91–100 of 114 posts
Is personalized data like browsing habits or GPS info or anything else they collect market on and sell considered intellectual property? If so why can these companies sell it without compensating me?
Eric Schmidt's "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" and Randi Zuckerberg's "I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away" are some choice quotes that should give anyone pause.
"Go ahead, sell my data" doesn't bother me. "How come you aren't putting yourself out there and letting your data be sold like the rest of us" bothers me.
I'm not sure the poster understands. The information that is sold can be and is linked up with other information. The big consumer database companies in the United States maintain databases with thousands of fields of data per person in the U.S.A. That's today (or ten years ago). Tomorrow, or ten years from now, it will probably be hundreds of thousands of fields of data per person in the United States. Your consumer…
The first time someone takes facial recognition software and allows the public to easily apply it to amateur porn, there's going to be some fireworks. That uber-detailed personal profile used without your consent worries me a bit less - while we'll get to the same place, it'll be completely because of voluntary sharing of information. You'll want that profile, because it'll save you lots of money. People tend to worr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not actually asserting that the logging itself harms me, just that it pisses me off. The reason it pisses me off is that my browser history reveals things about me that I'd rather keep private. Facebook is taking that from me without my consent. I would feel approximately the same if I discovered they were stealing stuff out of my garage without my consent-- it wasn't part of the deal I thought I agreed to. Witho…
Not really, no. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding facebook's tracking system, but I don't think your browser history is being captured here. You are viewing pages that have a facebook widget on them, and if you have a facebook cookie that says "pingswept", this tells facebook that pingswept visited a page with a specific widget on it (and thus, which page). Facebook is not taking anything from you that you ar…
As to who is doing the deception, I think you're right that (in the example we're discussing) cnn.com is being deceptive. That's a good point; I hadn't really considered the complicity of the partner sites.
But in the end, Facebook is producing widgets, building a system to receive data from those widgets, and working with their partners to deploy those widgets. This system of data transmission is in no way obvious to normal people; if I weren't a web developer, I'd just think I was seeing a "like button image," and that's it. That's the part that pisses me off-- I think it's sneaky, not just me complaining about something I originally agreed to.
Just out of curiosity, and assuming you actually have a Facebook account, this really doesn't bother you at all? Should it be obvious to me that buttons I'm not clicking may be transmitting data to other sites?
All the arguments that defend Facebook e.a come down to: "making money trumps human rights". There's no arguing about this subject with people who believe that people should not have the right to control their own data, just as there is really no arguing with people who don't believe in the value of free speech or the right to vote. This is not meant as an insult. Believe what you believe. But if you want to argue th…
> There's no arguing about this subject with people who believe that people should not have the right to control their own data, There's no inalienable human right to data about you unless you want to argue that it's somehow your property. (Or that it relates to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness). More likely data about you is just information on a public stage. If I see you walking around town and write it…
> There's no inalienable human right to data about you
Eh...yes there is. Maybe not for you, but I, and others who were born in the EU have quite inalienable rights to data about us.
EU laws quite explicitly state that, yes, I do have an inalienable right to data about me, unless I explicitly (and possibly temporarily) grant a company access to it.
A company is legally obligated to provide me a list of all data they have on me, plus the ability to change this data, including me demanding all of it to be deleted.
Is this relevant in dealing with US based companies? No. But of course the EULA of Facebook specifies that European users have an agreement with Facebook Ireland, meaning all these EU laws apply to this relation.
> If I see you walking around town and write it down, is that illegal?
No, but writing down and storing that you saw me walking is...
Now, maybe you don't care about what right you have to your data. But I do, and I endorse any action forcing big companies like Facebook and Google to comply with the EU law, which firmly puts me back in control about my data.
All the arguments that defend Facebook e.a come down to: "making money trumps human rights". There's no arguing about this subject with people who believe that people should not have the right to control their own data, just as there is really no arguing with people who don't believe in the value of free speech or the right to vote. This is not meant as an insult. Believe what you believe. But if you want to argue th…
Oh wait, aren't they doing something similar in Italy?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"they don't feel they have the willpower to resist these hyper-personalized ads" Although it's not necessarily a discussion of their own willpower but rather whether the masses will lose portions of the power to think for themselves. Not always the same or hyperspecific portions, but we're slowly giving away more and more of our decisions to advertisements. / Disclaimer: not sure whether I paraphrased this correctly.…
I don't believe ads are the only culprit. Daily, and increasingly, we give away our decision making to a myriad of sources. Blogs. Fox News. @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher). Apple product keynotes. Hopefully we can also use the same technology to liberate ourselves from the magnetic attraction of ads and the media and do something positive. I'd look to recent events (Arab Spring, #OWS) as a possible glimmer of hope there.
I'm not sure the poster understands. The information that is sold can be and is linked up with other information. The big consumer database companies in the United States maintain databases with thousands of fields of data per person in the U.S.A. That's today (or ten years ago). Tomorrow, or ten years from now, it will probably be hundreds of thousands of fields of data per person in the United States. Your consumer…
Or rather - I see the problems, but I think they are overstated. Just saying "PRIVACY GRRRR!" doesn't make sense - it is much, much more subtle than that.
The poster explicitly addresses this:
I understand the instinctive philosphic reaction that "we own our data" but when I dig beaneath that initlal gut response I come up empty. I do think there is an important distinction between privacy and security that sometimes people miss. There is certain information (address, account numbers, ss #, etc.) that if obtained by a third party, could result in some real world problems that will negatively impact my life. But information social networks sell to advertisers doesn't fall into this category.
Your comment simply fails to address this. You seem to be stating "Technology is powerful! We should be scared", but without addressing the very real points the poster made it doesn't really add a great deal to the discussion.
The so called privacy apocalypse is far from it. "Nightmare" scenarios like you spend 15 minutes every day at the local coffee shop during working hours plainly aren't as bad as you seem to think. It's trivial for a company to track how long a person spends in their office already - companies that care about it already do it.
Given that commercial consumer databases already exist, please explain why the worst thing to come from it is annoying unsolicited mail and phone calls? If that is a privacy apocalypse then I feel it is a small price to pay for using services that don't charge us money.
This is addressing the wrong problem, at least in my view. I don't really care about what Facebook does with the data I consciously give them. And ads are just an side-effect. My main problem is that they actively try to get their hands on data I don't want to give them. Like, my constantly actualized GPS coordinates, or my browsing history. And that they store it. And process it. And store me into some kind of box.…
And don't forget, due to the PATRIOT act, simply having that information obligates facebook to serve it up to law enforcement without a warrant any time they ask. Think about that next time you "like" the High Times fan page or post "I'm gonna get crunk!" some Friday night. Facebook itself may be pure as the driven snow, but I can guarantee the FBI is NOT.
Citation needed (Especially for the obligates part). If Google requires a warrant to share data then please explain why Facebook is obligated to do differently?
I guess the problem isn't targeted advertising per se. It's that you don't know what your personal information will be used for in the future. Maybe it will give you better, more targeted advertising. Maybe it will be used to deny you an insurance policy or be sold to a recruiting firm that will reject your job application. I guess Facebooks terms don't allow that, but those terms can change at any time. Maybe not ne…
In the Nazi Germany example, it was a government entity that was using the information. In that case no amount of privacy controls will protect you - if the information is available they can use the law to retrieve it. Even if Jews didn't have their religion listed on their passport, a government can retrieve that information in other ways (not least compulsory questioning).
In Facebook's case they are selling information to other companies. If the government wants they information they can legislate to get it from anywhere at all (including active surveillance), and so the fact you have shared it on Facebook merely minimises friction for them.