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FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

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Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#111

Post by jlarocco »

BeetleB wrote: post #103
jlarocco wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cognitive dissonance is in the voters and users. Even right here on HN, where most people understand the issue, you'll see conversations and arguments in favor of letting companies vacuum up as much data and user info as they want (without consent or opt-in), while also saying it should be illegal for the government to collect the same data without a warrant. In practice, the corporations and government have foun…

Anti-disclaimer: I'm not one of those folks. However, that's not at all a cognitive dissonance. Fundamentally, there's a difference between governments and private companies, and it is fairly basic to have different rules for them. The government cannot impinge on free speech, but almost all companies do. The government cannot restrict religion, but to some extent, companies can. Etc. Of course, in this case, it's un…

There is fundamentally a difference between corporations and the government, but it's still a cognitive dissonance. These aren't the laws of physics - we chose to have different rules for the government and corporations in this case.

There are plenty of cases where the same rules apply to both the government and corporations.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#112

Post by lupusreal »

whimsicalism wrote: post #50
lupusreal wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the matter of corporations vs governments, if you tally up number of people shot it's clear which of the two is more dangerous. You would think Europe of all regions would be quick to recognize this. I don't like corporations spying on me, but it doesn't scare me nearly as much as the government doing it. In fact the principle risk from corporations keeping databases is giving the government something to snatch.

because the government has a monopoly on violence. i would much prefer that to corporations being able to wage war themselves

Who is arguing for corporations to wage war? What an absolutely insane strawman. What I am arguing against is letting governments grant themselves the ability to spy on their own populations on an unprecedented scale, because governments "waging war" (mass murder) against their own people is a historically common occurrence.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#113

Post by doctorpangloss »

jlarocco wrote: post #14
ryanisnan wrote: post #5

I love the cognitive dissonance on display within the federal government. One arm: "everyone is a criminal; spy on everyone" Other arm: "hey you shouldn't really harvest all of that data"

The cognitive dissonance is in the voters and users. Even right here on HN, where most people understand the issue, you'll see conversations and arguments in favor of letting companies vacuum up as much data and user info as they want (without consent or opt-in), while also saying it should be illegal for the government to collect the same data without a warrant. In practice, the corporations and government have foun…

There isn’t a single intellectually honest harm associated with the majority of app telemetry and for almost all ad data collection. Like go ahead and name one.

Once you say some vague demographic and bodily autonomy stuff: you know, if you’re going to invoke “voters,” I’ve got bad news for you. Some kinds of hate are popular. So you can’t pick and choose what popular stuff is good or what popular stuff is bad. It has to be by some objective criteria.

Anyway, I disagree with your assessment of the popular position anyway. I don’t think there is really that much cognitive dissonance among voters at all. People are sort of right to not care. The FTC’s position is really unpopular, when framed in the intellectually honest way as it is in the EU, “here is the price of the web service if you opt out of ads and targeting.”

You also have to decide if ad prices should go up or down, and think deeply: do you want a world where ad inventory is expensive? It is an escape valve for very powerful networks. Your favorite political causes like reducing fossil fuel use and bodily autonomy benefit from paid traffic all the same as selling junk. The young beloved members of Congress innovate in paid Meta campaign traffic. And maybe you run a startup or work for one, and you want to compete against the vast portfolio of products the network owners now sell. There’s a little bit of a chance with paid traffic but none if you expect to play by organic content creation rules: it’s the same thing, but you are transferring money via meaningless labor of making viral content instead of focusing on your cause or business. And anyway, TikTok could always choose to not show your video for any reason.

The intellectual framework against ad telemetry is really, really weak. The FTC saying it doesn’t change that.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#114

Post by ranger_danger »

kibwen wrote: post #63
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you aren’t directly harmed yet what liability would they have? I imagine if your identity is stolen and it can be tied to a breach then they would already be liable.

The fact that my data can be stolen in the first place is already outrageous, because I neither consented to allowing these companies to have my data, nor benefit from them having my data. It's like if you go to an AirBNB and the owner sneaks in at night and takes photos of you sleeping naked and keeps those photos in a folder on his bookshelf. Would you be okay with that? If you're not directly harmed, what liabilit…

>I neither consented to allowing these companies to have my data, nor benefit from them having my data.

I think both of those are debatable.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#115

Post by brookst »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #96
srndsnd wrote: post #31

To me, what's missing from that set of recommendations is some method to increase the liability of companies who mishandle user data. It is insane to me that I can be notified via physical mail of months old data breaches, some of which contained my Social Security number, and that my only recourse is to set credit freezes from multiple credit bureaus.

I get a feeling that liability is the missing piece in a lot of these issues. Section 230? Liability. Protection of personal data? Liability. Minors viewing porn? Liability. Lack of liability is screwing up the incentive structure.

I think I agree, but people will have very different views on where liability should fall, and whether there is a malicious / negligent / no-fault model?

Section 230? Is it the platform or the originating user that's liable?

Protection of personal data? Is there a standard of care beyond which liability lapses (e.g. a nation state supply chain attack exfiltrates encrypted data and keys are broken due to novel quantum attack)?

Minors viewing porn? Is it the parents, the ISP, the distributor, or the creator that's liable?

I'm not here to argue specific answers, just saying that everyone will agree liability would fix this, and few will agree on who should be liable for what.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#116

Post by OkeyDokey2 »

munk-a wrote: post #60
cvnahfn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTC is under the president's authority. This is election pandering, same as Zuckerberg's backpedaling on government censorship. This is for getting votes from the undecided. Everything will be back to normal (surveillance, data collection and censorship) after the election.

I don't know if you've been watching but the FTC has actually been extremely proactive during this cycle. Lina Khan is an excellent steward and has pushed for a lot of policy improvements that have been sorely needed - including the ban (currently suspended by a few judges) on non-competes. It is disingenuous to accuse the FTC of election pandering when they've been doing stuff like this for the past four years consi…

[flagged]

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#117

Post by arminiusreturns »

mikeodds wrote: post #110
arminiusreturns wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Let me tell you about what just happened to me. After a very public burnout and spiral, a friend rescued me and I took a part time gig helping a credit card processing company. About 2 months ago, the owner needed something done while I was out, and got their uber driver to send an email. They emailed the entire customer database, including bank accounts, socials, names, addresses, finance data, to a single…

As in.. his actual Uber driver? He just handed his laptop over?

Yes. The owner is old, and going blind, but refuses to sell or hand over day to day ops to someone else, and thus must ask for help on almost everything. I even pulled on my network to find a big processor with a good reputation to buy the company, but after constant delays and excuses for not engaging with them, I realized to the owner the business is both their "baby" and their social life, neither of which they want to lose.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#118

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #102

Simple questions: Should ad prices be lower or higher? Should YouTube be free for everyone, or should it cost money?

Having ads does not require mass surveillance --- that's really just something that social media companies have normalized because that's the particular business model and practices they have adopted and which makes them the most amount of money possible.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#119

Post by lesuorac »

Clubber wrote: post #87
lesuorac wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it somehow negated the fact that we were now living under a surveillance state. There's long been surveillance programs and also numerous laws outlining the responsibilities of telecom provides to enable wire tapping. There's really nothing new from Snowden besides the names of a bunch of people to go kill cause they're spies. FISA [1] isn't a private law either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.…

>There's really nothing new from Snowden besides the names of a bunch of people to go kill cause they're spies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...

You are dense. Imagine a government authorizes 10B for a bridge and then in 5 years a bridge shows up.

Now instead, imagine in 1978 [1] a government authorizes "United States federal law that establishes procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil" and in 2008 [2] amends it to not be a big deal if they're foreign or not and then 5 years later it turns out they're doing just that.

These bills are not secret. Were not secret. Have never been secret. It's not my fault you didn't read them but it doesn't make Snowden novel.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#120

Post by janalsncm »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #102

Simple questions: Should ad prices be lower or higher? Should YouTube be free for everyone, or should it cost money?

Those are useful questions but I don’t think they’re the only ones that matter. Here’s another one for consideration:

What is the minimum level of privacy that a person should be entitled to, no matter their economic status?

If we just let the free market decide these questions for us, the results won’t be great. There are a lot of things which shouldn’t be for sale.

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