6 ms·

This is a very messy, multi-layered issue. First of all, a large part of a social network's utility is derived from sharing data about oneself. This data is pu

by niftich 10y ago

This is a very messy, multi-layered issue. First of all, a large part of a social network's utility is derived from sharing data about oneself. This data is public, for the benefit of other participants of the social network. Some of those participants may have agendas that are contrary to one's own: stalkers, adversaries, data aggregators -- it's impossible to know all of them ahead of time, and a granularity of permissions that satisfies these competing goals is... tough. Second, it ought to be a person's reasonable expectation that law enforcement is a benevolent actor. Actions such as this, which amount to targeted crowd surveillance, don't instill much faith in this assumption. This is a very serious issue that merits more discussion than my terse comment. Lastly, this data aggregator should not be the target of the outrage. They're an intermediary in a system where we willingly share data with private companies to get some value-add, who then sell that data to fund their operations, and some of the purchasers of our data happen to be law enforcement. Anger directed at any particular intermediary -- like anger at reposessors or ambulance chasers or debt relief counselors -- is woefully misdirected; we should instead be asking why corporations feel the need to sell our data in the first place, and why we have law enforcement that feels the need to employ mass surveillance. If we ponder these questions, we'll have accomplished something more than drive an inconsequential company out business while leaving the systemic faults in place.

CoryG89 10y ago
Companies feel the need to sell our data because they are offered tons of money for it by other companies such as Geofeedia. I agree that the blame does not rest on Geofeedia alone, but they aren't innocent either. I don't know a good solution to this issue other than making it illegal to buy or sell information about users of public corporations' products.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  The bigger issue is "why is it that companies can make more money selling personal data about consumers than selling products to consumers?" If companies had a viable business model that involved ordinary consumers paying money for services rendered, then their responsibility would be to the people paying them money, i.e. the consumer. This is a really complicated question, and probably results from a combination of: 1.) Consumers not having disposable income at all, because real wages for a large slice of the population have been stagnant or falling for a generation and necessities like housing, education, and health care keep going up. 2.) Consumers having certain expectations of what they can get "for free", and not wanting to pay money for things that competitors will offer for free. 3.) Consumers having a poor understanding of the long-term consequences of putting data out there, and what it can be used for. 4.) Network effects where even if a small minority of consumers are aware of the above and would rather pay for products, they can't because a majority of the market would rather pay with information rather than money. If you just ban the sale of information outright, you will either end up with work-arounds (eg. Google doesn't sell information, but it sells better ad-targeting and behavior manipulation based on that information), or consumers will lose access to services that they depend upon for much of their daily life.
  - CoryG89 10y ago
    I agree with most of what you said, but I don't think that banning the sale of user information is a problem for Google or similar business models. I may not have a problem with Google collecting information about me and using it to target ads. I do have a problem with Google turning around and selling that information to just anyone. I think there is a distinction there that makes a difference. I may trust Google and choose to trust them with my information, but I don't necessarily trust their partners.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      And frankly, if it's going to happen in a capitalist society, why aren't I getting my cut of the profits?
  - RodericDay 10y ago
    > The bigger issue is "why is it that companies can make more money selling personal data about consumers than selling products to consumers?" If companies had a viable business model that involved ordinary consumers paying money for services rendered, then their responsibility would be to the people paying them money, i.e. the consumer. Because advertising doesn't fulfill demand, it generates demand. It generates demand by preying on people when they are weak, when they are distracted, about what they are insecure, about what they are not knowledgeable.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    You made a lot of great points. In regards to: "3.) Consumers having a poor understanding of the long-term consequences of putting data out there, and what it can be used for" This is so true and unfortunately there are few resources for helping people understand the implication and consequences. I think at the very least we should be educating young people, perhaps in school. There's a decent documentary that came out a few years ago called "Terms and Conditions May Apply", its an independent release and so lacks some polish in places but I think its worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPw_hx7OME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPw_hx7OME
imh 10y ago
>Second, it ought to be a person's reasonable expectation that law enforcement is a benevolent actor. I totally disagree. Care to expand on that?
- int_19h 10y ago
  I think the point is that police etc should not behave in such a way that many people immediately assume that an encounter would likely be antagonistic. Basically, if you're afraid to go ask a police officer for help (which, apparently, is fairly common among black people in US, for example), then something is very wrong about police, and needs to be fixed.
  - geomark 10y ago
    It's worse than that. Some prominent lawyers advise that everyone should never talk to the police.
    - cyphar 10y ago
      Which is very good advice, but it's because of the fact that testimony given to a police officer can only ever be used against you (it's hearsay otherwise). Not to mention that if someone slips up and accidentally tells a lie in the middle of a testimony, that instills doubt in the entire testimony ("I didn't kill her, I've never killed anyone, I've never even used a gun, I wasn't in the area that night" sounds fine until the last part if it turns out you were in that suburb that night). Basically, to a lawyer a client talking to the police is giving the prosecution ammunition. Not to mention that nobody (not even the supreme court) can claim to know every federal law that applies to a person at a particular time (there was a quote for that but I can't find it on my phone right now).
      - tremon 10y ago
        Which is very good advice, but [..] Wrong conjunction? It seems like you're explaining why it is good advice, not offering an opposing view. I think you have given a perfect illustration of the GGP's assertion that "if you're afraid to go ask a police officer for help [..] then something is very wrong about police". This is a good example where the law sets up the police as antagonists against the general population.
aestetix 10y ago
1. If the data in question were public, Facebook would not need to be the ones selling it. There would be a whole market of third party data aggregators. 2. If this were true, why would we need the Bill of Rights? The entire point of the Fourth Amendment, for example, is to protect citizens against unreasonable searches -- by law enforcement. 3. This would be true if the data were only shared on a need to know basis, which has not been demonstrated. Facebook allows users to give it data under one set of pretenses, and then turns around and uses/sells this data under a different set. I agree the other questions are important, but none of them would be possible if Facebook were not abusing its role. The NSA FISA orders are getting endless complaints, and yet Verizon and others are handing this data over under a "court" order. In this case, Facebook is doing effectively the same thing, but for profit.
- cinquemb 10y ago
  re 1): as this situation stands now, facebook threatens via C&D or sues other companies that try this invoking us law. However if you incorporate in countries that are actively hostile to companies like facebook/google (i.e. Indonesia, China), you can operate aggregators of such data more effectively. However that barrier is a bit different from jumping over this barrier in the due to Facebook incumbent status.
  - aestetix 10y ago
    Can you provide evidence of that? I find this interesting, because a lot of people are saying "it's public data." I would argue that if you get a C&D for scraping/etc, it's no longer public.
    - cinquemb 10y ago
      Facebook's c&d against me and my friend's company we bootstrapped to about $100k annualized before decicing to close stuff down to changes from this: https://lumendatabase.org/notices/2037976 https://lumendatabase.org/notices/2037976 I'm in Indonesia now, and still have everything pretty much ready where I left off (and technically its even easier than before to exfil data from this walled garden sans user account, because of the huge surface of oauth keys out there in the wild as it is for every website with similar protocols and api's) so i'm just doing due diligence now to make sure that like me and my friend handled CNIL[0] from the US, we can effectively send any facebook requests to /dev/null So I say to anyone else if you think its "public data" try to start a company that builds a derivative product within the US leveraging such "public data" ;) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_nationale_de_l%27informatique_et_des_libert%C3%A9s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_nationale_de_l%27in...

by niftich 10y ago

CoryG89 10y ago

Companies feel the need to sell our data because they are offered tons of money for it by other companies such as Geofeedia. I agree that the blame does not rest on Geofeedia alone, but they aren't innocent either. I don't know a good solution to this issue other than making it illegal to buy or sell information about users of public corporations' products.

nostrademons 10y ago
The bigger issue is "why is it that companies can make more money selling personal data about consumers than selling products to consumers?" If companies had a viable business model that involved ordinary consumers paying money for services rendered, then their responsibility would be to the people paying them money, i.e. the consumer. This is a really complicated question, and probably results from a combination of: 1.) Consumers not having disposable income at all, because real wages for a large slice of the population have been stagnant or falling for a generation and necessities like housing, education, and health care keep going up. 2.) Consumers having certain expectations of what they can get "for free", and not wanting to pay money for things that competitors will offer for free. 3.) Consumers having a poor understanding of the long-term consequences of putting data out there, and what it can be used for. 4.) Network effects where even if a small minority of consumers are aware of the above and would rather pay for products, they can't because a majority of the market would rather pay with information rather than money. If you just ban the sale of information outright, you will either end up with work-arounds (eg. Google doesn't sell information, but it sells better ad-targeting and behavior manipulation based on that information), or consumers will lose access to services that they depend upon for much of their daily life.
- CoryG89 10y ago
  I agree with most of what you said, but I don't think that banning the sale of user information is a problem for Google or similar business models. I may not have a problem with Google collecting information about me and using it to target ads. I do have a problem with Google turning around and selling that information to just anyone. I think there is a distinction there that makes a difference. I may trust Google and choose to trust them with my information, but I don't necessarily trust their partners.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    And frankly, if it's going to happen in a capitalist society, why aren't I getting my cut of the profits?
- RodericDay 10y ago
  > The bigger issue is "why is it that companies can make more money selling personal data about consumers than selling products to consumers?" If companies had a viable business model that involved ordinary consumers paying money for services rendered, then their responsibility would be to the people paying them money, i.e. the consumer. Because advertising doesn't fulfill demand, it generates demand. It generates demand by preying on people when they are weak, when they are distracted, about what they are insecure, about what they are not knowledgeable.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  You made a lot of great points. In regards to: "3.) Consumers having a poor understanding of the long-term consequences of putting data out there, and what it can be used for" This is so true and unfortunately there are few resources for helping people understand the implication and consequences. I think at the very least we should be educating young people, perhaps in school. There's a decent documentary that came out a few years ago called "Terms and Conditions May Apply", its an independent release and so lacks some polish in places but I think its worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPw_hx7OME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPw_hx7OME

imh 10y ago

>Second, it ought to be a person's reasonable expectation that law enforcement is a benevolent actor. I totally disagree. Care to expand on that?

int_19h 10y ago
I think the point is that police etc should not behave in such a way that many people immediately assume that an encounter would likely be antagonistic. Basically, if you're afraid to go ask a police officer for help (which, apparently, is fairly common among black people in US, for example), then something is very wrong about police, and needs to be fixed.
- geomark 10y ago
  It's worse than that. Some prominent lawyers advise that everyone should never talk to the police.
  - cyphar 10y ago
    Which is very good advice, but it's because of the fact that testimony given to a police officer can only ever be used against you (it's hearsay otherwise). Not to mention that if someone slips up and accidentally tells a lie in the middle of a testimony, that instills doubt in the entire testimony ("I didn't kill her, I've never killed anyone, I've never even used a gun, I wasn't in the area that night" sounds fine until the last part if it turns out you were in that suburb that night). Basically, to a lawyer a client talking to the police is giving the prosecution ammunition. Not to mention that nobody (not even the supreme court) can claim to know every federal law that applies to a person at a particular time (there was a quote for that but I can't find it on my phone right now).
    - tremon 10y ago
      Which is very good advice, but [..] Wrong conjunction? It seems like you're explaining why it is good advice, not offering an opposing view. I think you have given a perfect illustration of the GGP's assertion that "if you're afraid to go ask a police officer for help [..] then something is very wrong about police". This is a good example where the law sets up the police as antagonists against the general population.

aestetix 10y ago

1. If the data in question were public, Facebook would not need to be the ones selling it. There would be a whole market of third party data aggregators. 2. If this were true, why would we need the Bill of Rights? The entire point of the Fourth Amendment, for example, is to protect citizens against unreasonable searches -- by law enforcement. 3. This would be true if the data were only shared on a need to know basis, which has not been demonstrated. Facebook allows users to give it data under one set of pretenses, and then turns around and uses/sells this data under a different set. I agree the other questions are important, but none of them would be possible if Facebook were not abusing its role. The NSA FISA orders are getting endless complaints, and yet Verizon and others are handing this data over under a "court" order. In this case, Facebook is doing effectively the same thing, but for profit.

cinquemb 10y ago
re 1): as this situation stands now, facebook threatens via C&D or sues other companies that try this invoking us law. However if you incorporate in countries that are actively hostile to companies like facebook/google (i.e. Indonesia, China), you can operate aggregators of such data more effectively. However that barrier is a bit different from jumping over this barrier in the due to Facebook incumbent status.
- aestetix 10y ago
  Can you provide evidence of that? I find this interesting, because a lot of people are saying "it's public data." I would argue that if you get a C&D for scraping/etc, it's no longer public.
  - cinquemb 10y ago
    Facebook's c&d against me and my friend's company we bootstrapped to about $100k annualized before decicing to close stuff down to changes from this: https://lumendatabase.org/notices/2037976 https://lumendatabase.org/notices/2037976 I'm in Indonesia now, and still have everything pretty much ready where I left off (and technically its even easier than before to exfil data from this walled garden sans user account, because of the huge surface of oauth keys out there in the wild as it is for every website with similar protocols and api's) so i'm just doing due diligence now to make sure that like me and my friend handled CNIL[0] from the US, we can effectively send any facebook requests to /dev/null So I say to anyone else if you think its "public data" try to start a company that builds a derivative product within the US leveraging such "public data" ;) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_nationale_de_l%27informatique_et_des_libert%C3%A9s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_nationale_de_l%27in...