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Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

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Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#121

Post by the_jeremy »

Vinnl wrote: post #78
imgabe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for providing an actual, tangible downside to this. I've never really seen one before. So many articles like this end up with people coming up with scenarios like "But what if there's a dictator and he wants to round up everyone who bought a 12-pack of Charmin' last week?" It would be interesting to see the arms race that could arise, though. If individualized prices became enough of a thing, there would pr…

How about "bombarding someone with articles about how voting doesn't matter if their spending pattern matches that of a particular demographic"?

gaslighting as a service: https://www.thespinner.net/

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#122

Post by ttalle »

hansvm wrote: post #117
skummetmaelk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disgusting

Why? In any transaction there's a non-negative spread between how much the buyer and seller value the item being exchanged. Why is it disgusting if the seller captures that spread but not if the buyer captures it, or is there some other distinction you're drawing? Off-topic: this same idea has been cropping up a lot on HN recently with respect to salaries when moving to lower CoL areas. The argument on one side is th…

The problem is with the information inbalance. Before, a salesman, for example would look at what kind of clothing you were wearing and what segment items you're looking for.

Now let's do a little thought-experiment with the Uber ride and look at the information you and Uber have to make your price and choice on:

For Uber:

- What time is it? +

- Are you far away from home? +

- Have you been here before? -

- What have you paid before? +

- Where do you shop usually? +

- Are you rich? ++

- Are you ill? +

- Are you pregnant? +

- Are you drunk? ++

- Are you very drunk? +++ (bonus!)

- Are you sad? +

- Did you just break up? ++

- Do you have any friends? +/-

- Do you have any friends with cars? -

- Are you alone? +

- Are you going home? +

- Are you already home? -

- probably a lot more...

For you:

- Price?

- How screwed am I if I don't take the ride?

There are not many other options. Maybe a taxi's while they last and Lyft probably has the same algorithm.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#123

Post by hansvm »

ttalle wrote: post #122
hansvm wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? In any transaction there's a non-negative spread between how much the buyer and seller value the item being exchanged. Why is it disgusting if the seller captures that spread but not if the buyer captures it, or is there some other distinction you're drawing? Off-topic: this same idea has been cropping up a lot on HN recently with respect to salaries when moving to lower CoL areas. The argument on one side is th…

The problem is with the information inbalance. Before, a salesman, for example would look at what kind of clothing you were wearing and what segment items you're looking for. Now let's do a little thought-experiment with the Uber ride and look at the information you and Uber have to make your price and choice on: For Uber: - What time is it? + - Are you far away from home? + - Have you been here before? - - What have…

Is the problem then that they have that information, and having that information is inherently bad for some reason regardless of the effects, or is it that with that information they're able to reliably capture more of the market surplus and cause more of your transactions to only be barely worth it for you?

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#124

Post by jfoster »

AshWolfy wrote: post #33
jfoster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I sell my data for a dollar and subsequently ensure I only buy what I need, am I ahead?

what makes you think you are special and able to resist manipulation?

Not asserting that I am. It was a hypothetical.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#125

Post by awinter-py »

backtoyoujim wrote: post #22
awinter-py wrote: post #16

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.

How can that kind of inequality look like justice to anyone other than someone very economically privileged ?

look your objection is valid but:

privacy as a legal right is complex and ill-defined -- if you look just at CCPA or GDPR, these are big laws with large compliance costs with the risk of benefiting incumbents like FB/G

if your goal is to develop a robust case law for privacy in the united states, pay for privacy accomplishes that because if I pay a dollar for 'private mode', and the vendor breaks our contract, I can absolutely sue.

we also don't know which privacy features users want. hard to write laws without market research, and you can't do market research if there's no market for a good.

another issue is that if privacy laws 'demonetize free tiers', you're effectively paying for privacy anyway. 'pay for privacy' vs 'privacy as right' may be a false choice.

I'm not saying market privacy is fair on the face of it, but it may be more effective than the alternatives.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#126

Post by pmiller2 »

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #115
pmiller2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need a way to disable access to your data that doesn't involve suing big companies that have lots of lawyers. And, there's no way to prevent them from copying it.

Wouldn't that be the same as copying books or music, we could copyright/authorright our private data, in that way any unauthorized data copy would mean infringement and fines. Authorities would have ability to check databases.

Copyright is a very, very bad example here, since it's only enforced by aggrieved parties through the legal system. Would you want to take on Facebook in a copyright lawsuit? And, as for these databases, how is anyone going to be able to tell whether, say, Facebook really has your data, or, if it's just gotten opaquely encoded somewhere in some ML algorithm?

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#127

Post by shadowprofile77 »

furyofantares wrote: post #25
asciident wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very cynical take assuming retail is zero-sum. It could also be helping you find the products you need at an opportune time, increasing the value for all parties. Or based on purchase patterns, they're able to stock inventory more accurately based on predicted purchases, and save on storage and transport.

Except all the multibillion dollar advertising mega corporations happen to sell directly to the people who want to affect your behavior to their benefit. You could argue that it just happens to also be to your benefit by chance, but that's certainly not where the incentives lie. By comparison, companies like consumer reports, which instead directly sell you information to influence your behavior to your benefit are t…

>The advertising industry is nearly a trillion dollar industry -- if a large amount of that value is going to the consumer why hasn't there been massive innovation in selling to it directly to the consumer?

But a hefty part of that value does come from selling it to the consumer, as long as he or she is interested. Advertising, and especially online advertising have both "democratized" greatly as the ad industry has grown over recent decades, and smaller business, so many of them belonging to consumers in other contexts, use this same consumer data to try benefitting their own bottom line.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#128

Post by charwalker »

hansvm wrote: post #117
skummetmaelk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disgusting

Why? In any transaction there's a non-negative spread between how much the buyer and seller value the item being exchanged. Why is it disgusting if the seller captures that spread but not if the buyer captures it, or is there some other distinction you're drawing? Off-topic: this same idea has been cropping up a lot on HN recently with respect to salaries when moving to lower CoL areas. The argument on one side is th…

There's an inherent information and therefore power imbalance as well as general unethical nature of the interactions.

I understand this article. I still want to see a penny every time my data is used/accessed/sold/etc, if anything to drive up the cost of contracts around or servicing of my data. If my data is made functionally anonymous then make it a dime payment and then a penny every time that block of data is used sold. Send it as a check to my mailing address with a letter including the legal entities involved, initial source of the data, what type or category of data they have relating to me (like PII category ex address, name, purchase history, etc), their intended use for the data (research vs marketing), and how I can contact to have my data removed from the set. Also if my data is made anonymous, provide a 1 penny check and above information for any use or sale of the data set.

Yes this regulation would kill the industry in overhead costs aimed at making the information somewhat close to the 'informed consent' required for medical approvals and breaking down how the industry works. Maybe make it so on initial sale and usage you get a check then at the start of each following year that entity pays out for annual usage.

Our data is valuable collectively to identify trends, markets, and opportunity and I'd like to know how I'm manipulated into being a part of that as well as what entities I cannot trust with any personal data. And I think this should apply to Experian/etc too. Chase wants to find out my credit score to market CC reward offers to me? Make it known and pay me the same way farms are paid for the useful manure their animals produce.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#129

Post by AntiImperialist »

ragebol wrote: post #103
AntiImperialist wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the right to bear arms mean that someone should give you a gun for free? Whether it's a right has nothing to do with whether you have to pay for it.

A right in itself costs nothing, to exercise a right is something else. If you've always had (some level of) privacy and that is (suddenly) taken away. With gun, you don't have one by default and getting one costs something. With privacy you (should) have it by default and now it would cost something to keep it. I wonder if people would accept to have to give up a gun they already had and then get paid to not have on…

You're talking as if Google is getting into your home and taking away your privacy.

A milkman knew where you lived, a plumber knows what your interiors looked like. You sacrifice your privacy for service.

Google is no different. You used their services in exchange for your information. It costs you nothing to not use these services.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#130

Post by dredmorbius »

ttalle wrote: post #122
hansvm wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? In any transaction there's a non-negative spread between how much the buyer and seller value the item being exchanged. Why is it disgusting if the seller captures that spread but not if the buyer captures it, or is there some other distinction you're drawing? Off-topic: this same idea has been cropping up a lot on HN recently with respect to salaries when moving to lower CoL areas. The argument on one side is th…

The problem is with the information inbalance. Before, a salesman, for example would look at what kind of clothing you were wearing and what segment items you're looking for. Now let's do a little thought-experiment with the Uber ride and look at the information you and Uber have to make your price and choice on: For Uber: - What time is it? + - Are you far away from home? + - Have you been here before? - - What have…

With machine learning, the model isn't even a set of explicitly selected factor whose parameters are then derived from data, but hidden factors (and interactions) within the neural net. The engineers who construct the models don't even knnoe how they achieve their ressults, only that they do.

Upside? Plausible deniability! An NN AI that happens to score based on age, gender, gender preference, religion, disability status, and ethnicity, but buried among other factors and not explicitly exposed? Perfectly fine! (At least until you can hire stats PhDs to prove statistically significant bias.)

Bad news? The engineers have no idea why (or when) the model gives bad results. It's answers without insight.

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