Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 553 posts

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

#371

Post by jhayward »

lacampbell wrote: post #170
dangus wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

> Often the downsides do outweigh their utility.

More like, "almost never do the down sides outweigh their utility, because they aren't designed by idiots".

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

#372

Post by JohnFen »

brightball wrote: post #341
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…

Agree entirely. This part is overreach as it’s now forcing a company to provide a service for which they receive no compensation. That’s too far.

I honestly don't see how it's doing that. The legislation doesn't even make an ad-based revenue model illegal.

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

#373

Post by jhayward »

pitaj wrote: post #208
dangus wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please show your work. I see lots of very successful regulation, and very few examples of regulation we'd be better without.

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

#374

Post by JohnFen »

jolmg wrote: post #265
mirimir wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't collect any information that's not essential to delivering content and services, there shouldn't be any problem. If you have a shopping cart, you must collect billing and shipping information. But you don't need to use it for any other purpose.

> If you don't collect any information that's not essential to delivering content and services, there shouldn't be any problem. That's pretty ambiguous. For example, I'm pretty sure everything Google does that can be considered against privacy can and is tied to the service they provide as features. The fact they keep a history of everywhere you went to can be used by users to recall the locations they've been too. T…

I don't use Google services at all, but Google still collects data about me. That's a serious problem.

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

#375

Post by tchock23 »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #34
rdlecler1 wrote: post #3

So the author would rather see each state/country implement it’s own laws so that a small startup needs to ensure they comply with hundreds of regulatory jurisdictions... awesome.

And that's how privacy compliance as a service was born.

Unfortunately, you’re correct. Post GDPR I’ve been pitched many times by EU companies trying to be my representative for GDPR, so if that is any indication we’ll see a booming industry for that in the US as well...

Funny enough, the emails sent by these companies are not GDPR compliant and they’ve given me no indication as to how they gathered my info, nor do they give me an opt out.

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

#376

Post by cwkoss »

Kalium wrote: post #80
munk-a wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each state can choose to be as restrictive as they like in their laws, and each startup can chose to invest in compliance on a wide scale or in the narrow scale as they'd like. It'd be nice if this was unified but it ain't because: 1. Tech companies lobby like hell at a national level 2. The national government is sort of broken right now so that's how the cookie crumbles. The fact that a number of companies have ski…

> Each state can choose to be as restrictive as they like in their laws, and each startup can chose to invest in compliance on a wide scale or in the narrow scale as they'd like. There's a special hell that exists where one state mandates records must be held for at least seven years and another mandates deletion at five. When the two states border one another and you may not have home addresses, how do you determine…

Pass a federal law that allows any American to choose the state jurisdiction they want their account managed under at sign up. Corporations can choose to incorporate in Delaware without any real presence, consumers should be able to pick and choose jurisdictions as well.

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

#377

Post by potta_coffee »

brightball wrote: post #341
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…

Agree entirely. This part is overreach as it’s now forcing a company to provide a service for which they receive no compensation. That’s too far.

They're not being forced to continue offering any services.

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

#378

Post by JohnFen »

sgregnt wrote: post #370
100100010001 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this anecdotal or do you have empirical evidence?

No this is one of the most verified facts. The privacy agreements of gmail, facebook and what not, serve like a poll for this: if you use the service you agree to this. Majority of people use Gmail, Facebook, etc. So this is not anecdotal. On the other hand the desire to "protect" privacy at the expense of free services is based on anecdotal data at best.

> The privacy agreements of gmail, facebook and what not, serve like a poll for this

I don't think they do, given that most people don't read them, and a large percentage of them are written so it's very hard to tell what they are really saying unless you're a lawyer.

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

#379

Post by hrjriei9 »

d1zzy wrote: post #332
jakelazaroff wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire premise of free exchange is that I give you my services in exchange for something of value of yours. "Something" doesn't mean "anything". You can't offer your services in exchange for e.g. my body parts. Why are we willing to ban that but not our data? > The only reason those services are being provided at all is to get that data. That's effectively a requirement that people provide services for free. We…

> "Something" doesn't mean "anything". You can't offer your services in exchange for e.g. my body parts. Why are we willing to ban that but not our data? Because if you were to run a survey over the general population the large majority is fine not having to pay for gmail, google search, maps and other "free" services while some data may be collected doing so while a much smaller percentage thinks it's OK to sell the…

The large majority have long held it ok to bomb other nations, persecute pot, ostracize others for sexual preference... basically a piss poor yard stick for what’s ok given how emotionally coopted they can be into believing nonsense.

Like how fetishizing the needs of the business class is of the utmost importance to maintaining cohesive social structure.

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

#380

Post by SXX »

d1zzy wrote: post #332
jakelazaroff wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire premise of free exchange is that I give you my services in exchange for something of value of yours. "Something" doesn't mean "anything". You can't offer your services in exchange for e.g. my body parts. Why are we willing to ban that but not our data? > The only reason those services are being provided at all is to get that data. That's effectively a requirement that people provide services for free. We…

> "Something" doesn't mean "anything". You can't offer your services in exchange for e.g. my body parts. Why are we willing to ban that but not our data? Because if you were to run a survey over the general population the large majority is fine not having to pay for gmail, google search, maps and other "free" services while some data may be collected doing so while a much smaller percentage thinks it's OK to sell the…

General population is simply not aware of how much surveillance is involved and how much of their private information said companies collect, use or sell to 3rd parties. Many are happy to get "free" service in exchange for "some data", but most people people would be very much against someone data mining their health or pregnancy status, using some sophisticated algorithm to selling something harmful to their kids or messing with their mood when they're in depression to maximize profits.

Most people don't understand the risks and how badly mass surveillance done by Google / Facebook / etc can be abused. So akin to situation with tobacco industry someone have to educate them about this.

Post reply on HN