Indeed. Firefox already has "sponsored links" and such in the built-in homepage, I simply disable those when I first install it and get on with life.
Big projects like Firefox need big money to support it. If you don't want it to be beholden to Google it needs to find ways to earn some on its own.
I'm in a campaign (with rotating GMs) where I'm playing a character who is literally an alien infiltrator that has infiltrated the party. Except he's really bad at it and it's obvious he's an alien infiltrator, and because he's bad at it he has no idea that it's obvious. The party's superiors told them to play along for now and try to find out what my character is up to.
It's been about four years now, going on five, and I practically had to spoon-feed them useful tidbits about his mission. I've finally just kidnapped them all and took them back to my homeworld, we're now running through the adventure where they escape. I had to put an alien diplomat in their cell to monologue information about them.
Still, I've been having fun so I don't mind. Just amusing how much PCs are willing to trust other PCs simply because they're PCs. :)
Sometimes it's different for NPCs, but not always - in another campaign just now the party encountered an Aboleth who told them that he was a good Aboleth that wasn't interested in mind control or manipulating anyone. And by the way, there's this list of quests he's working on and he'd appreciate some help. They jumped right in. He actually is on the level, but come on - Aboleth. If there's anyone to be instantly suspicious of it's someone like that.
They swore an oath to do no harm. They didn't swear an oath to mindlessly obey anyone with a badge. It actually should be easy.
The case was a rare criminal prosecution of emergency medical personnel, and stirred outrage among paramedics and firefighters across the nation who worry that urgent decisions made as part of their jobs can be criminalized.
Maybe don't ignore the Hippocratic Oath and commit basic blatant malpractice at the behest of the police and you won't have to worry about that so much.
And replace it with what? The only two basic forms of democracy are representative and direct, and direct democracy has its own problems.
Are there any laws against it where? You need to specify a jurisdiction.
My main reaction would be that whoever is paying for that data is a fool. It's available for free.
I can't imagine how a representative democracy would operate otherwise. In representative democracies you're picking some person to make decisions on your behalf, and that person is different from you so some of their decisions are not going be the ones you would have made if you were in their place.
You may be wanting direct democracy, in which you would personally get to vote on the government's actions. Your "representative" would be perfect in that case because your representative would be you. But since you would only represent yourself, that's not what would normally be called "representative democracy."
This is how representative democracy works, none of the presented options are likely to be "perfect" for any given voter.
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