Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#201

Post by mrmuagi » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

ashelmire wrote: post #198

darawk wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Consumers can opt out of their data being sold, and businesses can’t retaliate by changing the price or level of service. This is something I object to. It's just fundamentally stupid and doesn't make sense. The entire premise of free exchange is that I give you my services in exchange for something of value of yours. Making it illegal to withhold services if you don't give up your data is crazy. The only reason…

> - Consumers can opt out of their data being sold, and businesses can’t retaliate by changing the price or level of service. > - Businesses can, however, offer “financial incentives” for being allowed to collect data. This just means your service always costs money, but you can refund the full amount for allowing you to collect data.

Is there a difference between offering, say, $12 monthly opt-out & $10 plan for opt-in vs flat $12 with a $2 discount to opt-in?

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#202

Post by degenerate » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #106

It’s jarring to see such headlines on TechCrunch. They fed the valley by giving every little news a place and are ne of the original hype masters for startups. They profit off the area by hosting the disrupt conference as well, which is again a huge pat each other on the back event. So now they turn around and post a headline like that is just somehow ugly to me. It’s absolutely in their right obviously.

Pet peeve: when editors/authors throw their opinions on the end of headlines. [and why it's a good thing / and why you should care / and why it's dangerous / etc]

Just give me the facts and let me decide on my own after reading the facts. I don't need your opinion up front.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#203

Post by mdavidn » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

ptest1 wrote: post #163

Besides the tremendous onus laws like this may place on small startups and side projects: Does anyone know how companies are supposed to comply if “user data” literally cannot be deleted? I’m thinking in the case of blockchain type applications, where one users’ actions feed into another users’ actions, and you can’t deleted user A’s actions without deleting potentially tons of other stuff and destroying the applicat…

Git does have a mechanism to remove data from history. It's ugly, and you end up with new commit hashes, but it works. It was designed for situations in which a developer accidentally adds something sensitive, like a production database snapshot, to source control.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#204

Post by lemoncucumber » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #196

nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

I've commented in the past that the privacy community is diverse. I divide the community into (at least) two major groups: - People who believe that privacy means being able to anonymously use services. - People who believe that privacy means being able to control what other people do with data about you. These are not compatible views, and they often conflict with each other -- both philosophically and practically.…

Thanks, this clarified my thinking on the issue in a really useful way.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#205

Post by jredwards » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

1000units wrote: post #194

darawk wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Consumers can opt out of their data being sold, and businesses can’t retaliate by changing the price or level of service. This is something I object to. It's just fundamentally stupid and doesn't make sense. The entire premise of free exchange is that I give you my services in exchange for something of value of yours. Making it illegal to withhold services if you don't give up your data is crazy. The only reason…

Good laws put bad people out of business. I don't see the issue here.

The reason there are so many wonderful services available for free is because they make money selling your data. If the service is free, the product is you.

For many, many people, that is _fine_.

The real issue I see here is how this law is written and how we're interpreting it. If the law makes it so that people who want to opt out of free internet services because of privacy concerns are free to do so, then we're all good. If the law is written such that people who want to avail themselves of free services in exchange for their data are no longer able to do so because that business model is broken, then I see a lot of problems.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#206

Post by morganherlocker » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #136

jjuhl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don't do stupid privacy violating shit and you'll be fine anywhere. Collect no information. Share no information. You are good - everywhere . And that really ought to be the default behaviour..

I'm not sure how ecommerce works without some information from the user, such as what they're trying to purchase, the quantity, a shipping address, and some form of payment, most likely a credit card.

... and if you plan to handle this type of highly sensitive data, you should be prepared to provide some basic levels of compliance, including appropriate auditing of sensitive data along with informed consent from users.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#207

Post by joshklein » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #172

nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

> - Consumers can opt out of their data being sold, and businesses can’t retaliate by changing the price or level of service. This is something I object to. It's just fundamentally stupid and doesn't make sense. The entire premise of free exchange is that I give you my services in exchange for something of value of yours. Making it illegal to withhold services if you don't give up your data is crazy. The only reason…

Charging different customers a different price for the same product is illegal under US law, and California laws don’t change that.

EDIT: Several comments below point out the innumerable businesses operating in such a way as to make mine an impossible claim.

Enumerating the established methods to avoid meeting the legal parameters of price discrimination is not the same as price discrimination being legal.

My bar for following just laws is higher than the minimum required to avoid being prosecuted. I’m sure experts can help work around any future privacy laws too, so why even worry?

Surveillance already creates a different product one can charge more for, though your lawyer might advise you call it “personalization” in memos.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#208

Post by pitaj » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #118

mahmoudimus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that regulation always has unexpected side effects, some of which can be abused to actually do the perverse inverse of what they're intended to protect against. This is intuitive because regulation + law can really put a competitive barrier for established incumbents who (and arguably, they would be the target for lawsuits here) have resources to implement and comply with these regulations. The la…

On the flip side, the downsides of regulations don’t outweigh their utility. We don’t scrap seatbelt and airbag regulations just because they’ve had some unintended side effects. Regulations aren’t set in stone forever, either, and a functional legislative body can always modify and update them as their effects become more well known. Or, well, maybe I sound too idealistic. But...I think most of us can all agree that…

> On the flip side, the downsides of regulations don’t outweigh their utility.

Often times, they do. Often regulations don't even achieve their own goals. Sometimes they even result in the opposite.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#209

Post by pitaj » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #178

lacampbell wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US scrapped alcohol prohibition due to its unintended side effects, and is increasingly scrapping marijuana prohibitions. Often the downsides do outweigh their utility.

"Someone passed a bad law once, therefore all laws are bad." Guess we don't need food safety laws anymore, prohibition was bad! Surely you can understand the difference between prohibition and consumer-protection laws? They aren't even like, the same field of laws.

No, the point is that it's important to address and control for all of the consequences of policy - including the unintended ones.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#210

Post by ptest1 » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

mdavidn wrote: post #203

ptest1 wrote: post #163

Besides the tremendous onus laws like this may place on small startups and side projects: Does anyone know how companies are supposed to comply if “user data” literally cannot be deleted? I’m thinking in the case of blockchain type applications, where one users’ actions feed into another users’ actions, and you can’t deleted user A’s actions without deleting potentially tons of other stuff and destroying the applicat…

Git does have a mechanism to remove data from history. It's ugly, and you end up with new commit hashes, but it works. It was designed for situations in which a developer accidentally adds something sensitive, like a production database snapshot, to source control.

Yeah so you could do a rebase and remove all of the user’s commits, but their work would likely still remain in the subsequent history- integrated as changes in some way. It would be a real mess.