Why we should end the data economy • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#171

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

asiachick wrote: post #113

ianai wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sense this would have been in the Bill of Rights had the notion been around back then. They knew the government needed to protect property rights as a fundamental principle and that is written throughout the legal code and constitution. So endowing citizens with ownership of the date of where they are, what they’re doing, and how they use sites seem like extensions of the personal property right. In a sane universe…

I doubt it. If you ask me "who lives next door" I'll tell you "Oh, the Smith's live next door, John, Jane, Jill, and Jacob. John's a blacksmith, Jane makes the best apple pie, Jill is studying to be a doctor and Jacob just turned 14" I doubt the forefathers would have thought there needed to be a law against me passing on info.

The US Constitution is around a century too old to care about lists of people, but I think even they would react badly to some powerful organization going around classifying everybody by some random feature.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#172

Post by mym1990 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

asiachick wrote: post #94

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're getting their service. You want to use Facebook to talk to your family and keep up with your friends. You pay them in info, they pay you with the service you're using. Same with every other site, vox, theverge, slashdot, etc... Sure there are a few companies you pay that also collect your data and I wish they didn't but even then they'd raise the price (maybe willing to pay more) if they didn't subside the ser…

Not sure why the above got downvoted, it seems to echo the other sentiments.

As a developer I have a hard time imagining building an application that doesn't use data to provide a higher level of experience in some way. Of course there is a very long rabbit hole on how data collected to create a novel experience then gets used in other ways to provide revenue.

We just live in a world where applications are able to hide almost everything that is happening behind the scenes from the user, and advertising drives the majority of free applications, and this opens a gateway to major abuse...

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#173

Post by xibalba » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

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…

Would you please demonstrate to me how I, Joe Q. Public, can find out, via collected data that I can access, with whom another person is sleeping with?

Or, in lieu of that, walk me through how that would be done with Facebook's, Google's, or Apple's data via your first-hand knowledge of those data and where and how they are stored and accessed?

These fear mongering comments about data collection have never demonstrated real world harms, AFAIK. It reminds me of the genetically engineered foods bogeyman that, in spite of a complete lack of empirical evidence, continues to be trotted out as a huge danger.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#174

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

nINYqGQadl wrote: post #127

SavantIdiot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great list. SO many times people have said to me, "Let them track me, I've got nothing to hide." And you hit them with a few things off this list and they immediately change their mind. There should be a tinurl for website I can send people to that shows a simple list of all the ways personal information can be used.

I think this list makes a case for better sharing/access controls but I can see applications for most of the things listed here. I might just want the insights for myself but not want to share it with anyone or my data being sold without my consent e.g. monitor and improve my sleeping habits, monitor my expenditure by tracking my restaurant and shopping habits, my health data and/or insights into it. Maybe not your s…

don't track/collect data

Only two of your examples (parental controls and location sharing) require any kind of network, and those could be done with a private VPN running at home.

The design of cloud-based services is purely for convenience and collection. Sometimes if the collection can be controlled, the convenience is worth it, but every beneficial algorithm could be run locally.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#175

Post by matz1 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

slver wrote: post #110

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. Sol…

This is the way to go in the future. It will be more and more impractical, very costly, and inconvenient to hide information as technology get better.

The problem that need to be solves is not how to hide information but how to fix the issue that arise when the information are public.

Lets talk about one example :

Right now it is a problem if my credit card number become public because it can be used for unauthorized purchase.

Simply having my credit card number become public is not an issue perse but for it to be used for unauthorized purchase is the problem.

But what if I can have my credit card number public while nobody can use it for unauthorized purchase ? then I won't have issue for it being public.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#176

Post by tootie » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

EMM_386 wrote: post #162

I'm curious, can insurance companies get access to this information to potentially affect policy rates? That would be insane. If they know how sedentary you are, or if you aren't sleeping well, or if you are driving too fast, driving at dangerous hours, or if you hang out at the bar too much ... can you imagine the implications? It gets even wilder with things like Fitbit Charge 4 where this data, in the hands of dat…

The data collectors only provide anonymized data. But it's possibly for a company that collects PII to stitch together their own user profile data with the anonymous data. So, yeah, maybe. Like if you login to your car insurance website and that website is using third-party tracking to piece together a profile, they can correlate to your identity. I don't think I've actually seen this done and I'm not sure if it's entirely legal.

https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-data-platform-guid...

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#177

Post by airstrike » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #119

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…

> No one sane would ever want all their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors I'd happily share basically all of that information with that specific group of people - except maybe my neighbor that keeps reporting me to the city, they don't need to know my life, but if in turn I could know who was googling city ordinances in the middle of the night it might make up for it. At worst I get a funny look for…

It appears you and I have very different relationships with work colleagues...

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#178

Post by matz1 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #165

matz1 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am okay for them to be able to know. Them knowing is not the problem. Them using it to harm me is the problem. These are different thing, latter is a problem, former is not. Let pick this one example : 'your restaurant visits and shopping habits' Just them knowing is not problem, in fact them knowing can also benefit me: e.g when they want to give me gift.

"If invasive tracking is outlawed then only outlaws will use invasive tracking." The problem is that symmetry is impossible.

I'm not advocating to outlaw invasive tracking, rather advocating on solving the problem of the use of invasive tracking to harm people.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#179

Post by tomjen3 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

SonicScrub wrote: post #53

brokencode wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody know if targeted ads based on tracking even work? Are they worth all the extra cost and complexity compared to traditional ads? It doesn’t seem like it. Half the time I see a super-targeted ad, it’s for a product I already purchased. Also, what ever happened to showing ads to people who aren’t already interested in your product to expand your brand and maybe bring in new customers? The current ad model f…

Yes, yes they do work. That's why it's a billion dollar industry. It allows industries to micro-target specific ads for communities and speak to them directly. It gives you more ability to expand your brand to new customers, not less, as it allows to you to specifically target niche groups who previously had no interest in you. It's important to get a sense of the extreme level of refinement that firms have access to…

The last point is wrong: once I have purchased the dishwasher i care _less_ about a dishwasher at any previous point, because I am not most likely to have a functional dishwasher and even if yours is better I am not going to buy one more.

If marketers would only get this they would make so much more money, and I would get better ads for more relevant products. Instead I get ads that target me because I am in AGE_RANGE and live in country, or ads for scam products.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#180

Post by freddyym » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

yboris wrote: post #155

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/...

I'd advise reading pretty much everything that they write on privacy, its all very worthwhile.