4 ms·

I personally block adds, not because of annoyance, but because of tracking. I find private collection of information a bigger threat than I do government tracki

by jtrip 10y ago

I personally block adds, not because of annoyance, but because of tracking. I find private collection of information a bigger threat than I do government tracking. I like neither, but given the option, I would rather be tracked by the government. I am not accusing the OP of any bias or failing in ideals, just pointing out an interesting perspective on things that I got from reading [0]. 'Mistrust of government is pretty much universal, and that’s a good thing. Outside of the United States, however, people trust corporations even less.' [0]http://www.disruptingjapan.com/how-ubers-failure-in-japan-can-help-startups-everywhere/ http://www.disruptingjapan.com/how-ubers-failure-in-japan-ca...

blfr 10y ago
> I find private collection of information a bigger threat than I do government tracking Why?
- jtrip 10y ago
  Because the inherent idea is control of power. One would trust a small company over the government because the small company can't do much damage with only that much data, whereas the government can, combined with all the other data. The small company can earn more money, what we can rely on given that they are in it for the money, with helping us with the data than they can by selling the data. How ever, as the company grows, or uses a system developed and controlled by a larger entity, the data being collected can be combined with other larger data sets and can become much more powerful and potentially hurtful for us. In the same scenario, the power of the government has still remained the same, and given the history of Power, we the common people have some measure of control over them. More control than one would have over the large corporation.
  - blakeyrat 10y ago
    Hurtful how? I admit I've really never understood that part of the argument. To go with your example, ok, you have tracking data with a dozen smaller companies you've done transactions with online. Now they all merge and become one huge company, all that data is combined. How were you hurt by this action?
    - dhimes 10y ago
      It gives the company power over you, either to raise your insurance rates because you like pork rinds, or to embarrass you or your underage sister because you've been linked and she just had an abortion. And like we're learning from facebook, there's a herd immunity component to it. If I vaccinate myself against tracking but you don't, you can infect me anyway. It's a really shitty thing to do, and the problem we as a society face are people who are unable to abstract the idea into the dangers we can all face and protect ourselves against dangers we can't foresee. That's what principles are for. We stand on basic principles of privacy and freedom because if we don't we get into a nonlinear mess of unintended and unforseen consequences- and we don't even know it. Just like the deer that doesn't even know it's being hunted, we are in this game and don't even know what's eventually at stake. So we should stop it now. I'm ok with banner ads. I'm not ok with tracking.
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      People have a right to privacy, and there's social expectations which ensure that people generally have it. Generally speaking, people don't like it when other people spend huge amounts of effort trying to learn things about them that they would prefer not to share. It's more-or-less equivalent to if someone spent all their time looking through your trash and monitoring you 24/7 to learn if you're pregnant, what meds you're on, how much money you spend in a week, etc etc.
      - blakeyrat 10y ago
        Well right, but that's not what I'm asking. The claim is that collating lots of small data sets together can cause harm to a person. That's what I'm asking about.
    - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
      This information can be used to infer things about you, such as your sexual orientation, political positions, personality type, unhealthy behaviors and so on. Then machine learning algorithms can be used to deny you health insurance, credit or employment based on this data. Or they can sell that data to other companies that will deny you any of these things. So better be careful with out you say, with which books you read, who your friends are and so on. Or they can make deals with governments to reveal information about you, in exchange for regulatory favors. Or maybe you're a robot with nothing to hide, but they can still make mistakes or wrong inferences and hurt you in the above ways. And advertisement can be improved to bypass your cognitive defenses, or catch you at a vulnerable moment (all things that can be detected with enough data) and manipulate you into making decisions against your best interests. In short, data disclosure can get you killed, poor and/or sick. If that was not the case, why would corporations be so secretive about their own stuff? By the way, all of the above examples are not hypothetical. They are all based on things that are demonstrably already happening.
- ww520 10y ago
  Asymmetric information put you at a disadvantage when you deal with them.

by jtrip 10y ago

blfr 10y ago

> I find private collection of information a bigger threat than I do government tracking Why?

jtrip 10y ago
Because the inherent idea is control of power. One would trust a small company over the government because the small company can't do much damage with only that much data, whereas the government can, combined with all the other data. The small company can earn more money, what we can rely on given that they are in it for the money, with helping us with the data than they can by selling the data. How ever, as the company grows, or uses a system developed and controlled by a larger entity, the data being collected can be combined with other larger data sets and can become much more powerful and potentially hurtful for us. In the same scenario, the power of the government has still remained the same, and given the history of Power, we the common people have some measure of control over them. More control than one would have over the large corporation.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  Hurtful how? I admit I've really never understood that part of the argument. To go with your example, ok, you have tracking data with a dozen smaller companies you've done transactions with online. Now they all merge and become one huge company, all that data is combined. How were you hurt by this action?
  - dhimes 10y ago
    It gives the company power over you, either to raise your insurance rates because you like pork rinds, or to embarrass you or your underage sister because you've been linked and she just had an abortion. And like we're learning from facebook, there's a herd immunity component to it. If I vaccinate myself against tracking but you don't, you can infect me anyway. It's a really shitty thing to do, and the problem we as a society face are people who are unable to abstract the idea into the dangers we can all face and protect ourselves against dangers we can't foresee. That's what principles are for. We stand on basic principles of privacy and freedom because if we don't we get into a nonlinear mess of unintended and unforseen consequences- and we don't even know it. Just like the deer that doesn't even know it's being hunted, we are in this game and don't even know what's eventually at stake. So we should stop it now. I'm ok with banner ads. I'm not ok with tracking.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    People have a right to privacy, and there's social expectations which ensure that people generally have it. Generally speaking, people don't like it when other people spend huge amounts of effort trying to learn things about them that they would prefer not to share. It's more-or-less equivalent to if someone spent all their time looking through your trash and monitoring you 24/7 to learn if you're pregnant, what meds you're on, how much money you spend in a week, etc etc.
    - blakeyrat 10y ago
      Well right, but that's not what I'm asking. The claim is that collating lots of small data sets together can cause harm to a person. That's what I'm asking about.
  - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
    This information can be used to infer things about you, such as your sexual orientation, political positions, personality type, unhealthy behaviors and so on. Then machine learning algorithms can be used to deny you health insurance, credit or employment based on this data. Or they can sell that data to other companies that will deny you any of these things. So better be careful with out you say, with which books you read, who your friends are and so on. Or they can make deals with governments to reveal information about you, in exchange for regulatory favors. Or maybe you're a robot with nothing to hide, but they can still make mistakes or wrong inferences and hurt you in the above ways. And advertisement can be improved to bypass your cognitive defenses, or catch you at a vulnerable moment (all things that can be detected with enough data) and manipulate you into making decisions against your best interests. In short, data disclosure can get you killed, poor and/or sick. If that was not the case, why would corporations be so secretive about their own stuff? By the way, all of the above examples are not hypothetical. They are all based on things that are demonstrably already happening.
ww520 10y ago
Asymmetric information put you at a disadvantage when you deal with them.