31–40 of 133 posts
Have never understood EFF's objection to 'pay for privacy' (covered in the middle of this article). Being able to pay for privacy is better than not being able to. It creates the beginning of accountability for cos and optionality for users.
Privacy should be a right but it isn’t. At this moment privacy is very much a commodity or else we wouldn’t need articles like these.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only reason I'll pay you a dollar for your data is that I'll make 2 dollars selling you shit you wouldn't have bought otherwise using it. And for me to make 2 dollars, you need to buy 20 dollars worth of shit. Shit you didn't actually want or need.
If I sell my data for a dollar and subsequently ensure I only buy what I need, am I ahead?
I was thinking about a related idea recently - how much is my grocery information privacy worth for me? Summed up, I'm currently saving just over 11% on all the groceries + ~7% on fuel cost by sharing that information with 5 companies. (car insurance, CC, shop card, honey, airline) I'm not attached to this, I'd rather the programs like this get destroyed. But also by stacking the offers, I believe I'm getting more va…
Sure, until that information is used to give individualized prices and other things. Or used to hide things or show you only things the algorithms decide you like....or should have according to them. Already i've read things about hotel websites and stuff altering prices based on which device you're using to browse their site. In a world where your personal shopping information is bought and sold and things become in…
If anything, prices would rise for richer people, and decline for poorer people.
Is that bad?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, until that information is used to give individualized prices and other things. Or used to hide things or show you only things the algorithms decide you like....or should have according to them. Already i've read things about hotel websites and stuff altering prices based on which device you're using to browse their site. In a world where your personal shopping information is bought and sold and things become in…
> Sure, until that information is used to give individualized prices and other things. Or used to hide things or show you only things the algorithms decide you like....or should have according to them. If anything, prices would rise for richer people, and decline for poorer people. Is that bad?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sure, until that information is used to give individualized prices and other things. Or used to hide things or show you only things the algorithms decide you like....or should have according to them. If anything, prices would rise for richer people, and decline for poorer people. Is that bad?
Perhaps, but if/when word got out that this was occurring, an arbitrage opportunity would be available. Unless it were only a very marginal amount cheaper that would not cover the cost of arbitrage.
In particular, I think this idea of trading your data is easy to understand and communicate. Also, could it be the case that as soon as companies are forced to offer a price for your data a lot of the predatory data collection schemes may not be profitable enough as a result? I imagine you can't just make a crappy app and start collecting user info en masse because it now incurs a real cost. Also I think data should be traded precisely where every data point generated should be worth something. Not just as a one time thing.
> It’s also why we advocate strongly for laws that make privacy the default I always wonder: didn't this use to be the case? In the 80s, could we even imagine a telco listening in on our conversations? When did things go sideways?
I was thinking about a related idea recently - how much is my grocery information privacy worth for me? Summed up, I'm currently saving just over 11% on all the groceries + ~7% on fuel cost by sharing that information with 5 companies. (car insurance, CC, shop card, honey, airline) I'm not attached to this, I'd rather the programs like this get destroyed. But also by stacking the offers, I believe I'm getting more va…
For other elements of my data I am relatively hard line - it's too hard to value the privacy/ money breakeven and my approach is always to withhold wherever possible. In the long run this tends to net me on right side of any scandal even if I am a laggard on some social trend or convenience
Last year I was part of a working group on a data dividend proposal for the state of California, which you can read about at https://www.datadividends.org/ .
Our conclusions led us much closer to the spirit of this EFF article than the term "data dividends" might suggest. We recommended against any kind of personalized payments. We considered a small universal basic income funded by a "data tax", but because of the small amount (as mentioned by the EFF), we focused on use of a data tax to fund public projects and initiatives aimed at redistributing the benefits of data more equitably.
We mostly stayed away from recommending privacy or data ownership regulation because (a) California had recently passed the CCPA and (b) this question seemed outside of our mandate, but I agree that the two should be considered together.