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Why we should end the data economy

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Re: Why we should end the data economy

#261

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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 their relatives //

People close to you probably know all these things already. Even if you don't.

>No one sane is OK with corporations, governments, and other third parties being able to obtain and save this information either //

This is a popular view here. I don't think it's true of the population as whole.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#262

Post by rootusrootus »

saddlerustle wrote: post #210
rootusrootus wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the problem is merely Facebook, Google, or Apple, then I think you are underestimating the amount of data and who is processing it. There is an entire industry of companies you have never heard of that are thinking up ever more creative ways to put data together from various sources, identify it, correlate it, and then sell the 'insights' to whoever wants to pay. At the very least, at a bare minimum, I t…

Which company, apart from Facebook, Google and Apple, would remotely have access to any of the data on that list? Facebook Google and Apple don't share data with data brokers.

Up until very recently, a lot of this could be done by any of a number of innocuous looking apps with tracking toolkits installed. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes not.

Even now, the problem is that you want the data sometimes. Like maybe you use Life360 because it's handy for your family. Well, it knows how fast you drive (it likes to tell me my wife's top speed after she goes somewhere...). It has enough accelerometer access to decide if you've been in a wreck. It's a GPS app so of course it has pretty tight location information. And maybe you consent to all this, but hidden somewhere in the TOS it says Life360 may share this info with selected partner companies. Now it gets slurped up by big data warehouses.

Maybe you install a sleep tracking app. Now they know how well you sleep, and I would bet they could pretty accurately figure out if/when you're having sex. Depending on the device, they might even be able to guess whether or not it was solo.

Perhaps you don't like the limited options Apple has for pedometer data, so you install Pedometer++. Another possible avenue for data collection.

Or Instacart, Uber, Uber Eats, etc.

So. Much. Data.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#263

Post by belter »

saddlerustle wrote: post #243
belter wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a bridge to sell you. "Gmail messages 'read by human third parties'" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44699263 "One company told the Wall Street Journal that the practice was "common" and a "dirty secret". ...Google indicated that the practice was not against its policies."

That article is just describing gmail APIs, which requires explicit user consent via oauth to enable. This is no more shocking than gmail supporting IMAP.

"The companies said they had not asked users for specific permission to read their Gmail messages, because the practice was covered by their user agreements."

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#264

Post by reaperducer »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #146
donatj wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> They've got legal and lethal authority to do far worse than a weird look. Society scares me more. The government has the authority, but society has the power and the inclination to weaponise it. The government would never bother reacting to anything that RMS said but people did.

Society scares me more

Agreed. For example, it's unlikely a government agency is going to care about your personal web page talking about how you're open to theories about UFOs. But a potential employer may decide not to hire you because your mind is open to the possibility. Or worse, an employment screening company's "algorithm" will score you lower because of it.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#265

Post by jjulius »

emodendroket wrote: post #254

This reminds me of when people want to "reverse financialization" or "get rid of the shareholder value model." How are you going to reverse an idea and what are you going to replace it with?

>How are you going to reverse an idea...

In this case, make mass data collection and targeted advertising illegal.

>... and what are you going to replace it with?

The model(s) we had before - generalized advertising based on who advertisers believe the broader audience that watches X show or views Y website is.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#266

Post by maybelsyrup »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #261
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 their relatives // People close to you probably know all these things already. Even if you don't. >No one sane is OK with corporations, governments, and other third parties being able to obtain and save this information either // This is a popular view here. I don't think it's true of the population as whole.

> This is a popular view here. I don't think it's true of the population as whole.

I think you're right. They can get to the point where they care, but my intuition is that it'd take a real crisis, and even then there's plenty of incentive with this topic to move on as fast as possible. We (the public) are pretty fickle, and it's psychologically threatening to admit we've had a voyeur living in our bedroom for a decade.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#267

Post by hvocode »

I'm all for significantly limiting the "data economy", but I suspect too many people have become too used to getting free stuff. I see this all over the place - there are products and services that are quite expensive to build and provide, but they're free because people (often unwittingly) exchange data about themselves in place of the actual cost. If you still want those products/services without the data industry supporting it, someone will have to pay for them. I think lots of people opposed to the data economy will become less opposed when faced with actually paying for stuff it supports.

I learned this the hard way trying to sell something that competed with free tools from Facebook/Google/[other giant data monetizing companies]. Our tool was/is competitive, but we aren't in the business of data harvesting or advertising - so, the engineering cost (many years of effort) would have to be paid from actually selling the product. The response? People want the free ones, and could really care less how the engineers that built it were paid as long as THEY (the consumer of the tool) got it for free.

As long as the "someone else will pay for X so I can have it for free" attitude is acceptable and widespread, we're likely stuck with a pervasive and deep data economy.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#268

Post by kbsspl »

Raidion wrote: post #196
xibalba wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 demonstrat…

I'm undecided on this topic, but playing devil's advocate: Does the fact that this knowledge exists, and only in the hands of some of the largest (and most pervasive) tech companies in the world, make this information 'safer', or does it mean that it's a 'force multiplier' that increases the risk that this information will be used a) to enable anti-competitive behavior or b) be co-opted by authoritarian governments t…

Safer in what sense ? What would be your take on government tolerance to the existence of such data ? Someone from the clandestine teams would always want to utilise it ? How well could the businesses resist.

Anti competitive behavior, I would think comes automatically with such massive centralisation. What's scary is the ability to mass incite riots, using knowledge of the most susceptible audience to fake news and pushing it out incendiary posts to exactly that audience. India has faced multiple such incidents already. Deliberate ? Maybe in the sense of affinity algorithms.

With the backdrop of the Stanford experiment, and a host of other biases giving almost tribal warrior behavior, should such affinity data be allowed for collection ?

My apologies if this sounds drastic, but data collection generates micro nukes, generated based on turning individuals into an array of microcrucibles.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#269

Post by Black101 »

Black101 wrote: post #147
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…

> how fast you drive, even if you don't have a smart car, because your phone contains an accelerometer Any car 2010 and later "smart/stupid": https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-exec-gps-2014-1 , so even if you leave your phone at home, don't assume that you aren't tracked.

you don't like to hear the truth, but that's ok

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#270

Post by saddlerustle »

rootusrootus wrote: post #262
saddlerustle wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which company, apart from Facebook, Google and Apple, would remotely have access to any of the data on that list? Facebook Google and Apple don't share data with data brokers.

Up until very recently, a lot of this could be done by any of a number of innocuous looking apps with tracking toolkits installed. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes not. Even now, the problem is that you want the data sometimes. Like maybe you use Life360 because it's handy for your family. Well, it knows how fast you drive (it likes to tell me my wife's top speed after she goes somewhere...). It has enough acceleromete…

This is a good point and a good reason to prefer first-party apps!

No need to hide it, Life360 clearly states right near the top of its privacy policy "In order to keep our Service free for most users, we generate revenue through trusted data partnerships. We share device data, including location and movement data, with trusted data Partners for tailored advertising"

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