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Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#71

Post by peeters »

geofft wrote: post #42
peeters wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it a step forward at all. It's a move toward pricing out the privacy-conscious. Right now, auto insurers in Canada will give you a premium reduction if you let them spy on you as you drive. But what happens when that becomes the norm? People end up paying a premium to not be spied on. Eventually privacy becomes unaffordable.

Privacy becomes worth what the market will bear. If that's unaffordable, that's just because it's valuable. There's all sorts of other premiums on the exercise of your rights in a private context. It's very hard to get a job in information sectors that lets you retain copyright of your creative work, or in general a job that lets you exercise your freedom of speech without potentially risking your job. If you have ph…

> it seems like the fault is on society for allowing and encouraging the market to do so in general

I agree, but there's no underlying constant that humans act rationally or in their own best interest. I don't think the market can protect rights, period. And putting a price on them marginalizes the poor even more.

Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#72

Post by peeters »

geofft wrote: post #44
godelski wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy should be the default. It should continue to be a right.

In a capitalist society, something being a right has no bearing on whether you need to pay for it. You have the right to life, but if you get sick, you need to figure out how to pay for it, and if you can't, you might not be able to exercise that right. You have the right to liberty, but if someone infringes your liberty, nobody is going to give you a lawyer for free and you have slim chances of succeeding without re…

> In a capitalist society, something being a right has no bearing on whether you need to pay for it.

Right, which is why there are no purely capitalist societies in the world. Every "capitalist" society in the world regulates "free" enterprise in some way to protect that society from the consequences of unbridled capitalism.

Edit: Am I wrong? FDA doesn't just say "let the free market decide what risk is acceptable for a drug", or "you can just pay more for food that doesn't have a high chance of making you violent ill". The FAA doesn't just say "oh consumers can decide whether they want to fly on an unproven jet". They recognize that the damage will probably be done long before the free market reacts to it. I don't see how protecting privacy is logically different.

Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#73

Post by jkaplowitz »

electrograv wrote: post #68
jkaplowitz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google actually does allow significant opting out, including for Google Analytics. I do have problems with their defaults in many of these areas (in my main Google account I have disabled much of the tracking) and also with how certain features (e.g. Google Assistant) tie more of the functionality than necessary to extra permissions with dark pattern nags to grant them all. But the opt-outs are generally there. (Disc…

You may be right that Google and others technically offer some tracking opt-out capability (mostly because they were required to by GDPR), but it doesn’t seem to work, because I still regularly receive targeted ads (relating to recent web activity): ... Despite having painstakingly turned off every available tracking switch from every service I’ve ever signed up to. ... Despite no longer using any services from Googl…

I agree with most of what you wrote, yeah. It's a real problem, and the second sentence of my previous comment was meant to affirm that.

Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#74

Post by electrograv »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #73
electrograv wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right that Google and others technically offer some tracking opt-out capability (mostly because they were required to by GDPR), but it doesn’t seem to work, because I still regularly receive targeted ads (relating to recent web activity): ... Despite having painstakingly turned off every available tracking switch from every service I’ve ever signed up to. ... Despite no longer using any services from Googl…

I agree with most of what you wrote, yeah. It's a real problem, and the second sentence of my previous comment was meant to affirm that.

Yeah I don’t think we disagree. I just wanted to list out just how difficult/impossible I’ve found it to be to break free of the tracking ecosystem.

Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#75

Post by jniedrauer »

geofft wrote: post #42
peeters wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it a step forward at all. It's a move toward pricing out the privacy-conscious. Right now, auto insurers in Canada will give you a premium reduction if you let them spy on you as you drive. But what happens when that becomes the norm? People end up paying a premium to not be spied on. Eventually privacy becomes unaffordable.

Privacy becomes worth what the market will bear. If that's unaffordable, that's just because it's valuable. There's all sorts of other premiums on the exercise of your rights in a private context. It's very hard to get a job in information sectors that lets you retain copyright of your creative work, or in general a job that lets you exercise your freedom of speech without potentially risking your job. If you have ph…

> Privacy becomes worth what the market will bear. If that's unaffordable, that's just because it's valuable.

You could substitute workday length or child labor or any other undesirable attribute of a society into that sentence. There are some things better not left up to "the market".

Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#76

Post by sanjayjc »

electrograv wrote: post #21
nl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data, especially personal data should not be a means in which anyone can make any sort of financial compensation from. Why? That seems a pretty extreme position.

Yeah, I thought this was a popular idea around here: ”We should have to explicitly opt-in to data collection, and when we do we should be compensated for our data!” Then Amazon actually does it and people are angry? If anything, this is a great move in the right direction for both privacy and fair compensation: It’s opt-in (you’re opted out by default), AND you get monetary compensation! What more could you want? Mor…

I'd only support what Amazon is doing if the converse were true: by choosing not to be paid, I'm guaranteed that I won't be tracked. That does not seem to be the case here: "Amazon is also fine paying nothing for the data: New customers only get the $10 credit if they install the assistant from a particular landing page ..."

Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#77

Post by ggg3 »

SkyBelow wrote: post #47
r3bl wrote: post #4

Just a casual reminder that a portion of Amazon workers are on a strike during the Prime Days. Support them by not visiting any Amazon property for the next two days. No Amazon purchases, no Audible, no Goodreads, no Twitch. AWS is kinda unavoidable, but the rest is not. We can do without them for two days, and show our support for the workers that are protesting inhumane conditions.

>AWS is kinda unavoidable And that shows the strength of one's resolve.

and the (lack of) resilience of one's mono-cultuture architecture!

Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#78

Post by ggg3 »

prime-day-boycott: the day all tech companies realized amazon had them in their pockets with AWS

the day everyone woke up and realize the lies of multi-cloud. Everyone's architecture is naked, and tied to one particular provider.

if you can't flip a button and serve from other provider for the strike, you will also not be able to change when aws crashes, get slow or too expensive. Or what is more likely, slow unless you pay the aws-prime subscription ;)

Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#79

Post by godelski »

geofft wrote: post #44
godelski wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy should be the default. It should continue to be a right.

In a capitalist society, something being a right has no bearing on whether you need to pay for it. You have the right to life, but if you get sick, you need to figure out how to pay for it, and if you can't, you might not be able to exercise that right. You have the right to liberty, but if someone infringes your liberty, nobody is going to give you a lawyer for free and you have slim chances of succeeding without re…

I think very few Americans would agree with you (maybe the far left?). But I lived in the South for awhile and I don't know a single person there than believes certain rights should be inalienable. Even the most hard core libertarians believe in inalienable rights. You should hear what they believe with guns. I'm not trying to get into a capitalism vs socialism debate, but just like there's no "true" socialist there's really no "true" capitalism. In fact I'd doubt the Scottish exist at all. It's always the middle area. But because we live in the middle area, just like with democracy, it is us who decide where we are in that. Not the system itself. The system is what we make of it and how we use or abuse it. I guarantee you that if you talk to almost any American they will agree with you that the system is broken and needs fixing. But as long as we quibble about who's a real Scotsman we can't work together to fix it.

TLDR: don't blame the Scottish, they don't even exist.

Re: Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data

#80

Post by hedora »

r3bl wrote: post #22
peaktechisnow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this worked great for autoworkers! h a h a ha

There's precisely two ways of increasing the profit: 1) raise the prices, or 2) reduce the costs. Amazon took the second route. They still can't automate everything. If they could, they'd do so already. Workers are what keeps Amazon alive today , even if that might not be the case in the future.

4) Expand into horizontals/verticals

5) Financial engineering (e.g., open a finance / lending business)

6) Acquire competitors / complementary businesses that are also profitable.

7) Make leveraged investments using stakeholder capital (e.g., take on low interest debt, and invest in things with a higher expected return)

8) Regulatory capture (eliminate taxes, regulations, competitors — the latter two can boost the stock even if they have no actual impact on the business)

I’m probably missing countless other ways businesses can increase shareholder earnings.

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