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The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

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101–110 of 140 posts

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#101
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance companies are very interested by your workout routine and how you drive your car, so they can adjust their offering specially for you… We can’t get laws banning this soon enough.

Bad drivers should pay more for car insurance.

A big input for what defines "bad" is excessive speeding. Going 75 in a 45 is excessive speeding.

But what happens when your daily commute takes you through a former construction where the computer thinks the speed limit is still 45?

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For example how you drive your car is sourced straight from the car manufacturers. This is why I do not, and never will, own a car with telemetry capabilities. I'm happy with my old dumb car. No smart crap for me.

That type of car in 20 years will become as rare as one without OBD, sadly

And also unusable if you live in a bigger city. Many of those are pushing to ban old cars due to pollution and noise regulations.

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#103
post #71
post #40

There is an easy way to fix this: make the companies collecting the data be criminally liable for any misuse or leaks of this data. Something with teeth, such x% of total revenue, not our current “sorry, we leaked your data, tough for you” If this data is so important it should be treated with the same care & auditing that their income stream gets.

Two other potentially effective punishments: 1. Removal of all crowd-sourced data from their systems. Let's see if users will want to come back if there are zero network effects. Maybe sad for the users, but I'd feel safer if data-leak==data-removal. 2. Forced modification of their trademarked logos for some period of time. This will warn people to stay away from the company and their products. (Trademarks are all ab…

I like #2, that is creative and would really ruffle some feathers (in a good way). Mandate them to change app icons, favicons, etc. everywhere and then include daily fines for any instances of the logo that are non-compliant. One can only dream

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#104
post #8
post #5

What do they even do with this information? The ads they feed me haven’t become more relevant.

Even straight up first party information is an accurate. Amazon thinks I’m a woman despite buying men’s products. Google is convinced I’m a fan of a rival sports team despite obvious information otherwise. I have even told them I don’t want stories about the other team, but they keep popping up. I feel like most places are gathering information enough to somewhat fulfill their goal of getting a profile for advertisin…

Wow. Amazon has always been pretty inept at advertising (most often trying to sell durable goods that I literally just purchased) but that is taking it to a whole other level.

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also expensive to have handicapped parking spots and ramps. You do it because it's right, not because it's convenient or cheap.

Not many retail places are building their own locations any more. Normally, they are just renting space. The things you mention are the landlord's problem Edit: also, landlords are not doing these things because they are "right", they are doing them because they are regulated to do so

The only reason things are legal or illegal, allowed or disallowed, is because the majority of the voting public deems it to be so. There is no possible set of rules that can reflect every individuals sense of right and wrong, since we disagree strongly and in good faith about those matters.

Building codes exist because people died in fires. Limits on working age exists because there would be child labor without it. Limits on working agreements exist because there would be indentured servitude without it. Limits on government power, exemplified by the first 10 amendments to the US constitution, exist because without them the government would do anything to you that it wanted. And even then there are those who find those regulations limited, who want government with unlimited power over them, thinking that would make them safer, or that it's coercive to government workers to abide by them. Society is not a game of absolutes - it's a game of compromises that can only function if people are generally acting in good faith.

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I have been on both sides of this issue. I really want cash to work anywhere, but I have also worked retail and seen that cash is a giant pain in the ass for businesses. It has to be secured, transported, the employees steal it, and it means more accounting headaches. Whereas if all your payments are done through Square, this all goes away. It's not surprising to me an increasing number of businesses— especiall…

It's also expensive to have handicapped parking spots and ramps. You do it because it's right, not because it's convenient or cheap.

Landlords don’t provide parking ‘because it’s right’. A more accurate statement would be ‘because it is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act and you won’t receive a building occupancy permit unless you provide handicap parking’.

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#107
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're all misunderstanding ad relevance. An ad that trick you into buying what you were not intending to is more effective than otherwise. An ad for a MacBook shown to someone dead set on buying one soon, is not effective, and only relevant in end-user perception, not in actuality. Many "irrelevant" ads are probably relevant from that perspective, just we all are not comfortable with the concept of an ad in e…

We should not be looking at this from the user's perspective. Relevance isn't meaning relevant to the user. They are relevant to the ads company.

Yes and no. Technically any given advertising campaign doesn't need to be effective, only convince the buyer that it is effective (without engaging in fraud). But relevance is important to the ad companies because they aren't going to pay for you to advertise towards markets they aren't even operating in or planning to. To go reducto ad absurdum, you wouldn't get any ads contracts if you were to start advertising towards inaccessible alternative universes and alien planets when they cannot even buy the products. Even if it gives trillions or quadrillions of ad impressions that could not be any less relevant towards them.

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#108
post #40

There is an easy way to fix this: make the companies collecting the data be criminally liable for any misuse or leaks of this data. Something with teeth, such x% of total revenue, not our current “sorry, we leaked your data, tough for you” If this data is so important it should be treated with the same care & auditing that their income stream gets.

Does nothing to prevent state abuse when the state sets and executes the punishment for it.

Doesn't the state just use commercial sources for their data anyway? Corporations all have far more resources and power, so it's easier to just ask for it.

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not many retail places are building their own locations any more. Normally, they are just renting space. The things you mention are the landlord's problem Edit: also, landlords are not doing these things because they are "right", they are doing them because they are regulated to do so

The only reason things are legal or illegal, allowed or disallowed, is because the majority of the voting public deems it to be so. There is no possible set of rules that can reflect every individuals sense of right and wrong, since we disagree strongly and in good faith about those matters. Building codes exist because people died in fires. Limits on working age exists because there would be child labor without it.…

I think you've strayed from the herd a bit too far here. We're talking about a retail establishment accepting cash payments or not.

You're trying to make moral comments on labor laws or something. I'm not really sure the point. Regulations to run a business can be deemed as protecting what's "right". While we can commonly agree that it's "right" to provide accessibility access to your establishment, we can hopefully also agree that if it wasn't legislated to be, then more than a few retailers would not provide them.

However, none of this has anything to do with a retailer's decision to accept cash and all of the risks associated with that.

Re: The problem of creeping commercial surveillance (2022)

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Unless you have other lawful grounds of processing, all functional cookies still have to be session scoped at worst

Strictly necessary cookies do not have to be session cookies. If you read https://gdpr.eu/cookies/ it says they generally will be session cookies, not that they must be. If you think it is appropriate for your users to be already logged in the next time they run their web browser, using a persistent cookie for that is permitted.

Yes, they can become persistent once you get consent or other grounds. You probably get that consent in registration form and "recall" it on login. Otherwise you process data from across sessions, which is a huge red flag.
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