8 ms·

> Few people read privacy policies. People have free will and that's their choice. I'm not surprised that most don't. I rarely do. But it doesn't make sense th

by gdulli 10y ago

> Few people read privacy policies. People have free will and that's their choice. I'm not surprised that most don't. I rarely do. But it doesn't make sense that the people who have strong feelings about privacy aren't reading them. You can't give up what's clearly your own personal responsibility and then blame someone else for the consequences.

mikeash 10y ago
I agree that blame should go to people who care about privacy and then don't read privacy policies. However, blame should also go to companies that hide important privacy info in privacy policies, with the full knowledge that most of their users will never see it. Given that the company here is a single entity, while their users are a disorganized mass, I think the company should bear much more responsibility for fixing the situation. They can unilaterally fix it for everybody, while their users can't. The company also exists with the sole purpose of running its business. That is all they do. Their users, on the other hand, are quite busy doing many other things and dedicate perhaps 0.1% of their time to doing business with this company. In a relationship that's this lopsided, we should not hold both sides to the same standard. The company should bear far more responsibility for hiding important information where nobody will read it than their users should bear for not hunting it down. Edit: it occurs to me that this is basically like getting conned. Somebody spins a story at a gas station about how they're trying to get to Cincinnati and they just spent their last $5 on money for their sick kid and can you just help a guy out, and they manage to con some poor sucker, do we focus our ire on the con artist or on the sucker? I'm OK with telling the sucker that they should be more careful and they shouldn't have fallen for the story, but they are ultimately the victim here, and the culprit is the scammer.
- gdulli 10y ago
  > Somebody spins a story at a gas station about how they're trying to get to Cincinnati and they just spent their last $5 on money for their sick kid and can you just help a guy out, and they manage to con some poor sucker, do we focus our ire on the con artist or on the sucker? That is just ridiculous. You're describing a lie. This situation has transparency that people have simply chosen to ignore. Fine print isn't a crime.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Lying is about intent. When you know that people will expect a reasonable level of privacy by default, and that people won't read your privacy policy, then selling all of their data and only mentioning it in your privacy policy is also lying.

by gdulli 10y ago

mikeash 10y ago

I agree that blame should go to people who care about privacy and then don't read privacy policies. However, blame should also go to companies that hide important privacy info in privacy policies, with the full knowledge that most of their users will never see it. Given that the company here is a single entity, while their users are a disorganized mass, I think the company should bear much more responsibility for fixing the situation. They can unilaterally fix it for everybody, while their users can't. The company also exists with the sole purpose of running its business. That is all they do. Their users, on the other hand, are quite busy doing many other things and dedicate perhaps 0.1% of their time to doing business with this company. In a relationship that's this lopsided, we should not hold both sides to the same standard. The company should bear far more responsibility for hiding important information where nobody will read it than their users should bear for not hunting it down. Edit: it occurs to me that this is basically like getting conned. Somebody spins a story at a gas station about how they're trying to get to Cincinnati and they just spent their last $5 on money for their sick kid and can you just help a guy out, and they manage to con some poor sucker, do we focus our ire on the con artist or on the sucker? I'm OK with telling the sucker that they should be more careful and they shouldn't have fallen for the story, but they are ultimately the victim here, and the culprit is the scammer.

gdulli 10y ago
> Somebody spins a story at a gas station about how they're trying to get to Cincinnati and they just spent their last $5 on money for their sick kid and can you just help a guy out, and they manage to con some poor sucker, do we focus our ire on the con artist or on the sucker? That is just ridiculous. You're describing a lie. This situation has transparency that people have simply chosen to ignore. Fine print isn't a crime.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Lying is about intent. When you know that people will expect a reasonable level of privacy by default, and that people won't read your privacy policy, then selling all of their data and only mentioning it in your privacy policy is also lying.