on this. I am not naive.

> That's a "motte and bailey" defense. Such a perfect free trade almost doesn't exist, and very few are privileged to partake in it.

Yes the free market doesn't exist because governments stick their noses in.

>Market offerings aren't independent - they're in competition, which means a lot of possible products aren't provided, and those that are face competitive pressure to provide less value for more price

What a load of nonsense. It is because of the free market we have niche products (Amiga accelerators would exist and that is pretty damn niche).

> The most important thing to recognize is that the market, as a dynamic system, optimizes for profitable companies. Not for maximizing value these companies deliver to their customers. Usually, providing value is the most straightforward way for profit. But there are other ways - ways to provide no value, or even negative value while still netting additional profit - and the market takes them as much as it can.

You are speaking out of both sides of your mouth.

> Vendor lock-in and surveillance are just few ways of making money by providing negative value-add.

If vendor lock in a problem if the customer is happy with it? It is up to the individual customer to decide.

> Not illicit. Immoral. Because after all is said and done, the market is still entirely made of people and their decisions, which get to be evaluated through the lens of ethics.

That is splitting hairs. No you want them to be evaluated through the lens of ethics because it benefits to do so in this argument.

> They care and they will use them anyway, because the market doesn't provide any other option.

You don't need yourtube, you don't need facebook, you don't need a lot of this nonsense.

> In the store. Not across stores. And they gave vouchers back, not shoved extra ads in your face. And that's without touching the qualitative difference between a human clerk doing the surveillance and automated systems doing the same.

You have no idea if that data wasn't sold to anyone else. The vouchers are in themselves ads.

These store cards proved two thinds. The first being that people will willingly give up their details for some trickets, and two that tracking customers and optimising via that works. It was a stepping stone.

> I hate to invoke the concept of "victim blaming", because it's usually invoked very unreasonably, but - you can't expect individuals to be able to rationally make market decisions while working their asses off trying to make ends meet, having their attention DDoSed, and facing against compounding improvements in manipulation techniques (courtesy of the market). I'm willing to cut regular folks some slack, and instead focus on the people running these companies, who had a clear choice, and chose to engage in abusive practices. You don't impulse-adopt business models, so you can't excuse it as a moment of weakness either.

Yes I do expect individuals to able to rationally make decisions. People have been told for years and year and years on end what these companies do and they don't care. So it is their fault.