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Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

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Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#31

Post by sroussey »

justanotherc wrote: post #28
Karunamon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that people wind up worried about the wrong thing on these systems. The worst case scenario, where some all-knowing system negatively impacts you because it's rating your behavior on some opaque scale, isn't the one we should be worried about. That by itself is scary enough, but the much more likely case is the one where this system is rating you based on wrong information , and given Finagle's law.. Especial…

The justice system has built into it the requirement to justify allegations against you though. By design everything in the justice system is transparent or its not admissible. So an opaque "score" of any sort wouldn't ever be acceptable evidence.

You are thinking in about evidence in court. Police have other data that can flag you for greater scrutiny. Then your chances of even being in court go up.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#32

Post by tomcooks »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #25
usrusr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very good reason why organizations should be allowed to keep "fool me once/twice/thrice" records: it's what enables them to be nice to customers who don't abuse that niceness. But there's no process to appeal and the data might be laughably wrong. Outlawing cross-organizational aggregation might be a reasonable middle ground. It gives a further advantage to giants like Amazon, but all the problems compound…

In 2006, I spent some time in the hospital after a bike accident. Someone who shared my recovery room was an guy with kidney failure & an extremely poor attitude. I learned he was running out of places to get dialysis because he kept treating the staff poorly & getting kicked out of the dialysis centers. Imagine having some poor newly hired receptionist trying to help this near death, abusive asshole & reading a note…

Precisely what the Hippocratic Oath states, take care of all who have the green smiley icon and 70 or more happy points

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#33

Post by gmantg »

vorpalhex wrote: post #27
gmantg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to disclose anything: plausible deniability is enough. And "bias" can be fixed by ad-hoc quotas.

Why wouldn't an HR person or hiring staffer immediately out the company or even sue them?

What do you mean? Why wouldn't an HR sue his own employer? Because binding arbitration and the employer will make sure to destroy the reputation of that HR.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#34

Post by amoshi »

cosmodisk wrote: post #5

People are complex. If some piece of code is used to predict my employability based on my facial expressions, there's not much to add. It's already as bad as it gets: you can't say/write anything non vanilla in public because 10 years later some HR snooping app will analyze the sentiment on the post and outright reject you. And we all kind of blindly walking into this no questions asked.

>And we all kind of blindly walking into this no questions asked.

It's already happening, now, unfortunately. All your tweets (posted & liked) etc analyzed and flagged for bad language, drug/alcohol mentions, bigotry etc. and a report generated for HR.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363

The company in question is used by Sterling and HireRight, so this isn't some unknown/niche company.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#36

Post by FalconSensei »

vorpalhex wrote: post #27
gmantg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to disclose anything: plausible deniability is enough. And "bias" can be fixed by ad-hoc quotas.

Why wouldn't an HR person or hiring staffer immediately out the company or even sue them?

they wouldn't be employed anywhere else?

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#37

Post by jermier »

There are people out there resisting these efforts. For example, I know people who are against smartphones and use a so called 'dumbphone' or feature phone for their main number. If they need to buy groceries, they refuse to use a loyalty card, and always pay in cash. They typically have a secure and private laptop with something like Ubuntu on it, and use Firefox with all the anti-tracking features enabled, and uBlock Origin installed, JS turned off by default etc. The typical steps people take to minimize their footprint against these predictive algos

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#38

Post by dragonwriter »

drtillberg wrote: post #17

A central premise of this article is not correct. If an employer, for example, is using tens of thousands of background data points to deny employment to a person, the employer would need to disclose that to the applicant.[1]. If the things in this article are secret then the law may well be violated. Also, not really the best idea to apply secret proprietary algorithms to these kinds of decisions because you're even…

> Also, not really the best idea to apply secret proprietary algorithms to these kinds of decisions because you're eventually going to have to disprove improper bias

You only have to disprove that if the applicant can first show the existence of bias, which with a secret proprietary algo that they don't have access to either the inputs or outputs of or know exists, is pretty hard to do.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#39

Post by icedistilled »

Eyght wrote: post #9

I feel like the Chinese style social score system won't have enough support in government for most countries, but we'll receive a decentralized version anyway through corporate overreach. Also, it's always amusing to arrive at an article about data collection and be greeted by this: https://i.imgur.com/d4Z4sdd.png

I mean, it's already standard practice (All states except CA) to use credit score in things like pricing your auto insurance.

It's only a tiny leap to incorporate a similar magic number some company comes up with. Actually due to competition, if it correlates to risk, all companies will literally be forced to use the magic numbers or go into an adverse selection death spiral.

Unless there is regulation against it, like in CA. Not all regulation is bad.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#40

Post by Spooky23 »

Eyght wrote: post #9

I feel like the Chinese style social score system won't have enough support in government for most countries, but we'll receive a decentralized version anyway through corporate overreach. Also, it's always amusing to arrive at an article about data collection and be greeted by this: https://i.imgur.com/d4Z4sdd.png

It’s already happening. Georgia had a anti-opioid program where they could score every pregnant woman in the state for likelihood to become dependent on opioids during pregnancy. Babies born with addiction cost the state about $1M each.

There were a few similar programs a few years ago when federal grants were made available. Iirc, they were modeled on the stuff built to identify people vulnerable to becoming extremist terrorist types. Insurance companies have databases of way more lifestyle and other behavior data than people realize. (Everything from sports, politics, to porn and gambling habits — anything for sale) I’m pretty sure Georgia mashed that against Medicaid claim data to build the model.

It’s a reason why we all need to watch “pre-existing condition” debates closely. If insurers know that 45 year old divorced father of 3 who moves every 3 months is a smoker, gambler and drinker, they don’t want to write a policy — the guy is a trainwreck with no support system.

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