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>I'm not going to spend time trying to map that into some arbitrary and intentionally provocative analogy about "serfs" Someone posted about how our current st

>I'm not going to spend time trying to map that into some arbitrary and intentionally provocative analogy about "serfs" Someone posted about how our current state is tech feudalism, you commented to refute that. You obviously did want to talk about this analogy. >When you bought and paid for the server, and you're the only one who has administrative access to it, that's not at all artificial. That's a simple question of who created it and who controls it. >The natural state of affairs is for anyone who has bits to be able to process and copy those bits. Any restrictions on that, whether in the form of copyright or data-collection laws, are necessarily artificial. That doesn't make those restrictions wrong; for instance, I think it's entirely appropriate and likely uncontroversial to prohibit any public disclosure of people's physical location (e.g. home address or current GPS location), for safety reasons. I'm simply arguing that any such restrictions are artificially constructed, so we should talk about which restrictions are necessary and reasonable. What prevents your website from being my website? What prevents me from just walking in and taking that server? Then I could take it home, set it up and run "your" website but now it'd be mine. Well property laws prevent that and property laws are just as artificially constructed as copyright laws or data-collection laws or any other law really. That's why I'm asserting that your "ownership" of a website isn't natural and that the laws curtailing it aren't artificial. Artificial and natural never even enter into yet you keep trying to assert that. And that second paragraph could very easily be reworked into something like this: "The natural state of affairs is for anyone who has serfs to be able to order and demand fealty from those serfs." >By contrast, a framing that treats data about someone as somehow "belonging" to them implies restrictions on basic things like the ability to communicate with others. (At the most basic level, you'd be talking about telling another person some personal information about you and expecting your "please don't share that information" to have some force of law; that's a restriction on that person's natural ability to communicate any knowledge they have.) The point of law is to restrict people's ability to do things. Does a framing that treats websites as somehow "belonging" to someone imply restrictions? Of course it does! Yet you're all for that curtailing of freedom. >Such a framing flips the polarity around from "which restrictions are necessary to protect people" to "which limited rights are granted over that data in order to accomplish things", and I think that's a fundamentally broken approach. Does a framing that treats websites as someone "belonging" to someone also flip this polarity? >I'm ignoring the charged term "swear", here. Then let's also remove the charged term "natural." >Castles and towns in the middle ages got rather poor Internet service, and changing loyalties tended to be frowned upon, to say the least. Okay, well on the web when I use your website but then decide I want to change loyalties how do I get you to give me and then delete my data? Going beyond you, how do I get anyone to do that? It seems that websites are determined to hold my data whether I want out or not, much like the serf in our example. This is actually a perfect segway into what kind of change I'd like. Originally I had been a bit stumped about this but upon rereading your sentence above was really perfect. It seems that you and I agree that a good way to prevent tech feudalism is to give people the ability to change loyalties. In the case of user data that would seem to be some right to user data that allows me to collect it from you and request that you scrub it. Otherwise I'm not really able to change loyalties am I?

JoshTriplett 9y ago
I commented to respond to phrases like "our data", which itself is a framing. > Then let's also remove the charged term "natural." We can call it the default state of affairs, if you like. Because there is a default, here. Forget computers for a moment. If you tell me the statement "foo is bar", then the default state of affairs is that I now have heard from you that "foo is bar", and I can tell other people "foo is bar" or "X said 'foo is bar'". That's what I'm referring to as "natural" or "default". There's an obvious extrapolation from that to facts like "X visited my site on this date" or "X follows Y". Why don't we talk about policies and not analogies, here, since policies are both more concrete? > Okay, well on the web when I use your website but then decide I want to change loyalties how do I get you to give me and then delete my data? Going beyond you, how do I get anyone to do that? You ask nicely for them to provide such functionality, and then go "oh well" if they say no. And then you leave anyway, because unlike any strained analogy made in this thread, you're still free to leave, and you won't wind up killed or imprisoned for doing so. You're free to make use of any site you like, and stop using it whenever you like. And they're free to provide or not-provide any services they'd like. > It seems that websites are determined to hold my data whether I want out or not Try making that observation without using the phrase "my data" to describe "data about you" (or perhaps more generally "data that in some way mentions you"; it's not clear what you intend here, which is all the more reason to clarify). You might find that the resulting observation provides less support for your assertion. For instance, I could phrase an equivalent statement as "Websites are determined to maintain the integrity and completeness of their stored data regardless of unauthorized user actions." Sounds equally reasonable, and no less valid. The framing "my data" is presuming the point you have yet to prove. > It seems that you and I agree that a good way to prevent tech feudalism Still rejecting this framing device, and not agreeing to it as a premise. > is to give people the ability to change loyalties. I would say, more precisely, that people are free to use or stop using any site they like. > In the case of user data that would seem to be some right to user data that allows me to collect it from you and request that you scrub it. Otherwise I'm not really able to change loyalties am I? Of course you are; you can stop using the site at any time. You cannot, on the other hand, un-say what you've already said. While you may ask that someone pretend they've never heard it, I don't believe you should have the ability to demand that. You said it, someone observed and noted that you said it, and now you want their record of that observation destroyed. (To be clear, here, I'm a huge supporter of privacy, and of services that provide such privacy. And I intentionally choose to use such services and avoid many others. I'd love to see more sites and applications designed to give users more control and agency over data they provide, and over how that data is stored and processed. I'd also love to see more distributed, federated services.)

JoshTriplett 9y ago

I commented to respond to phrases like "our data", which itself is a framing. > Then let's also remove the charged term "natural." We can call it the default state of affairs, if you like. Because there is a default, here. Forget computers for a moment. If you tell me the statement "foo is bar", then the default state of affairs is that I now have heard from you that "foo is bar", and I can tell other people "foo is bar" or "X said 'foo is bar'". That's what I'm referring to as "natural" or "default". There's an obvious extrapolation from that to facts like "X visited my site on this date" or "X follows Y". Why don't we talk about policies and not analogies, here, since policies are both more concrete? > Okay, well on the web when I use your website but then decide I want to change loyalties how do I get you to give me and then delete my data? Going beyond you, how do I get anyone to do that? You ask nicely for them to provide such functionality, and then go "oh well" if they say no. And then you leave anyway, because unlike any strained analogy made in this thread, you're still free to leave, and you won't wind up killed or imprisoned for doing so. You're free to make use of any site you like, and stop using it whenever you like. And they're free to provide or not-provide any services they'd like. > It seems that websites are determined to hold my data whether I want out or not Try making that observation without using the phrase "my data" to describe "data about you" (or perhaps more generally "data that in some way mentions you"; it's not clear what you intend here, which is all the more reason to clarify). You might find that the resulting observation provides less support for your assertion. For instance, I could phrase an equivalent statement as "Websites are determined to maintain the integrity and completeness of their stored data regardless of unauthorized user actions." Sounds equally reasonable, and no less valid. The framing "my data" is presuming the point you have yet to prove. > It seems that you and I agree that a good way to prevent tech feudalism Still rejecting this framing device, and not agreeing to it as a premise. > is to give people the ability to change loyalties. I would say, more precisely, that people are free to use or stop using any site they like. > In the case of user data that would seem to be some right to user data that allows me to collect it from you and request that you scrub it. Otherwise I'm not really able to change loyalties am I? Of course you are; you can stop using the site at any time. You cannot, on the other hand, un-say what you've already said. While you may ask that someone pretend they've never heard it, I don't believe you should have the ability to demand that. You said it, someone observed and noted that you said it, and now you want their record of that observation destroyed. (To be clear, here, I'm a huge supporter of privacy, and of services that provide such privacy. And I intentionally choose to use such services and avoid many others. I'd love to see more sites and applications designed to give users more control and agency over data they provide, and over how that data is stored and processed. I'd also love to see more distributed, federated services.)