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Brian Acton or anyone else feeling guilty about their ad-tech wealth: use your winnings to lobby for a federal privacy bill that is as strong and comprehensive

• noreddit323 8y ago
  Why the sudden concern over tech companies mining our habits? Advertisers have been doing it for years, using government funded research in military propaganda that made it's way into universities after WW2 as marketing and journalism programs. This rhetoric is something like "Kill this particular witch!" without questioning whether the belief we hold on how the world works is rational. EDIT: let me re-state: Why is the public conversation around data mining limited to west coast tech? Media be capitalizing on the public mistrust in the air after the election, and government is leaning in. Why should any big brand or corporate master be enabled to collect and analyze my behavior in an effort to get me to buy more of their widgets without my explicit approval?
  • 394549 8y ago
    > Why the sudden concern over tech companies mining our habits? Because tech companies have broad, detailed, individual-level visibility into our habits. Neither traditional advertisers nor the government have ever had data that detailed.
    • codeddesign 8y ago
      Having extensive experience in adtech - besides reading your emails I can assure you they have the same level of sofistication and tracking. Major brands know more about you than your spouse.
      • 394549 8y ago
        Adtech is still tech, and some of the biggest tech companies, Google and Facebook, are adtech companies. When I said "traditional advertisers" I meant old-school advertisers that were used old-school techniques like consumer surveys, etc.
  • thrillgore 8y ago
    I think after the last election, the moral panic du jour was aimed at tech companies. Russian hackers on Facebook, clickbait...it's all lead to this. And the dialog is manufactured to make Google a villain. I'm not sure who the bigger villain is here: Google, or whoever wants to cut them down.
    • notriddle 8y ago
      More specifically, the political pundits latched onto a thing that has been around for over a decade. Tor has been around since 2006, and mixmaster is even older than that. The anti-adtech privacy movement is not new, but the interest coming from mainstream political talking heads is.
      • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        The difference is that after the Russian interference thing, politicians realized all of this Internet stuff they didn't understand can cost them re-election.
        • kodablah 8y ago
          > realized Or, in a continued fit of misunderstanding, they came to that assumption and are shaping their narrative/attacks around it.
    • noreddit323 8y ago
      Well of course. The old school business class is being outdone by them. The east coast media elites are now focusing on west coast rabble rousers. I'm not saying it isn't entirely deserved. But they're not doing anything catalogs, grocery stores, and others haven't been doing for years. West coast tech has the visiblity, the public is growing mistrustful, and are easier to vilify to people that don't realize the cell phone providers have been tracking their locations for decades (used to work for one of the top 3 in network ops, oh yeah, they could find you within a block back in the 90s). Or that Sears has profiles on their customers dating back quite a while.
    • 8y ago
  • scrollaway 8y ago
    > Why the sudden concern over tech companies mining our habits? Oh enough. There's been concern since the beginning, it's just getting more press right this minute. One step at a time.
    • noreddit323 8y ago
      Ok, "dad". Way to cherry pick the obvious counter-argument to make. I'll take that as a tacit agreement with the rest of what was said.
      • JCSato 8y ago
        Not so much "easy" as "obvious".
  • joejerryronnie 8y ago
    Two reasons: 1) The misperception that everyone in Silicon Valley is wealthy beyond their wildest dreams while the rest of the country is struggling. 2) Trump was elected instead of Hillary A very small minority have valid concerns over privacy and the reach of the tech giants, for everyone else, it's simple politics.
• gowld 8y ago
  The article is abouta proposal that the US reglate how Google operates in China, quite different from the EU GDPR, which only applies to companies' treatment of EU residents.
  • icebraining 8y ago
    No, for EU companies, the GDPR applies to all their users worldwide, not just EU residents.
• ewheeler 8y ago
  I'd recommend reading more about the 'information fiduciary' approach[1] promoted by Prof Jonathan Zittrain (and others) which I find to be among the most realistic steps in a better direction, as it offers a 'grand bargain' in the spirit of DCMA's 'safe harbor' for companies that choose to commit to putting consumers and their rights above maximizing profit. [1] https://hbr.org/2018/09/how-to-exercise-the-power-you-didnt-ask-for https://hbr.org/2018/09/how-to-exercise-the-power-you-didnt-...
  • s73v3r_ 8y ago
    I don't want a bargain. I want those companies to stop tracking, and actually respect privacy.
    • diminoten 8y ago
      I think each person should be given a clear choice. I should be allowed to give up my privacy for convenience, I just want to know exactly how much privacy I'm giving up before I make that call. I don't think that's unreasonable, and I think we can pass legislation that puts something like that into effect without harming the economic viability of current companies or future startups. I don't want to bog down startups with regulations that force a "you must be this tall to ride" situation, but it's getting out of hand, how exposed I am without being told about it. I just want to know, is all.
• kodablah 8y ago
  Or don't use your winnings for lobbying for new laws heaped on everyone. Instead, use them to build what you consider the ideal, give grants to promote your principles, finance populace-educating groups, fund pro-privacy thinktanks/projects/foundations, etc. Please don't waste money or time on heavy-handed government internet intervention.
  • vkou 8y ago
    There are fifty million reasons for why 'Just build a better competing product' may be a less successful solution to this problem.
    • kodablah 8y ago
      And hundreds of millions of reasons why government-led heavy-handed internet oversight is worse. I also included other options such as education. But I'll take any option, including the status quo, over what I consider the nuclear option that often has unintended consequences regardless of original intent.
      • vkou 8y ago
        Government-led heavy-handed oversight is so terrible that it also gave us rivers free of coal sludge, products that work as advertised, drugs that have to be tested before they are sold, airplanes that usually don't crash, and cars that are safer, more fuel efficient, and cleaner then they were before mandated seat belts, air bags, emission limits, and mileage gains. At this point, the nuclear option, like the GDPR, is the only way to align the interests of large data firms with the public. If you think otherwise, consider how the market punished Equifax for their data breaches. Or Kaiser. Or Target. Or Facebook. When given the choice between doing the right thing, and the expedient thing, this industry has a long, and shitty track record of always choosing the expedient thing.
        • kodablah 8y ago
          And the patriot act, and prohibition, and on and on. Not sure why pointing out unrelated positive or negative legislation affects the issue at hand. It's disingenuous to debate that way. Back to the issue at hand, I am specifically talking about heavy-handed oversight of the internet. The not-as-heavy-handed internet oversight we either already have or has been attempted is problematic and we should not double down on it. In the absence of a good solution to a problem that exists, we should not make a second problem. We might want it to work, but existing examples have shown us that what we want to work is not enough to make it so.
• jamiequint 8y ago
  Ironically, in a way similar to most legislation, GDPR will mostly benefit the largest tech companies at the expense of small startups that may eventually compete with them. Google, FB, et al have endless amounts of resources to comply with and litigate legislation like GDPR, whereas it's a substantial cost to smaller companies to do the same.
  • icebraining 8y ago
    Which is why the GDPR has a reduced level of obligations for companies under 250 employees (see article 30).
    • yeahforsureman 8y ago
      Not really. You're talking about an exception to only one obligation (record-keeping). And even that is relevant only where the processing is "not occasional".
      • icebraining 8y ago
        A small company is also less likely to need a DPO.
    • lotu 8y ago
      When Instagram was bought by Facebook I think it had 13 employees. Would they not of had to comply with GDPR then?
      • icebraining 8y ago
        Everyone has to comply with the GDPR, it's just that bigger companies have extra requirements to fulfill.
      • vxNsr 8y ago
        Similarly, Whatsapp had 55 at the time of the purchase.
  • 8y ago
• ehsankia 8y ago
  I'm not sure that would have any impact on censorship in China, which seems to be what this person is really upset about here.
• bepotts 8y ago
  Or how about users take some ownership of their actions and educate themselves on how "free" services are making their money. If you don't like Google's tracking practices: don't use Google products. If you're okay with them, then keep using Google products. Free minds; free people; associating with each other freely. Washington should be weary of regulations like GDPR on principle. Plus I doubt GDPR would have passed if Google, Facebook, and Twitter were, say, French. GDPR was only passed because the companies they were "targeting" (and they were targeting a specific set of companies let's please be real) were foreign.
  • taurath 8y ago
    > Or how about users take some ownership of their actions and educate themselves on how "free" services are making their money. They know. There’s nothing they can do about it. Even as someone who wants to protect their own privacy it’s impossible without being in a cave or updating your habits every week. Use Linux and duck duck go and don’t use any social media and don’t have a phone and only buy 15 year old TVs and late model cars, don’t use credit cards. Blaming internet users for not protecting their privacy indicates that one has no idea how anything works, or they make their money off of ads.
    • bepotts 8y ago
      No I'm not blaming internet users for not "protecting their privacy", I'm saying people who care about their "privacy" shouldn't be so presumptuous about the rest of us. Plenty of people on Hacker News dislike data collection companies, that doesn't mean everyone else agrees with you. I'm plenty happy with Google collecting stuff about me. In fact, if they could use their algorithms to help me stay fit, and all they needed was me to ingest some pill every month or so while they collected information about me and gave me a readout, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Sign me up! Not everybody cares about some "privacy" crusade. Don't ruin business models that the rest of us are okay with. If you want to use Google over DuckDuckGo, and can't get away from Twitter or Facebook, dude, that's your fault. Stop speaking for the rest of us just because you can't get your life in order.
    • closeparen 8y ago