Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why we should end the data economy

thereboot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 390 posts

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#101

Post by peacelilly »

rhacker wrote: post #10

We need to go back to the TV model. I mean we sold things back in 1995 right? You go to a website about babies, you get baby ads. You go to a website about electrified fences, you get ads for trucks, tractors, backhoe rentals (even in your area because of your IP address - but that's it) It's damn near equivalent to local / cable TV.

Nowadays cable TV targets ads too. If your diabetic grandma connects to your cable provided wifi router, you will get ads for glucose monitors and insulin pumps. Targeted advertising should be illegal.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#102

Post by meh99 »

cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

There’s still billions of people who believe in helicoptering.

Being watched by sky wizard and judged at all times is their expectation. It is their agency.

Write down whatever you want, how does one resolve the reality? We have documents in place to cover all these things.

Yet here we are still.

You’re doing what the people you aren’t ok with do; expect everyone to undertake creating and importing some wholly new perspective.

We know how to regain our agency: take control of it away from the aristocracy.

The species has done this again and again. It’s not new.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#103

Post by teucris »

infogulch wrote: post #65

Somehow organizations get an immense amount of value out of tracking everything you do, say, think, and buy; everywhere you go; and everyone you meet. Two questions: 1. Why should they profit off of my data without my consent? (Hint: they shouldn't.) 2. Why is it so hard for me to get value out of it? Shit, if it's gonna be collected, aggregated, and analyzed anyway, I should just do it my damn self and actually get…

The response to expect with #2 is that you get paid back in the form of fast search results, map directions, live communications, personalized news feeds, targeted advertisements, etc.

Pay no attention to the fact that you’re not getting versions of these things that maximize your benefit either...

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#104

Post by spinningslate »

Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

>Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets.

Work in advertising by any chance?

If you read the article, it's not primarily about advertising. It's about privacy and the negative impact to society on losing it.

The ad tech firms were certainly pivotal in creating the dystopian surveillance world we live in. They deserve every single bit of bad rap they get for that and, personally speaking, I really hope there's a lot more bad rap heading their way.

>the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm

I don't know if you're deliberately positioning that duplicitously or not. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Whether there are cookie-based breaches or not is, in practical terms, irrelevant. Read the article. With cookies, and without breaches, the Facebooks and Googles of the world allow advertisers to promote smoking to children or payday loans to those with financial troubles.

Advertising is a wide spectrum. At one end it's relatively benign: billboards and the like. Some feel even that is unacceptable. At the other is the FB/G hyper-targeted end. In and of itself it is extremely creepy. But the article is about much more than just the weird experience of wondering how they knew to target you for erectile dysfunction treatment. Or divorce lawyers.

Ad tech has bootstrapped a global panopticon. That's the problem here.

Oh, and next time your insurance premium goes up mysteriously, have a think about your browsing history.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#105

Post by mumblemumble »

Barraketh wrote: post #70
mumblemumble wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. This is a very specific statement. It may be true. But, even if we accept for the sake of argument that it is, it's not quite the same statement as, "Mass personal data collection has never resulted in personal harm," which, while seeming quite similar, also happens to be false.

I'm trying to differentiate between data that is anonymized (cookies), and data that is not. I'm unaware of any data leak of anonymized data that resulted in any harm, but if I'm wrong I'd love to hear about it.

Perhaps? But focusing on that specific case means you're not aiming for the same goalpost as the article was.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#106

Post by intricatedetail »

Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

Advertising that uses targeting is nothing else than manipulation and fraud and should be banned.

Disclaimer: I worked in advertising.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#107

Post by fuckyouriotshit »

Barraketh wrote: post #70
mumblemumble wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. This is a very specific statement. It may be true. But, even if we accept for the sake of argument that it is, it's not quite the same statement as, "Mass personal data collection has never resulted in personal harm," which, while seeming quite similar, also happens to be false.

I'm trying to differentiate between data that is anonymized (cookies), and data that is not. I'm unaware of any data leak of anonymized data that resulted in any harm, but if I'm wrong I'd love to hear about it.

How about intentional publishing of "anonymized" data? It's intentional, so it should be even less potentially harmful than an unintentional leak, right?

Well, Yahoo's publishing of supposedly "anonymized" data still poses a privacy risk to any of their users: https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp3d8v/yahoos-gigantic-anony...

That's just one of many apparently "anonymized" datasets that has been trivially deanonymized by researchers/hackers/internet-stalkers; so there's plenty of harm to be done.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#108

Post by briffle »

whatever1 wrote: post #93
infogulch wrote: post #65

Somehow organizations get an immense amount of value out of tracking everything you do, say, think, and buy; everywhere you go; and everyone you meet. Two questions: 1. Why should they profit off of my data without my consent? (Hint: they shouldn't.) 2. Why is it so hard for me to get value out of it? Shit, if it's gonna be collected, aggregated, and analyzed anyway, I should just do it my damn self and actually get…

You are getting free searches, email, messaging, photo storage etc

I would pay a fee to some sites to keep using their service, without tracking/advertising. But they don't offer it as an option.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#109

Post by bo1024 »

Swizec wrote: post #87
cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

> your life expectancy based on how fast you walk, as measured by your phone Shit I would love to know this for myself! Is there a service or app that can crunch the numbers and tell me?

Just to respond seriously for a second: it's good to remind ourselves that ML isn't magic. If it knew your weight and age it would use those for predicting life expectancy instead. Same for smoking history, sleep habits, etc. But all it has access to is the accelerometer, and a weak correlation is better than nothing, so that's what it uses.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#110

Post by slver »

cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

From reading this list, I can deduce OP just made up most of them, because over half of them contains details that are total BS.

Also I happen to think we'd be a better society if we all knew everything about each other. Instead of discouraging companies from analyzing us, encourage them to publish everything all the time. Let governments join in on the fun. Everyone should be tracking an analyzing everyone else.

Solves the issue with companies manipulating us to sell our data, because if they publish it they can't sell it. Solves the ransomware problem as well. Publish everything, no privacy for anyone. You can't blackmail someone for data everyone has.

I wanna know what you think right now. I'm not asking you to tell me, I'll scan your brain instead. And I'll know what your dream last night was. And you'll know the same for me as well.

That's the future, prove me wrong.

Post reply on HN