Live data from Hacker News

I put all my personal data on eBay

olifro.st

41–50 of 148 posts

Re: I put all my personal data on eBay

#41

Absolutely a serious question here: what is the big deal with companies e.g. Facebook and Google using your data for profit? These companies provide services that you , a user of their platforms, want. Providing those services is not free, and yet the prevailing sentiment across the internet seems to be, "Wow, I can't believe FB was using my data to sell me ads!"

For one, it pigeonholes your internet experience. Systems like this basically take the simplest, stereotyped, one-note view of you from a snapshot of your online activity, and constantly projects that judgment back at you. Buy a microwave oven on Amazon, for example, and now you're seeing microwaves everywhere. If you browse Youtube with cookies enabled, it's a terribly limited experience compared to with cookies blo…

> It's a much better experience when recommendations are simply associated with the video you're currently watching

This is very subjective. You cannot speak for everyone, and meanwhile Youtube generates petabytes of analytics every day showing what people really like, down to each individual.

Re: I put all my personal data on eBay

#42
post #22

> Loads more, like who I vote for, my boss’s name, and where all my family live. So their selling other people's data too?

Every time someone on FB shares a picture with other people in it they are doing just that.

TIL when I tag a friend on Facebook I'm also tagging their political beliefs, work history, favorite food, and venereal disease status.

Re: I put all my personal data on eBay

#44
post #39

Absolutely a serious question here: what is the big deal with companies e.g. Facebook and Google using your data for profit? These companies provide services that you , a user of their platforms, want. Providing those services is not free, and yet the prevailing sentiment across the internet seems to be, "Wow, I can't believe FB was using my data to sell me ads!"

I don't understand this either. The big ad companies have a huge incentive to keep your data secret, so only they can serve you ads. The big privacy danger will always be the government through the ISPs.

Why should the government go through the ISPs if they can get the unencrypted data from facebook.

Re: I put all my personal data on eBay

#45
post #6

Selling your personal data as an individual is not going to work (yes, I understand this is a joke posting). If your data has to be re-imported into the various systems that normally exchange consumer profiles (advertising platforms for instance) it will be a net loss, besides that the chances of you hitting one of the properties is nil. So without the association between your profile and your online presence that da…

There are some people[0][1][2] want to sell your data and use your data to train ML.

[0] https://synapse.ai/ [1] httsp://datum.org/ [2] http://doct.ai/

Re: I put all my personal data on eBay

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, it pigeonholes your internet experience. Systems like this basically take the simplest, stereotyped, one-note view of you from a snapshot of your online activity, and constantly projects that judgment back at you. Buy a microwave oven on Amazon, for example, and now you're seeing microwaves everywhere. If you browse Youtube with cookies enabled, it's a terribly limited experience compared to with cookies blo…

> It's a much better experience when recommendations are simply associated with the video you're currently watching This is very subjective. You cannot speak for everyone, and meanwhile Youtube generates petabytes of analytics every day showing what people really like, down to each individual.

My specific, stated metric was pigeonholing.

You receive less information online when these systems are employed, ie more repetition in the same space. Youtube optimizes for maximizing the viewing time across the most common types of viewing associations, namely people watching for entertainment, not looking for information. If you ever look for information in a new topic, you tend to be signposted back towards your old time-sink staples from your history instead.

Certainly, one can also point to algorithmic enforcement of echo chambers, which would be a subjective value judgment as well. It feels good in immediate practice (and can increase viewing time), but many don't view it as a net positive at scale for social issues. Yet for things like small-scale hobbies, it can be beneficial.

Re: I put all my personal data on eBay

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, it pigeonholes your internet experience. Systems like this basically take the simplest, stereotyped, one-note view of you from a snapshot of your online activity, and constantly projects that judgment back at you. Buy a microwave oven on Amazon, for example, and now you're seeing microwaves everywhere. If you browse Youtube with cookies enabled, it's a terribly limited experience compared to with cookies blo…

> It's a much better experience when recommendations are simply associated with the video you're currently watching This is very subjective. You cannot speak for everyone, and meanwhile Youtube generates petabytes of analytics every day showing what people really like, down to each individual.

Out of interest, do you have a source for that "petabytes of analytics every day"? It sounds like the kind of thing that would come out of an interesting "How we cope at scale" kind of article.

Re: I put all my personal data on eBay

#50
post #12
post #2

Didn't know Ebay suddenly allowed digital goods again

He could probably be putting it on a CD, DVD or USB drive and mailing it out. But looks like only shipping to the UK... Says "May not post to United States" for me.

He's supplying it on a one time USB drive and only offering collection in person from London, UK.
Post reply on HN