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Ideally instead of a wall of text preceding the use of a service, or even worse hidden away somewhere under a fine-print footer link, I'd like to see services h

Ideally instead of a wall of text preceding the use of a service, or even worse hidden away somewhere under a fine-print footer link, I'd like to see services have to do something like this: "You've just entered some search text. May we store this text and future search queries? [ ] yes, anonymously to help suggest searches for other users [ ] yes, along with your user name to help refine future searches, and to improve the targeting of our advertising [ ] oh god no, forget I asked" When clicking a search result: "Before we redirect you to this page, may we record the fact that you clicked on it? (similar choices)" And as they build up history: "From information you've previously allowed us to save and information we've bought from authorized third parties, we've determined that you are a 35-year old green-skinned right-wing vegetarian with the following sexual fetishes: <redacted>. May we share this information with our advertisers?" I would hope things would change if permissions were this explicit.

yellow_postit 9y ago
This would quickly become the incessant prompts about cookie usage that the UK enforces. Like most alerts users quickly become blind to them and click through to get to what they are trying to accomplish.
- brainfire 9y ago
  "This product is known to the State of California to..."
cortesoft 9y ago
If you got asked 5 questions for every page you visited, what would end up happening is people would start clicking yes without reading. You would get overwhelmed by requests that you would start paying less and less attention to them.
jimktrains2 9y ago
Or just assume everything you send someone else will be saved by that person.
Communitivity 9y ago
This is on the right track. I'd like to see it go farther though. Each of these pieces of information has value of X to an advertiser. Flip the relationship management, so vendors treat their users as content producers, and pay some fraction of X to access the user's information. This would need better trust technologies, but is the right path. It's the path groups like the Project VRM folks at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society are working toward, and ties in to Cory Doctorow's concept of Whuffie. Also ties into my concept of Communitivity enhancing software technologies - technologies that help people do community.

yellow_postit 9y ago

This would quickly become the incessant prompts about cookie usage that the UK enforces. Like most alerts users quickly become blind to them and click through to get to what they are trying to accomplish.

brainfire 9y ago
"This product is known to the State of California to..."

cortesoft 9y ago

If you got asked 5 questions for every page you visited, what would end up happening is people would start clicking yes without reading. You would get overwhelmed by requests that you would start paying less and less attention to them.

jimktrains2 9y ago

Or just assume everything you send someone else will be saved by that person.

Communitivity 9y ago

This is on the right track. I'd like to see it go farther though. Each of these pieces of information has value of X to an advertiser. Flip the relationship management, so vendors treat their users as content producers, and pay some fraction of X to access the user's information. This would need better trust technologies, but is the right path. It's the path groups like the Project VRM folks at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society are working toward, and ties in to Cory Doctorow's concept of Whuffie. Also ties into my concept of Communitivity enhancing software technologies - technologies that help people do community.