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Why we should end the data economy

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Re: Why we should end the data economy

#271

Post by reaperducer »

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…

I happen to think we'd be a better society if we all knew everything about each other.

You should set the example. Go ahead and post your e-mail address and password for us.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#272

Post by treis »

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, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP):

The things you mentioned are kind of how it was before the advent modern civilization. Before Facebook tracking it was old biddy tracking. Through gossip everyone knew pretty much everyone's business.

That said, there's not an immediately obvious connection between surveillance and our neighbors knowing things. I have 0 information about who my neighborhors are sleeping with based on their cell phone tracking.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#273

Post by infogulch »

emodendroket wrote: post #258
teucris wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It wasn't that long ago that you'd buy a GPS unit for a few hundred dollars and updating the maps would be another $100+.

And then there's https://www.openstreetmap.org which is arguably better than both.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#274

Post by emodendroket »

jjulius wrote: post #265
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.

Making "mass data collection" illegal seems pretty fraught. I doubt that anybody would want that in its literal form. I'm not sure anyone is too interested in nuking our tech sector either but maybe I'm wrong about that part.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#275

Post by ramphastidae »

treis wrote: post #272
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, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): The things you mentioned are kind of how it was before the advent modern civilization. Before Facebook tracking it was old biddy tracking. Through gossip everyone knew pretty much everyone's business. That said, there's not an immediately obvious connection between surveillance and our neigh…

I downvoted this because I can’t read this as anything but a disingenuous comparison. Surely you can understand the difference in scale and motive behind village gossip and global surveillance by profit-seeking corporations.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#276

Post by alexanderdmitri »

saddlerustle wrote: post #246
decasteve wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Akamai and Microsoft. When your Apple device communicates with "Apple", many/most of those IP addresses are owned by Akamai. Even when you search DuckDuckGo, both the search results (Bing) and web servers that serve the content are owned by Microsoft (Azure).

That covers one or two of the list I suppose, but is there any reason to believe Akamai is lying to its customers and harvesting their users' data? I can't think of any incentive for them to do that, it would be brazen fraud for an insignificant revenue source.

Akamai's privacy policy on personal data: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/privacy-policies/privacy-shield...

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#277

Post by bryanrasmussen »

treis wrote: post #272
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, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): The things you mentioned are kind of how it was before the advent modern civilization. Before Facebook tracking it was old biddy tracking. Through gossip everyone knew pretty much everyone's business. That said, there's not an immediately obvious connection between surveillance and our neigh…

>Before Facebook tracking it was old biddy tracking. Through gossip everyone knew pretty much everyone's business.

As already noted the difference in scale, but obviously if you didn't like what the old biddies tracked about you in your small town you could move to a new one and start over - you can't with the global surveillance system.

finally it should be obvious that not everyone lived in a small enough town that the old biddy network was actually useful for tracking you.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#278

Post by NortySpock »

treis wrote: post #272
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, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): The things you mentioned are kind of how it was before the advent modern civilization. Before Facebook tracking it was old biddy tracking. Through gossip everyone knew pretty much everyone's business. That said, there's not an immediately obvious connection between surveillance and our neigh…

Yeah, it's in grandma's forgetful brain, and to be fair she probably (a) has usually learned the value of discretion, (b) will pass away in a few years and (c) can sometimes be dismissed as a fibber.

The computer on the other hand, is an eternal record and can be dumped into the open by any hacker or wannabe-hacker for ill intent or just for fun.

I guess, there's no appropriate reputation scale for what we see on the internet (it's either perfectly trustworthy or a total sham), there's no forgetfulness in terms of minor misdeeds, and there's no way to argue with the public consensus once they've made up their hivemind...

"No really, I've changed in the 10 years since I wrote that post!"

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#279

Post by korse »

xibalba wrote: post #173
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 demonstrat…

You need to know something about your person of interest, other than a name. Then you need access to multiple data sets.

Use a list like this as a starting point.

https://www.oag.ca.gov/data-brokers

Commuter data is good, so is foot traffic. Data sets centered around health and income or quality of life can be beneficial as well. The game is to use publicly available information about your person to tie them conclusively to set of entries in an 'anonymized' data set.

If you aren't at least investigative journalist tier or the resources you need cost too much/require a corporate presence, then hire someone to do it for you who already has the pipeline set up. PI's have been available to Joe Q. for years and they still are. This all just makes them even more efficient.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#280

Post by ipsin »

As I understand it, CCPA means any California resident could hypothetically write a data broker, get their own file, and determine how much actual tracking is going on.

All the hypothetical examples are realistic, but... what are the names of companies that are actually providing that level of data about me?

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