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People - not the ones here on HN - have no clue what they 'give' away. They also have no clue how often small companies, indie game devs etc make a living by se

People - not the ones here on HN - have no clue what they 'give' away. They also have no clue how often small companies, indie game devs etc make a living by selling said information that was 'given' to them. These data aggregators can build profiles on people by buying data from as many sources as possible. How is the average user supposed to know this happens on the background when they load www.nytimes.com? How are they supposed to know that those flashy banners contain entire programs designed to track them? How should the average user now that the ad banners on acb.com are the same as on xyz.com? How should the average user know that a FB button on every website also tracks you. As does G+ button, as does Twiter etc... How are regular users supposed to know how much data they produce online. Honestly it even scares me to see how many JS is loaded on average websites. Just for tracking, just for profile building. This isn't given. It's taken.

jasonlotito 8y ago
> People - not the ones here on HN - have no clue what they 'give' away. Doesn't change the fact that browsers requests assets from servers, not the other way around. People being ignorant of this fact doesn't change this fact. Rather, again, we should place the blame on the thing giving this data to sites: browsers. > How is the average user supposed to know this happens on the background when they load www.nytimes.com? ... They shouldn't have to, and thinking they should know this is silly. Which is why I don't blame the users. I blame the browsers. The browsers are the ones sending user data. > This isn't given. It's taken. No, it's actually not. This is delusional thinking at best, and ignores where the problem lies. Browsers are giving the necessary information to allow people to be tracked. Only now do we see companies addressing this (see Safari for example). Suggesting that given data is instead taken allows the people that actually gave the data to the companies to continue to get away with it, and is more harmful. Stop lying.
- dang 8y ago
  Incivility like that will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong another comment is or feels. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jasonlotito 8y ago

> People - not the ones here on HN - have no clue what they 'give' away. Doesn't change the fact that browsers requests assets from servers, not the other way around. People being ignorant of this fact doesn't change this fact. Rather, again, we should place the blame on the thing giving this data to sites: browsers. > How is the average user supposed to know this happens on the background when they load www.nytimes.com? ... They shouldn't have to, and thinking they should know this is silly. Which is why I don't blame the users. I blame the browsers. The browsers are the ones sending user data. > This isn't given. It's taken. No, it's actually not. This is delusional thinking at best, and ignores where the problem lies. Browsers are giving the necessary information to allow people to be tracked. Only now do we see companies addressing this (see Safari for example). Suggesting that given data is instead taken allows the people that actually gave the data to the companies to continue to get away with it, and is more harmful. Stop lying.

dang 8y ago
Incivility like that will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong another comment is or feels. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html