101–110 of 175 posts
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Not dead and buried in Europe with GDPR coming.
Which will add another checkbox that you have to tick once when entering a website. EU is not the ally of ordinary folk when it comes to the Internet.
I find the term "your data" bothersome. Just because there is a piece of data out there that pertains to you it doesn't make it "your data". Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy, but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering.
Yes it does.
"Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy"
That it is.
" but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering."
And when did I agree to Equifax's terms?
You are being compensated for it. You get to use Facebook, Gmail, Google Search, etc. without taking out your wallet. Want more compensation? You’re free to negotiate or take your data elsewhere to a higher bidder.
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I mean on an individual basis. And I'm skeptical about your assessment that this is merely a problem with "Western Capitalism". This is a problem of any system that doesn't have proper regulations to define the rules of the game in a fair way.
Who puts regulations in place about how many deer it is "fair" for a wolf to kill? And yet, the system has been running for longer than we are around to know about it. It is however when the humans tried to "regulate" the wolf population in Scotland, for example, that the forests were lost due to deer overpopulation. So I would argue that less regulations make the system regulate itself, which it does better than hum…
I'm not saying that this system wouldn't be more prolific or that regulations would somehow cause it to evolve quicker or something. I'm saying that if we want to to work in a way that we believe is ethical and just, then we need to regulate it otherwise it will carry on in a predatory way.
This is absolute nonsense and dangerous to boot. Facebook's ARPU is still less than $20/year. If they literally paid all of their profits directly to their user it would still be a pittance. The real value of privacy has to do with freedom, manipulation and surveillance, and that is not represented by economic measures at all. Talking about the value of the data in purely economic terms is exactly the way you would w…
Unfortunately that will also put a cap on their profits, so it's unlikely they'll do that.
There's a whole genre of articles based on conflating two senses of "your," belonging to you, and about you. If I observe that you have blue eyes, that's a fact about you, but it doesn't belong to you, at least not without redefining what "belong" means. It would be helpful if, instead of deliberately conflating these two senses of "your," articles on this subject went in the other direction and explicitly discussed…
I think it is pretty easy. The moment you start storing this data outside your brain, it's "my" data. You can memorize or observe it all you want but not store it permanently or semi-permanently elsewhere. I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later" (most skip the latter part anyway, if not confronted with a shitst…
Huh. I actually believe most western societies are incredibly tilted in the "ask permission" direction. You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing.
Personally, I prefer freedom: do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't violate someone's rights (and no, Imaginary Property doesn't count).
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It's worse than that. We currently don't even have the right to determine who has our data, or how its being exploited. The remedy, of course, is to establish intrinsic properties rights over our own data. No different than copyrights. Maybe we need a new catchphrase. I propose bodyrights . It captures the notions of self, privacy, identity, and sovereignty all in one.
PII, Personal Identifiable Information, is the phrase I know for this. I'd like to see a requirement for all companies receiving PII to issue an account of how they use it and who it's sold to, those receiving your PII would also have an obligation to notify you, and offer access to the same audit data (how they're using it, who they got it from, who they gave/sold it to). Legit companies would then leak information,…
E.g. sensor-mapping data gathered by Tesla from your driving is extremely valuable even if you absolutely dissociate it from anything personally identifiable. Facebook would have immensely valuable aggregate data about how people are likely to react when seeing a particular piece of content even if they would (or would be required to) not link the event to anything personally identifiable and just keep the aggregate. Etc, etc, etc.
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> outside of tech often don't know about the data collection to quite the extent you're talking about and don't care Quite, but some of those very same people who don't care will call it creepy when they are on the receiving end of a retargeting campaign. Of course some don't care, or just find it funny. That's how I've got dragged in to those occasional conversations - typically a friend is spooked at the fact sudde…
> So clearly there is still some significant dissonance out there. And not only that, but useds aren't expected to try to quell their dissonance by being more adversarial to these mostly free services (some would say its not even an option because it is just impossible™ for them), and companies are expected to try to coddle to useds desires that they won't try to rectify for themselves by being more adversarial. I do…
> ...try to coddle to useds desires...
> I don't see this ending well for the useds with cognitive dissonance.
Using Stallman-esque terminology like "useds" to refer to people really doesn't encourage anyone to listen to you who doesn't already agree with the point you're making. It's condescending, puerile and snarky to the detriment of discussion. It makes your point seem like the banner of an ideological crusade, not a well reasoned critique.
Consider that calling people "useds" en masse is an extremely poor way to go about convincing them of your perspective. It implicitly puts you above them intellectually and delegitimizes their opinions. If all you want to do is signal your ingroup to other people then using the term "useds" makes sense. But if you actually want people to listen to you who don't already agree, it comes across as tonedeaf.
You could simply use the common word which is not going to distract anyone and literally nothing of value would be lost.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not dead and buried in Europe with GDPR coming.
Which will add another checkbox that you have to tick once when entering a website. EU is not the ally of ordinary folk when it comes to the Internet.
Of course, we'll have to see how it turns out in practice, but it's just a couple more months.