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Little League wants all your information

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Re: Little League wants all your information

#151

Post by wonnage »

jancsika wrote: post #36
Spooky23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

> Age is very important for leveling kids appropriately and keeping them safe, which is why birth certificates are required — parents are insane and go to extreme lengths (I personally encountered forged documents, parents who delayed entry into kindergarten to age 6, bogus documents from siblings or cousins, etc) to try to let older kids play in younger levels. This being HN, I figure I can make this criticism and b…

HN is unable to conceive of an alternate model to human cooperation, it's the Linux Kernel or the abyss

Re: Little League wants all your information

#152

Post by danShumway »

Spooky23 wrote: post #13
kstrauser wrote: post #2

Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post. I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m very opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little L…

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

> I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases.

You're almost certainly right, but I still think for legal documents this kind of argument needs to die. I'm really, really sick of being asked to be OK with agreements that give organizations significant, unnecessary levels of power simply because they say they won't misuse it. What are the consequences in place if Little League decides to misuse this data? This agreement removes any accountability or oversight from Little League's data handling.

Frankly, it's magical thinking. In the real world, organizations do corrupt things sometimes. Organizations accidentally leak data, they have bad actors, they get into conflicts and decide to stop operating in good faith. We shouldn't give those organizations blank checks to do so.

This kind of fuzzy "trust us" agreement is fine for something casual that parents are putting together, but it's not fine when it's an organization of this size. Because I guarantee that in the event of a scandal, if a Little League was ever sharing personal information with advertisers, this contract would get trotted out during the lawsuit to argue that the defendants couldn't sue. I don't believe for a second that a Little League wouldn't look at the letter of the contract in that situation rather than the "spirit" of the contract.

So even in situations where an org isn't actively trying to take advantage of you, it's harmful for contracts to have this kind of language. Often this language is genuinely only put in because some lawyer somewhere recommended it, often nobody is trying to take advantage of anyone. But even so, legal documents are not gentleperson's agreements, and we shouldn't treat them that way, we should treat them seriously.

It's OK for you to acknowledge that the agreement probably doesn't have malicious intent. It's not OK for someone to argue that not having malicious intent makes the agreement acceptable.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#153

Post by Scottn1 »

ryandrake wrote: post #140
kstrauser wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s what happens when you don’t have residency rules: Suppose you have suburb A next to suburb B. B has an awesome Little League local organization, but A’s is awful. Parents from A all send their kids to play ball in B. The problem is that B’s resources are finite, too: there are only so many baseball fields available for practice at a time, or batting practice cages, etc. And since the kids from A that are comin…

Why have it by residency then? Try out for a team, if you don’t get on it, try out for another one. It’s just kids playing ball, I don’t understand the high stakes. We used to just play pick up games in the park and that was fun too. No birth certificate required! Why is little league so serious?

LL is bound to residency for several specific reasons but all geared towards the goal of fair play.

Throughout any city there are only so many public baseball fields (all run by the city). A set of fields covers so many square miles and a league set by residency gets access only to those fields in their close vicinity. Obviously you will have fields in poor areas as well as upper class areas, and from experience, the condition of those fields can vary widely. Naturally without boundary restrictions everyone would be signing up only to the nicest area leagues, leaving the poor ones to falter and those parks rundown even more.

Having a "try-out" system for kids (6-12) doesn't work for a wide variety of reasons.

Obvious one is safety. Mixing ages is dangerous and a try-out system would encourage it due to size of player pools. Doesn't matter how good a 7 year old, he cannot compare to a 12 year old. The worst 12 year old is still good enough to really injure a 7 year (or 8/9). At 46' (LL pitching distance)it has just about reached my ADULT limit of reaction time on a few occasion tossing to a 12 year old batter.

Other reason would be lack of balance in the teams and the leagues. You'd end up with super teams as some teams become loaded with talent (add in the above factor of no residency and you'd have the loaded super teams end up in the nicest areas) and cut those kids not good enough (ending up in the poor areas to play). The not good enough kids would have huge blow to their esteem as well as the fun of playing baseball as they would routinely not make a few try-outs each season and falter down to the bad teams. Those bad teams would eventually play the super teams and have no chance. Not fun to be part of losing all the time while the better kids always win and get to play in nicest parks.

For those who don't have kids and experienced youth sports, many of the answers to your questions might not be obvious. It isn't "just kids playing ball". You do that with your group of friends. Playing for LL you are getting an organization that works hard at providing an organized, equal and fun baseball experience with your surrounding communities. They have the criteria in place that they do to try and deal with the many chances of having overzealous parents and coaches cheat/manipulate and ruin the experience for kids and parents.

What the OP brought up and what they are doing with the data IS a concern though. One I never thought about when I signed my son up. It is SAD world we are in IMO in which data is worth THAT much that it is becoming the norm for companies to make a lot of extra money in harvesting it. Something has to be done about this. It is everywhere now it seems. From a simple app installed on my phone to Even Little League is now a possible data theft/ Broker threat willing to sell your info or lose it in a hack?

Re: Little League wants all your information

#155

Post by posguy »

newsclues wrote: post #51
krumpet wrote: post #19

This type of crap makes me so, so mad. I don't have specific examples right now, but I find it increasingly common to be asked for personal information from the most obscure sources. Ordinarily, I can choose to either not sign up or choose a different option. But with something like the only sports league in town, what's a parents supposed to do? So frustrating. Love the comment from throwawaygulf to submit fake data…

I was taking a university computer studies course and the cengage curriculum had a project that required setting up a LinkedIn account. I wrote a letter saying this sort of data mining for marks was stupid and abhorrent. I received no comment on my objection, just a zero.

Did you talk to your classmates and organize your classmates to take this to the Dean?

Even just 5 people getting up in the middle of the class, heading straight to the dean's office and demanding to know why we are being forced to give our information to Microsoft needlessly would have likely remedied your situation that same day.

If there is serious discontent in the class, forcing the dean to meet with you/your classmates immediately is a solid power move that worked for myself and my friends that went to other institutions. Show them how their professors fucked up and demand they fix it, its not the student's fault that they are teaching a crummy curriculum.

Additionally, post-graduation when they sell your contact information ensure you document who contacted you using the information they sold, and escalate it with the Faculty. Framing it as data theft from the institution is a solid way to escalate to the president of your university, then you can harangue them about their terrible business practices.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#156

Post by bonzini »

FloatArtifact wrote: post #122
dragonwriter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Little League is a very US institution, but even in places with socialized healthcare there are non-medical costs of injuries and potential liability attached to them, and anyway, while universal coverage is common outside of the US, many nations acheive it without socialized medicine.

"while universal coverage is common outside of the US, many nations acheive it without socialized medicine." Can you expound on that further and provide some sources for future reading?

I guess it's referring to private insurance schemes like on Germany or Switzerland, which however are highly subsidized and/or regulated.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#157

Post by jck »

Lammy wrote: post #96
kstrauser wrote: post #2

Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post. I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m very opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little L…

Requiring three separate factors of proof sounds to me like a way for that organization to implicitly filter out "undesirable" kids who may not have the most stable home life.

Wow. I didn't think of this angle, but you're absolutely right. This is arguably more insidious than them just selling your data to advertisers.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#158

Post by mikeiz404 »

jancsika wrote: post #36
Spooky23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

> Age is very important for leveling kids appropriately and keeping them safe, which is why birth certificates are required — parents are insane and go to extreme lengths (I personally encountered forged documents, parents who delayed entry into kindergarten to age 6, bogus documents from siblings or cousins, etc) to try to let older kids play in younger levels. This being HN, I figure I can make this criticism and b…

So while this is pretty accurate I think the last part could be said more nicely.

I get why you’re upset / impassioned, I am too about this in general, but I believe the person you are replying to was acting in good faith and giving a perspective most of us here do not have.

From a more pragmatic perspective this behavior discourages others, both directly and indirectly, from contributing in the future for fear of saying something wrong or incorrectly. Of course there is a balance.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#160

Post by HenryBemis »

kstrauser wrote: post #2

Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post. I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m very opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little L…

For us non-Americans, "Little League" is:

(Wikipedia) Little League Baseball and Softball is a 501 nonprofit organization based in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States, that organizes LOCAL YOUTH baseball and softball leagues throughout the United States and the rest of the world. (caps are mine)

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