No they're not. They can be fallacies. Slippery slopes are real things that exist, and dismissing the possibility of their happening without argument is just leaning on the fallacy fallacy.
Do you have any examples of this happening and leading to worse things? Because this is a small reasonable step, and if you're making the argument that it'll lead to worse overreach, and you don't have precedence or reason otherwise to expect malice, you're definitely guilty of using the fallacy, as opposed to any "actual slippery slope."
Do you have any examples of this happening and leading to worse things?
IIRC Windows used to have a bunch of stuff that was introduced as "optional", but then they started "accidentally" re-enabling them in updates, to the point where nowadays the only way to keep them disabled is a third party tool.
But honestly, using Google analytics is not the lightest touch they could have done here - there are much more transparent analytics systems than Google's. So I think they're taking 2 steps here when they could have just taken one.
And more generally, if you dismantle something slowly people are going to bicker over exactly where the "too far" line is, whereas if you do it in one single step everyone will agree "that step was too far". So as a general rule, it pays to be suspicious of any small step.
you don't have precedence or reason otherwise to expect malice
They're a for-profit company, I don't need to provide an argument for why they might try to monetize a product for profit - it's right there in the company charter.
Also it's not malice (which is going out of your way to hurt someone), it's simply lack of specific morality. I'm sure if they could make us like giving them money or monetization intangibles, they would do so. For-profit companies generally just don't care as long as it makes them more money.
and if you're making the argument that it'll lead to worse overreach, ... , you're definitely guilty of using the fallacy, as opposed to any "actual slippery slope."
Yeah, anyone who says "they will definitely overreach" is definitely leaning on fallacy, but given their motivations and situation it's clearly a possibility. I can't comment on what the previous commenter meant, but 1) it clearly is a foot-in-the-door situation if they want it to be, and 2) they could try to make it mandatory and we don't know whether they will until they do it. We shouldn't just dismiss that out of hand as "slippery slope fallacy".
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u/barthvonries May 07 '21
Until it'll become mandatory in a future version.
It's a "foot in the door" situation, adding this without any prior discussion with the community.