Ask HN: A simple solution to limit surveillance capitalism?

Not an original idea but I'd be interested in HN's perspective.

Can we reduce “surveillance capitalism” by reducing the incentive to collect personal data? Personal data is primarily collected and used by the advertising industry. Large ad companies such as Facebook and Google already admit that microtargeting with personal data is being misused. Google voluntarily restricts targeting for political advertising [1] while Facebook has called for legislation [2].

If we were to simply ban the use of personal data beyond a few key items like age, gender and zip code for delivering ads there would be less reason to collect more data. Advertising companies will still earn ample profit from their ads with contextual targeting (e.g. showing ads related to search terms or related to the topic of a post or news item being displayed on the screen) and coarse grained targeting.

The simplicity of the rule would simpler to understand and enforce and would be much less prone to loopholes exploited by the sophisticated legal teams at the largest advertising companies. This creates a more level playing field between large and small companies perhaps enabling increased competition.

Banning targeted advertising is not a panacea for protecting personal data. Other industries can still extract value including insurance companies that may adjust prices up or down based on your data or retailers may offer discounts or enhanced services to its most profitable customers. Even so by restricting the most profitable and prevalent misuse of personal data perhaps we can protect it.

What do you think? Would this work?

Further reading: > https://newrepublic.com/article/147887/ban-targeted-advertising-facebook-google > https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-advertising/

1 [https://www.blog.google/technology/ads/update-our-political-ads-policy/] 2 [https://about.fb.com/news/2020/01/political-ads/]

Certainly agree on the process of gaining support but thought we should test the idea a bit first. Also interested in framing the conversation a bit differently.

Do you see any obvious issues with banning targeted advertising?

Personal data is collected, though often not reused or shared by many industries other than advertising.

For example, many organizations proactively collect emergency contact information: your employer, sports clubs, recreation companies (rafting, zipline,...).

> Can we reduce “surveillance capitalism” by reducing the incentive to collect personal data?

Reduce? Sure. Reduce in a meaningful way? Ambiguous, but the cynic in me says probably not.

> Personal data is primarily collected and used by the advertising industry

This is just one (and in my opinion, the most benign) facet of surveillance capitalism. You also have to consider these companies like Taser[1] and Amazon[2] that sell facial recognition software to the police. It's not fair to say surveillance capitalism is primarily/mainly/only an ad-tech problem. That type of talk can actually be quite deceiving because the iceberg (surveillance capitalism) is much bigger underneath the surface (when you go further than just ad-tech).

> If we were to simply ban the use of personal data beyond a few key items like age, gender and zip code for delivering ads there would be less reason to collect more data

But what is "personal data"? We're talking quintillions of bytes pinging and ponging on a daily basis. The idea that we could have surgical precision in determining what is/isn't personal data (or even a rough idea) is kinda laughable. In theory could we do it? Absolutely of course. But in reality? I'll let you have a good laugh just thinking about the powers that be working to "make the world a better place".

> Advertising companies will still earn ample profit from their ads with contextual targeting (e.g. showing ads related to search terms or related to the topic of a post or news item being displayed on the screen) and coarse grained targeting

Ad-tech companies don't want "ample" profit. They want _all_ the profit. That's capitalism. Your question/statement is a bit of "having your cake and eating it too". You think Zuckerberg (as an example) would be happy with say...10 billion dollars of net worth? No. He wants it all.

> This creates a more level playing field between large and small companies perhaps enabling increased competition.

As long as we have entry portals owned by monopolistic walled gardens (e.g., the Apple app store, Chrome web browser, Facebook (and its subsidiaries)) there is no such thing as a leveled playing field. You're asking team Google to play basketball "fairly", but team Google owns the officials, the ball, the hoop, the court, the stadium, and the concession stands - they can do whatever they want.

IMO

If we want to stop surveillance capitalism we have the most daunting task there ever was or could be - educating the public. If people knew "hey that's your data and you're not making any money off of it" they'd be much more inclined to give a damn. Only when we can find a way to make people realize "Hey Jon Doe, you could've made $300 last month off of your data, but $LARGE_COMPANY is keeping it all for themselves. Get what you deserve!", can start to make a dent in people's minds.

steps off soapbox

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/taser-maker-wont-use-facial-reco...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/10/21287101/amazon-rekogniti...

It would be interesting if it were possible to create a tool of some sort that distorts your personal data and or floods irrelevant data along with it so it is not so easily collected. For example any time your location is provided it also sends 9 randomized locations, every time you click a google search 9 other random clicks occur on other pages etc, so instead of getting relevant data you are getting a dataset of largely irrelevant data with the goods buried within.