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

OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 108 posts

Re: OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

#21

Post by pesus »

JohnFen wrote: post #17
stephenhuey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have long wondered about the market size for privacy-focused apps. Sure, plenty of people don't know or don't care to value that, but if there are enough, maybe you could have a whole set of apps that emphasize they are not seeking world domination or selling out to the highest bidder, and a major selling point for using them would be that they are not . Am I too idealistic? If such apps are not aggressively seekin…

> I have long wondered about the market size for privacy-focused apps. The real problem is how to trust that a "privacy-focused" app is actually privacy-focused. You certainly can't take the publisher's word for it. The only safe stance is to withhold as much personal information from as much software and services as possible.

Even if they were initially trustworthy, it's surely only a matter of time before they start wanting/needing to make (more) money and start abandoning their principles in pursuit of profit.

Re: OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

#22

Post by amiantos »

baldrunner2049 wrote: post #3

Counting the number of comments in this thread 50 minutes later (2 including mine), I can just extrapolate most of HNers have an OKCupid account

Considering how long OKCupid has been around, there's a good chance a significant majority of internet-using millennials have had an account at some point in their lives.

Re: OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

#23

Post by uoaei »

everdrive wrote: post #2

At this point, nearly every online service should be considered hostile. If they can make a small amount of money by compromising your privacy or your identity, they will. If they can make a small amount of money by stealing your attention and addicting you, they will. Are there exceptions? I'm sure. Will I be erring sometimes by being cautious? Definitely. But, there is really not much of an alternative these days.

The persistence of data means that if you expect a firm to eventually become hostile, you should treat them as hostile today.

Re: OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

#24

Post by JohnFen »

kube-system wrote: post #9
stephenhuey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have long wondered about the market size for privacy-focused apps. Sure, plenty of people don't know or don't care to value that, but if there are enough, maybe you could have a whole set of apps that emphasize they are not seeking world domination or selling out to the highest bidder, and a major selling point for using them would be that they are not . Am I too idealistic? If such apps are not aggressively seekin…

This is a multi-axis problem. On one spectrum, you have privacy -- at one extreme, the most private of people don't even use social apps, they are traditionally private people. At the other extreme, you have the highest consumers of apps -- the people who demand sharing the most. On the other spectrum, you have technical acuity -- at one extreme you have people who can audit software they use and verify that it actua…

> at one extreme you have people who can audit software they use and verify that it actually does what it says

Unless the software sends data off to the cloud or a sever somewhere. You can't audit what happens there.

Re: OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

#25

Post by prepend »

everdrive wrote: post #2

At this point, nearly every online service should be considered hostile. If they can make a small amount of money by compromising your privacy or your identity, they will. If they can make a small amount of money by stealing your attention and addicting you, they will. Are there exceptions? I'm sure. Will I be erring sometimes by being cautious? Definitely. But, there is really not much of an alternative these days.

I’ve never posted information anywhere off a machine that I control unless I’m comfortable with it being sold or made public.

Reduces anxiety.

Re: OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

#26

Post by jmye »

nemomarx wrote: post #8
stephenhuey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have long wondered about the market size for privacy-focused apps. Sure, plenty of people don't know or don't care to value that, but if there are enough, maybe you could have a whole set of apps that emphasize they are not seeking world domination or selling out to the highest bidder, and a major selling point for using them would be that they are not . Am I too idealistic? If such apps are not aggressively seekin…

Users who want to be private and are willing to pay extra for it are necessarily highly valuable for data brokers and advertisers. So incentives always push towards betraying them eventually I think.

Is that true? Not arguing, just curious. I would imagine that the highly valuable users are those most likely to buy things, and people that into privacy would be fundamentally more likely to also go to extremes to block that advertising, but this is very much not my area.

Re: OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

#28

Post by cromka »

prepend wrote: post #25
everdrive wrote: post #2

At this point, nearly every online service should be considered hostile. If they can make a small amount of money by compromising your privacy or your identity, they will. If they can make a small amount of money by stealing your attention and addicting you, they will. Are there exceptions? I'm sure. Will I be erring sometimes by being cautious? Definitely. But, there is really not much of an alternative these days.

I’ve never posted information anywhere off a machine that I control unless I’m comfortable with it being sold or made public. Reduces anxiety.

That's great if you live like it's still the 90s.

Re: OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

#30

Post by gjsman-1000 »

stephenhuey wrote: post #4
everdrive wrote: post #2

At this point, nearly every online service should be considered hostile. If they can make a small amount of money by compromising your privacy or your identity, they will. If they can make a small amount of money by stealing your attention and addicting you, they will. Are there exceptions? I'm sure. Will I be erring sometimes by being cautious? Definitely. But, there is really not much of an alternative these days.

I have long wondered about the market size for privacy-focused apps. Sure, plenty of people don't know or don't care to value that, but if there are enough, maybe you could have a whole set of apps that emphasize they are not seeking world domination or selling out to the highest bidder, and a major selling point for using them would be that they are not . Am I too idealistic? If such apps are not aggressively seekin…

> Am I too idealistic?

Open source developers are wildly idealistic. In the rest of the world, I have finally internalized...

1. Most people say they care about privacy... but won't spend even $1 for it. They care about their privacy about as much as an open source developer cares about user experience. Just extract the tarball, it's not that hard.

2. Most people don't care about technology and want it out of their lives. They don't want to know what sideloading is. They don't want to know how to discern safe from dangerous. And they aren't wrong. How many open source developers know how to drive manual? Car enthusiasts have just as much of a righteous claim to attention, after all. The model railroad enthusiasts are also upset by our community's lack of attention. Every enthusiast, in every field, hundreds of them, are upset by lack of mainstream attention, and this will never change.

3. Linux and open source software in general are not even close to being popular on the desktop. Gaming and web browsing is a tiny subset of what people buy PCs to do, and Linux isn't even close on the rest. Even the gaming success is so niche it's irrelevant in the grand scheme of things (Switch 2 outsold 3 years Steam Deck sales in the first 24 hours).

4. Some of this optimism was deluded from the start. Like when Stallman said we can defeat proprietary software with open source, then openly admitted he had no idea how any open source developers could afford rent. "If everyone works for free, while the big companies stop working, we could get ahead" is gobsmackingly naive and it's honestly astounding anyone fell for it.

Post reply on HN