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Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

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

#241
This:

> The bill would authorize businesses to offer financial incentives for collection of personal information.

Means it's nothing like the GDPR. This might actually be a sane law. And it doesnt implement punitive fines if you get hacked. Nor does it bring about a massive cookie alert insanity.

The right to delete may work in europe , but i think in the US it is going to clash with free speech laws. So it might not work at all.

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

#242
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Durbin Act of 2010 changed that Ah! I was always saying I'm surprised by the brazenness of gas stations to offer cash discounts in violation of their credit processing agreements. Today I learned that as of 2010 the law protects them. Thanks!

The gimmick has always been that you can't charge more for using a credit card, but you can offer a cash discount . So basically you just have to advertise the credit card price rather than it being a surprise fee added on at the last second. Which makes sense, most other countries actually roll sales tax and others into the advertised prices, and what you see is what you'll pay out the door.

Right, but before 2010 the credit processing agreements could (and always did) include language that you could not offer a different price to credit customers and cash customers, discount or not. Otherwise you would lose your ability to accept credit cards. Some places would still offer a cash discount and assume they wouldn't get caught, but most places didn't risk it.

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

#243
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…

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…

How do car dealerships do it then?

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

#244
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this mentality. If someone is fine giving a company some information, and the company uses that to give them a better product, where is the harm? And what right do you have to stop those two parties from voluntarily exchanging goods and services?

If I am voluntarily giving information to a company, and have been completely informed of all the purposes that it will be put to (especially which companies it may be transmitted to), then I have no problem with it at all, personally. And I particularly would not be inclined to say that others can't decide this for themselves. The problem is the rampant data collection that is engaged in without my permission and/or…

>If I am voluntarily giving information to a company, and have been completely informed of all the purposes that it will be put to (especially which companies it may be transmitted to), then I have no problem with it at all, personally. And I particularly would not be inclined to say that others can't decide this for themselves.

I fully agree, but it seems like under this legislation it becomes illegal to conduct a business in this manner. If I am fine with trading a certain set of my data for access to a service, I should be able to do so (if the service provides that option, obviously).

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

#245
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…

They’re not bad for the consumer. They’re just hard to implement in practice. I’m going through this right now at a well known tech co. Nobody, including the lawyers on both sides of the table, knows exactly what to do to be compliant because a lot of the bill is pretty vague on details.

And for some companies doing shit like selling customer data is the only reason they’re in business. Good riddance to them though.

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

#246
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am on board with this law, but I’m curious how these two points will shake out: > - 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. Seems to me that it’s a distinction without a difference. Is there something I’m missing?

IANAL, but I'm guessing it's the difference between opting in and opting out? For example, I think it would be legal for Verizon to get around this law by increasing their prices by $5 across the board, and offering a $5 rebate for customers who want to opt-in to their data being sold. But it would not be legal for Verizon to allow customers to opt-out of data collection by paying an extra $5 a month. In the first ap…

Assuming that's true, then it's just accounting for social behavior.

A user isn't "paying" for privacy. Privacy comes by default (for a price) and a company can pay a user to harvest their data.

Financially, they both work out the same, but based on opt-in, opt-out behaviors and perception I presume they have a different impact. The wording specified by the law says that users should have a default expectation of privacy. They can actively choose to give that up for a fee.

The business profit loss side of it says, you can't build a business that assumes it gets to profit off harvesting user's data for free. User data has value, place a value on it, and make it an explicit part of the transaction.

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

#247
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 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…

I think the idea is that regulation always has unexpected side effects

So does a lack of regulation. That's how we ended up here.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This statement is too broad brush for me to actually understand where you're coming from. Let's try a few variations of the theme and see if we can suss out why we perceive this so differently. If none of these touch on your perspective, I'd appreciate it if you could propose some of your own. Please note that these are deliberately constructed as strawmen; I am not advocating for them or saying you do. 1/ Would you…

These all sound fine, except I don't know that credit agencies are held to high standards.

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

#249
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…

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…

I have a coupon code that says otherwise.

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

#250
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…

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…

Not even remotely true unless you're selling to the government. The GSA does get a bit testy if they think you're cutting someone else a better deal.
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