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Please Sell My Personal Information

taylor.town

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Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#51

Post by recursive »

remram wrote: post #48
Zak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies" There's almost that. It doesn't always accept all cookies but it does hide the warnings: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

Could there be a standard between browsers and websites to avoid those banners? Similar to the Do Not Track header, a Accept Cookies header? Contrary to ad-blocking where the website very much wants you to see ads, and is not going to help you in blocking them, this is a situation where they might be interested to help.

This is a real problem, but it has gotten quite silly at this point. A user agent can reject cookies by merely not doing anything with them. A user agent can signal that it accepts cookies by just retaining them.

You might argue that we could save a pittance in bandwidth by eliding the Set-Cookie header entirely. However, the potential savings here is a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of javascript to handle the consent banners.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#52

Post by onurcel »

I am curious what makes the author think that expert reviews are free of any incentives for abusing their influence. Also, if you ever built anything useful in your life, you should know that it's not possible to count solely on word-of-mouth, even in a upotian marketing-free world.

Listen, I get you are disappointed by bad actors, but going to the other extreme is never a solution.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#53

Post by FrontAid »

remram wrote: post #48
Zak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies" There's almost that. It doesn't always accept all cookies but it does hide the warnings: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

Could there be a standard between browsers and websites to avoid those banners? Similar to the Do Not Track header, a Accept Cookies header? Contrary to ad-blocking where the website very much wants you to see ads, and is not going to help you in blocking them, this is a situation where they might be interested to help.

> Similar to the Do Not Track header, a Accept Cookies header?

Do not track can do that, it has three possible values.

    0: The user prefers to allow tracking on the target site.
    1: The user prefers not to be tracked on the target site.
    null: The user has not specified a preference about tracking.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DN...

The problem is that DNT is mostly ignored, and also deprecated by now.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#54

Post by Zak »

remram wrote: post #48
Zak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies" There's almost that. It doesn't always accept all cookies but it does hide the warnings: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

Could there be a standard between browsers and websites to avoid those banners? Similar to the Do Not Track header, a Accept Cookies header? Contrary to ad-blocking where the website very much wants you to see ads, and is not going to help you in blocking them, this is a situation where they might be interested to help.

I am not a lawyer or a GDPR expert, but I think that probably wouldn't satisfy the intent of the GDPR any more than current browser capabilities to accept or reject third-party cookies would.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#55

Post by not_kurt_godel »

There are many in tech whose jobs rely on selling personal information in ways that users would never consent to if they were made fully aware of what was being collected, how it was being collected, and how it was being used. I can't imagine it feels good to constantly deal with the cognitive dissonance required to participate in such schemes.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#56

Post by surprisetalk »

onurcel wrote: post #52

I am curious what makes the author think that expert reviews are free of any incentives for abusing their influence. Also, if you ever built anything useful in your life, you should know that it's not possible to count solely on word-of-mouth, even in a upotian marketing-free world. Listen, I get you are disappointed by bad actors, but going to the other extreme is never a solution.

> I am curious what makes the author think that expert reviews are free of any incentives for abusing their influence.

Author here. I definitely don't think that!

The internet is swamped with annoying listicles like "100 Vacuums That Will Change Your Life in 2023".

Affiliate links and SEO offer perverse incentives for expert reviewers.

But word-of-mouth survives! At we speak, there is an affiliate-free product thread on the front-page of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34272687

EDIT: wrong link :)

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#57

Post by bluesign »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #55

There are many in tech whose jobs rely on selling personal information in ways that users would never consent to if they were made fully aware of what was being collected, how it was being collected, and how it was being used. I can't imagine it feels good to constantly deal with the cognitive dissonance required to participate in such schemes.

This is not tech specific, this is the world we live in. It is built on ignorance.

- It is the steak I ate at dinner. - It is the AC I turned up in summer. - It is the car I drive etc.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#58

Post by not_kurt_godel »

bluesign wrote: post #57
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #55

There are many in tech whose jobs rely on selling personal information in ways that users would never consent to if they were made fully aware of what was being collected, how it was being collected, and how it was being used. I can't imagine it feels good to constantly deal with the cognitive dissonance required to participate in such schemes.

This is not tech specific, this is the world we live in. It is built on ignorance. - It is the steak I ate at dinner. - It is the AC I turned up in summer. - It is the car I drive etc.

Society does indeed effectively force us to participate in a number of immoral systems and choices but the ones you listed are not equivalent to voluntarily choosing a job whose fundamental basis is deceiving people into violating their privacy for your personal gain.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#59

Post by kroltan »

Baader-Meinhof wrote: post #23
boh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you love targeted pricing too? Like user X is more likely to buy product Y so make the price +10%. It’s a good thing that targeted pricing is illegal in many places, but oh wait, there’s an AI pricing layer which cannot be reverse engineered so evidence of price targeting can’t be found. The problem with user data is it lasts forever, and as the political and technological environment further shifts into "profit-f…

> there’s an AI pricing layer which cannot be reverse engineered so evidence of price targeting can’t be found Is this strictly true? Couldn't we can audit the model's parameters for things analogous to the user's economic status?

Most AI models are not even known about, accessible outside the system they are part of, let alone targeted for audits at all.

Unless you got enough volume of volunteer users to try and make some correlations, but then, those can still be argued not to be causation.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#60

Post by drusepth »

manicennui wrote: post #40
chadd wrote: post #4

in all seriousness, i'll take the contrary opinion, i love targeted ads. saves me time, and there's no way to keep my data private anyway, so i might as well get some value out of it. i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies" which would just get rid of the friction, and as a downstream fringe benefit, show me better ads.

Do you have money burning a hole in your pocket? I don't want to be constantly prompted to buy and consume things. When I have a problem, I research solutions and buy a product or service if necessary. I don't care what those with the largest marketing budgets think I should buy. I also follow companies on social media that I know and trust if I think I might be interested in their future products.

>Do you have money burning a hole in your pocket? I don't want to be constantly prompted to buy and consume things.

On the other hand, I like to be constantly made aware of new things I might like to buy and/or consume. That way, when I do have a little extra cash to burn (or just want to save up for something, or want to be inspired to create something similar), I already have a feel for what all is out there without having to spend extra time researching "cool stuff I don't know about".

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