Why we should end the data economy • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#81

Post by fuckyouriotshit » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #29

People should own the data about them, and should be free to rent or trade usage of it to companies in exchange for money or services. Actual ownership should continue to rest with the person, however, who can revoke access the same way that a landlord can evict tenants or a worker can quit. The biggest barrier to this has been that lots of valuable data (eg. Facebook's social graph, Android contact data) is data abo…

Simply assigning a price to an activity doesn't solve the ethical and moral issues that can arise from that activity.

Having a price for something doesn't exactly help victims of human trafficking (whether the illegal organ trade, prostitution or anything else). What can help those victims is regulation and aggressive criminal prosecution of anyone who seeks to gain from the suffering of others.

Unless people actually have a realistic and practical way of "revoking access" to their data which results in serious penalties for companies which continue to use said data (including company-destroying or even criminal penalties for senior managers/benefactors) then the negative-externalities of data-collection won't ever really be curtailed.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#82

Post by Barraketh » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

troutwine wrote: post #67

Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

> Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymi…

The premise is slightly different. I'm mostly differentiating between cookie tracking and social networks (and some other large online platforms). The large online platforms don't need to track you - you give them your data willingly. Facebook knows a lot about you not because it's tracking you, but because you keep posting things to it. Cookie tracking is an alternative way to build up an effective advertising profile that is decentralized and anonymized, which I think has some value.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#83

Post by hedgedoops2 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

34679 wrote: post #25

Anyone engaged in the collection and sale of data should be required to maintain a list of their customers. Upon the sale of data, the customer should be required to provide their list to the broker. At the point of collection/consent, the list should be made available to the consumer. For example: You want to vote in an online poll by company A. Company A collects data about you and sells it, so you must agree to th…

CCC has a longstanding policy demand called the "Datenbrief" ('data letter'). Under this proposal, every corporation that keeps personal information about a natural person would be obligated to, once a year, mail the subject a letter containing their information, with instructions how to exercise their existing statutory deletion/correction rights.

If you keep PII, you'd also need to keep some contact info for the subject, and use it to ensure they know about their rights / the data. The existence of the data-related right would imply an obligation to inform the subject about it.

I guess I'd prefer a web interface displaying all the data holders with little "delete" buttons, over getting a gazillion letters, but if this is implemented by a single organization that actually has all your data (even if only for the purpose of faciltating GDPR), it could be a central point of failure.

[1] https://www.ccc.de/en/datenbrief

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#84

Post by meh99 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

Toks wrote: post #55

KyleBerezin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want a system that tracks me and is 100% transparent to me.

Exactly. It's not the tracking that is the problem, it's the lack of control/transparency. I want a personal data bank where I can decide who knows what about me.

Don’t expect that with big corporate hoarding it all for you. It’s “their infrastructure” and their business.

The west wants to be free of life’s problems while also being free to optimize time to avoid dealing with them.

It’s almost as if physical reality is full of real constraints our imaginations can refuse to acknowledge.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#85

Post by ianai » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #79

ianai wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, there’s a dollar value to you that they’re not paying you. You’d need a “property right” over it. (You are your own “property” already anyway.)

Too late. You already clicked "I agree" on that EULA.

Since the civil war, you can’t sign ownership of yourself over to another. The ownership of data that intensive seems the same thing.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#86

Post by SavantIdiot » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

> but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm.

How could you possibly make this claim in good faith, let alone believe it?

EDIT: typo

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#87

Post by Swizec » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:46 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…

> your life expectancy based on how fast you walk, as measured by your phone

Shit I would love to know this for myself! Is there a service or app that can crunch the numbers and tell me?

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#88

Post by mumblemumble » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

brokencode wrote: post #27

rhacker wrote: post #10

We need to go back to the TV model. I mean we sold things back in 1995 right? You go to a website about babies, you get baby ads. You go to a website about electrified fences, you get ads for trucks, tractors, backhoe rentals (even in your area because of your IP address - but that's it) It's damn near equivalent to local / cable TV.

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…

I don't know that straightforward data on this will ever be forthcoming. And we can produce theoretical arguments every which way, not entirely unlike how classical philosophers were able to prove, through reason alone, that objects in nature tended to only travel in perfect circles and straight lines, and never shapes like ellipses and parabolae, and probably produce about the same volume of useful epistemological output in the process.

I'd think that the more interesting thing would be to try and find some proxies we can use as an ersatz empirical test. For example, what about ad prices? If personalization based on tracking really does work better than other forms of ad targeting, then one would expect that that difference would yield a noteworthy difference in ad prices.

In short: If it really works so well, then you'd expect personally targeted ads to cost significantly more per impression than ads that use content-based targeting. And I'd assume that that information is reasonably public.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#89

Post by meh99 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

bobthechef wrote: post #60

Articles that make declarations about how bad X is and then follow that up with empty calls to action like "We need to end X" to get people nodding their heads in agreement are common and cheap. What's your solution? Is there one? Sure, you can draw attention to something bad, but if all you ever do is live off the drama and frantically declare that X "needs to stop" (I loathe that airheaded phrase like few others),…

It’s not a journalists job to dictate policy.

It’s to emotionally masturbate a message.

Then the people will look at the politicians offering fixes.

This is the whole point of division of labor.

So many on this thread are looking for Superman. Did you found the company you work for and take out the garbage, while refilling the snack machine?

You want someone like PG to write down some elementary math and say it’s a solution to something?

No one does it all.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#90

Post by ayngg » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

Data feels like the next resource (like hydrocarbons or other resource extraction) where it can be exploited for massive profit while its costs externalized for the rest of society to bear.

Like how it took decades for society to come around to human influenced climate change, it will probably take a while for people to accept the social and mental health costs associated with the extraction and use of this resource, or we will get to a point where people are manipulated enough to be insulated from such a realization.