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Why we should end the data economy

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Re: Why we should end the data economy

#151

Post by paxys »

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…

1. They are getting your consent

2. They are giving you value (via free services)

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#152

Post by toss1 »

whatever1 wrote: post #116
briffle wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are paid options for example for email, but still people prefer the free options. Market has spoken. People just don't care about being tracked, specially if they get free goodies. As an anecdote: I am the only one in my extended family who does not use the car insurance tracker. Everyone is calling me out on why I dont get the "free" discount.

I'm with you

I pay for email services (and make some use of gmail for junk/transactions).

I also would never use one of the insurance trackers. They literally have zero clue of what they are doing and interpret things backwards. E.g., they interpret higher g-forces as bad driving. Yet, as someone who has been through countless high-performance driving and race schools, had racing lisenses, and won multiple racing championships, I can tell you that what high-performance driving, whether racing or getting out of emergencies, is about wringing out of the vehicle, suspenseion and tires, every last bit of grip to maximally accelerate, brake, and/or turn. Of course, I'm usually very smooth and low-g on public roads, but if I do something like maneuver around an animal in the road, they'd see a high-G maneuver and charge me for bad driving, when in fact, I probably saved them from a claim.

It is a lovely concept, but the institutional idiocy really bothers me.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#154

Post by joadha »

The so-called "data economy" has improved our lives in immeasurable ways. I can more easily discover products that are relevant to me. Deserving innovations are granted a platform for quicker adoption. The world at large is more efficient, because relevant products and services are being delivered more quickly and efficiently than ever before.

The author is extremely paranoid. She uses the word "should" a whole lot, but does not back up her dictatorial statements with any reasoning.

This article has failed to scare me as intended.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#155

Post by yboris »

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…

The author of this article, Carissa Véliz, also wrote Privacy Is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data

https://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Power-Should-Take-Control/dp/...

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#156

Post by Barraketh »

mumblemumble wrote: post #105
Barraketh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you are right - this was a brain dump of some things I've been thinking about, specifically on how the fight against cookie tracking is making centralization worse and companies like Facebook more powerful. This article generically criticizes both, but I think there's actually a tradeoff here, and not making the distinction may lead to bad policies

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#158

Post by throwawaywindev »

joadha wrote: post #154

The so-called "data economy" has improved our lives in immeasurable ways. I can more easily discover products that are relevant to me. Deserving innovations are granted a platform for quicker adoption. The world at large is more efficient, because relevant products and services are being delivered more quickly and efficiently than ever before. The author is extremely paranoid. She uses the word "should" a whole lot,…

Efficiency is not always a good thing. We’re not machines and we shouldn’t aspire to some Wall-E existence where we do nothing but consume without any inconvenience.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#159

Post by uberdru »

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…

Or even just a constitutional amendment that specifically defines rights of privacy.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#160

Post by virtue3 »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #141
virtue3 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how would you trust any company to properly respect who you share stuff with? There's a multitude of anti-patterns that make some things public already with social media. I think we should all be looking at this as either they're getting -all- of your data and sharing it with -everyone- (because that means more $$$) or they're NOT getting your data and they CANT share it cuz they don't have it. We cannot trust co…

turning a profit depends to some extent on our trust, so we can expect companies to do some good for us too

Either they sell the data, or they keep it protected as a fuck you to google (aka apple) or they potentially get a data leak because they aren't following best practices in the slightest (aka Experian).

I remember being out of college and finally being able to buy adobe products to do photography and then Adobe got hacked and my un/pw was out in the wild. It was safer to pirate their stuff and trust some crazy keygen software that's definitely doing something nefarious cuz at least I could run that in a VM.

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