4 ms·

>Currently it has to be, "if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service, and don't interact with other people or companies

>Currently it has to be, "if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service, and don't interact with other people or companies who use their service." Not sure you have any other option. Most of the time, you can't restrain what other people choose to do with images they've taken that contain your likeness, and you can't stop them from posting content that mentions their spouses. That person is willfully disclosing this data under the terms they've accepted. If the person is disclosing data about you that you don't want disclosed, that's an issue between you and that person, not that person and the entity who receives their willful, free, and unprompted disclosures. Facebook can't know a priori that the user intends to disclose information on a person who doesn't want Facebook to know about them, and thus can't do anything about it until it's too late. Allowing people to delete other peoples' content because they don't want to be mentioned/included in it is an obvious non-starter (and Facebook already includes this to a reasonable extent with untagging features). The privacy threat could be partially, not totally, mitigated by radically changing the way we approach online services, but I don't see how that could be pushed through. It wouldn't benefit any commercial entity, so no one with private motive would bankroll it to a height that could reasonably challenge FB, and it surely wouldn't be fair to use police/military force to dismantle Facebook et al and force users into a hypothetical somewhat-more-private decentralized, self-hosted, encrypted Facebook replacement, so we're basically stuck. The reality is that this is the world we live in now. I don't think there's really a way to avoid it. Legal solutions that prevent vendors from referencing some data points may limit some effects here and there, but I think it's going to be difficult to craft something that really accomplishes anything big, and the tech and data is still going to be out there and used by some people regardless of the legal status.

dsp1234 10y ago
The reality is that this is the world we live in now. I don't think there's really a way to avoid it I agree. Which is why when the original commenter stopped at "don't use their service", I pointed out that that action isn't enough. It's not good advice, because it doesn't actually work.
toomuchtodo 10y ago
> Legal solutions that prevent vendors from referencing some data points may limit some effects here and there, but I think it's going to be difficult to craft something that really accomplishes anything big, and the tech and data is still going to be out there and used by some people regardless of the legal status. I think you underestimate the effectiveness of laws and punitive damages for breaking said laws. Seems to be working fairly well in reining in companies like AirBnB and Uber, its a matter of time before we rein in companies using data mining.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  I understand that laws can have an immense impact. In fact, I believe that our bad network access and copyright laws have enabled things like Facebook to become scary data-hoarding monopolies in the first place. Without the CFAA, without improper application of trespass to chattels, without improper application of the Copyright Act to RAM copies of pages that exist for mere microseconds, and without considering exploitative browsewrap "agreements" legally binding, Facebook (and most other "walled gardens" that effectively downgrade the WWW into just another technical curiosity in content delivery instead of an independent, open, and free publishing platform) could relatively easily be harvested and reduced to something like the decentralized protocol described above, which would greatly enhance individual privacy and control moving forward. But I digress. Uber and AirBnb have physical-world touchpoints that are easy to police using our existing police and justice infrastructure. You're driving a car with revoked registration or renting out a unit in an area not zoned for short-term rentals and/or without the proper licenses. These are straightforward violations that are trivially observable, relatively simple to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law and reasonably within a jury's comprehension and familiarity, and we can send a real guy with a gun to come and haul you off to jail if you break these rules. All-digital conduct, like storing too much metadata, is much harder to detect, curb, and assign accountability for. And even if Facebook itself is stopped from making the correlations or compilations outlined by such a law, nothing can stop under-the-radar third-party scrapers or special-privilege actors like intelligence agencies from combining the data exposed to Facebook and ultimately achieving the same end: an uber-effective mass surveillance system capable of identifying anyone, anywhere (potentially even digitally) with nothing more than a semi-decent picture of their face.
confounded 10y ago
> ...changing the way we approach online services, but I don't see how that could be pushed through I'm a little bit more optimistic than you. As noted in the article, there are important differences under the hood between FB in the US and The EU, and these were "pushed through" by courts, and cultural norms (e.g. not a violent/benevolent 'privacy junta' as you suggest). I can imagine a world where the US gov banned sucking entire contact lists out of people's phones for commercial exploitation, for example. Everyone feels it's creepy, and there's zero user benefit. I don't see why this wouldn't be extremely popular, and straight forward to legislate. This would remove the primary data collection means for FB's shadow profiles in one stroke.
- nerdponx 10y ago
  How do you know there's zero user benefit? I can think of several legitimate/non-evil uses of "shadow profiles" in product research.
  - confounded 10y ago
    Well, if you came home and I was wearing your partner's dressing-gown and smoking your pipe, I'm sure I could offer a few non-evil research reasons too. What's the user benefit you have in mind?
    - nerdponx 10y ago
      Non-users represent an "unexposed" control group for experiments.
      - confounded 10y ago
        Not a user benefit (or methodologically sound).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
amelius 10y ago
> Not sure you have any other option. Most of the time, you can't restrain what other people choose to do with images they've taken that contain your likeness, and you can't stop them from posting content that mentions their spouses. But, assuming that FB's face recognition actually works, they can refrain from tracking people that don't have an account. It cuts both ways.
pjc50 10y ago
This is literally what EU data protection is for: if you're going to process personal data, people have the rights to know what it is, whether it's correct, and to have it deleted.
- yellow_postit 10y ago
  From the article the tagging feature is not available in the EU. An interesting question is are the citizens better/happier/safer without this feature? I don't propose to know how to measure that.

dsp1234 10y ago

The reality is that this is the world we live in now. I don't think there's really a way to avoid it I agree. Which is why when the original commenter stopped at "don't use their service", I pointed out that that action isn't enough. It's not good advice, because it doesn't actually work.

toomuchtodo 10y ago

> Legal solutions that prevent vendors from referencing some data points may limit some effects here and there, but I think it's going to be difficult to craft something that really accomplishes anything big, and the tech and data is still going to be out there and used by some people regardless of the legal status. I think you underestimate the effectiveness of laws and punitive damages for breaking said laws. Seems to be working fairly well in reining in companies like AirBnB and Uber, its a matter of time before we rein in companies using data mining.

cookiecaper 10y ago
I understand that laws can have an immense impact. In fact, I believe that our bad network access and copyright laws have enabled things like Facebook to become scary data-hoarding monopolies in the first place. Without the CFAA, without improper application of trespass to chattels, without improper application of the Copyright Act to RAM copies of pages that exist for mere microseconds, and without considering exploitative browsewrap "agreements" legally binding, Facebook (and most other "walled gardens" that effectively downgrade the WWW into just another technical curiosity in content delivery instead of an independent, open, and free publishing platform) could relatively easily be harvested and reduced to something like the decentralized protocol described above, which would greatly enhance individual privacy and control moving forward. But I digress. Uber and AirBnb have physical-world touchpoints that are easy to police using our existing police and justice infrastructure. You're driving a car with revoked registration or renting out a unit in an area not zoned for short-term rentals and/or without the proper licenses. These are straightforward violations that are trivially observable, relatively simple to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law and reasonably within a jury's comprehension and familiarity, and we can send a real guy with a gun to come and haul you off to jail if you break these rules. All-digital conduct, like storing too much metadata, is much harder to detect, curb, and assign accountability for. And even if Facebook itself is stopped from making the correlations or compilations outlined by such a law, nothing can stop under-the-radar third-party scrapers or special-privilege actors like intelligence agencies from combining the data exposed to Facebook and ultimately achieving the same end: an uber-effective mass surveillance system capable of identifying anyone, anywhere (potentially even digitally) with nothing more than a semi-decent picture of their face.

confounded 10y ago

> ...changing the way we approach online services, but I don't see how that could be pushed through I'm a little bit more optimistic than you. As noted in the article, there are important differences under the hood between FB in the US and The EU, and these were "pushed through" by courts, and cultural norms (e.g. not a violent/benevolent 'privacy junta' as you suggest). I can imagine a world where the US gov banned sucking entire contact lists out of people's phones for commercial exploitation, for example. Everyone feels it's creepy, and there's zero user benefit. I don't see why this wouldn't be extremely popular, and straight forward to legislate. This would remove the primary data collection means for FB's shadow profiles in one stroke.

nerdponx 10y ago
How do you know there's zero user benefit? I can think of several legitimate/non-evil uses of "shadow profiles" in product research.
- confounded 10y ago
  Well, if you came home and I was wearing your partner's dressing-gown and smoking your pipe, I'm sure I could offer a few non-evil research reasons too. What's the user benefit you have in mind?
  - nerdponx 10y ago
    Non-users represent an "unexposed" control group for experiments.
    - confounded 10y ago
      Not a user benefit (or methodologically sound).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

amelius 10y ago

> Not sure you have any other option. Most of the time, you can't restrain what other people choose to do with images they've taken that contain your likeness, and you can't stop them from posting content that mentions their spouses. But, assuming that FB's face recognition actually works, they can refrain from tracking people that don't have an account. It cuts both ways.

pjc50 10y ago

This is literally what EU data protection is for: if you're going to process personal data, people have the rights to know what it is, whether it's correct, and to have it deleted.

yellow_postit 10y ago
From the article the tagging feature is not available in the EU. An interesting question is are the citizens better/happier/safer without this feature? I don't propose to know how to measure that.