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Why is privacy so hard? (2019)

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Re: Why is privacy so hard? (2019)

#51

Post by mitxela »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #48
Rygian wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any "legally-binding, two-party transaction" between an individual and a large corporate conglomerate is a lost battle (or more precisely, a not-even-fought battle) for the vast majority of individuals. 80% of buyers of anything simply smash "Accept" (and watch through ads/spam) until their device shows the content they wanted to access. (Statistic is made up, but I think it's hard to refute.) Do you call that "expli…

I'm talking of a world in which laws are strong and well written enough that people don't need to worry; they can mash that Accept button and not be getting screwed over. We agree that most peopke aren't equipped to provide informed consent and "buyer beware" won't work. For these the government steps in - car & plane safety for example.

Has anyone tried arguing they didn't actually consent even though they clicked accept?

Re: Why is privacy so hard? (2019)

#53

Post by chadgpt5 »

daft_pink wrote: post #37

Because there are numerous choke points where people need to use devices to do a thing and those devices can record you and the financial incentives for the companies that own these choke points is so great that they end up selling your data. Even if Apple truly had perfect privacy you still need to use credit cards, bank accounts, insurance, cell towers, drive a car, etc. I think that’s the underlying reason why pri…

Why's there no competition?

Re: Why is privacy so hard? (2019)

#54

Post by chadgpt5 »

socalgal2 wrote: post #28
cogman10 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ad revenue is the new shrink-flation without it prices will rise. Some prices rise, some prices go down. Ads aren't free money, the advertisers are paying for them (I know, seems obvious) but where do the advertisers get the money to advertise? Well, it's baked into the cost of the goods they advertise. That makes everything that advertises more expensive.

And yet advertising raises demand, which in intern causes people to offer to meet that demand which means competition, which lowers prices. Lots of examples of this cycle you can search for.

Higher demand causes higher prices, not lower. Competition is irrelevant because startup competitors have to advertise a lot more, making their prices even higher.

Re: Why is privacy so hard? (2019)

#55

Post by psd1 »

baxtr wrote: post #47
beloch wrote: post #26

We should tax data. Hear me out. Google, Meta, etc. offer "free" services to a significant portion of the world's population. This isn't charitable work. They do this for data that makes them money. Lots of money. Data has real monetary value, but governments don't treat it as such. Few, if any, jurisdictions view data exports as taxable. It's simply not tracked. If data collection isn't tracked, how can one realisti…

Why not just tax the profits of the data companies? If we start taxing data, why not tax any other underlying asset a company makes profits from?

Data is an unpriced natural resource. Your pabulum is already priced. We should, generally, tax extraction, because otherwise the externalities are imposed on the public for free. In the case of mining, that's e.g. resources taken from the future; in the case of data, that's privacy taken from the public.

Re: Why is privacy so hard? (2019)

#56

Post by chadgpt5 »

bigbaguette wrote: post #12
spottedmarley wrote: post #2

Personal privacy is, and has always been, the job and responsibility of the individual. You can be as private or as public as you allow yourself to be through your own practices. Nobody can give you privacy, you must take it, which requires work and sacrifices that most people are simply unwilling to make, that's why nothing has changed. If it's privacy you want, stop being so public. Avoid surveillance. It's not eas…

Unrestricted invasion of privacy and considering it completely normal is just a libertarian fantasy

More like a libertarian reality

Re: Why is privacy so hard? (2019)

#57

Post by psd1 »

hacker_homie wrote: post #8

My thought was to write legislation that gives 20% of my generated ad revenue to me the customer as legal tender (no store credit, coupons) then have the government tax that income. 1. government gets new income source. 2. government is invested in making sure they are not getting short changed. 3. failure to pay me is fraud. 4. When you pay me now I know your crap is spying. 5. Government taxes almost never go down,…

> Government taxes almost never go down

Wasn't income tax 90% during America's golden age? What is it now?

Re: Why is privacy so hard? (2019)

#59

Post by like_any_other »

rileymat2 wrote: post #38
beloch wrote: post #26

We should tax data. Hear me out. Google, Meta, etc. offer "free" services to a significant portion of the world's population. This isn't charitable work. They do this for data that makes them money. Lots of money. Data has real monetary value, but governments don't treat it as such. Few, if any, jurisdictions view data exports as taxable. It's simply not tracked. If data collection isn't tracked, how can one realisti…

I am not sure what the point of this is. If they are exporting data for sale, we can tax the value they are selling it at. If they are using data to generate ad revenue, we can tax that. If we want to enforce privacy standards, we can make liability laws around sharing that data with third parties; we can make it harder for users to consent to the sharing of data by making users decide and approve on a case by case b…

> making it so privacy policies legally survive bankruptcy

They currently don't? Why? Isn't that completely insane? How is that different from buying a music CD with the restriction that it may not be used commercially, declaring bankruptcy, and selling it without that restriction, so the buyer can make and sell copies of it? I.e. it's using bankruptcy to create from thin air and sell permissions that one was never given.

Can I, in the process of personal bankruptcy, sell information I've signed an NDA on? Can I sell genetically modified seeds that I signed a contract forbidding me from re-planting them, now without the re-planting restriction?

Re: Why is privacy so hard? (2019)

#60

Post by rileymat2 »

like_any_other wrote: post #59
rileymat2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what the point of this is. If they are exporting data for sale, we can tax the value they are selling it at. If they are using data to generate ad revenue, we can tax that. If we want to enforce privacy standards, we can make liability laws around sharing that data with third parties; we can make it harder for users to consent to the sharing of data by making users decide and approve on a case by case b…

> making it so privacy policies legally survive bankruptcy They currently don't? Why? Isn't that completely insane? How is that different from buying a music CD with the restriction that it may not be used commercially, declaring bankruptcy, and selling it without that restriction, so the buyer can make and sell copies of it? I.e. it's using bankruptcy to create from thin air and sell permissions that one was never g…

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12810892/

Look at the 23andMe case, which ended sort of ok. Previously, a company called Toysmart caused some legislation to pass some specific rules around it, but it did not go far enough.

> Can I sell genetically modified seeds that I signed a contract forbidding me from.

You can't but the court can adjust terms.

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