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What would competition do in terms of how advertising companies benefit from user data? I think the point is to start forcing companies into thinking sensitive

by mtgx 7y ago

What would competition do in terms of how advertising companies benefit from user data? I think the point is to start forcing companies into thinking sensitive user data is a liability that is taxed or worse if they do anything "nefarious" with that data (where nefarious could be whatever we think to put in that law). So it's like asking for Coca-cola to "have competition" (which generally just creates more sugar soda brands) vs taxing sugar.

laughinghan 7y ago
This is brilliant, I've never thought of it this way. In a sense, GDPR already kind of does this, increasing the burden of storing user data. Would be interesting to consider dramatically ramp up this burden---maybe with a literal tax---for behavioral data stored longer than 90 days (or some other grace period), like a weaker version of Maciej Ceglowski's Six Fixes. https://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you.htm#six_fixes https://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you...
- lugg 7y ago
  That's just going to optimise for short term thinking. Your customers will probably just get treated like crap long term.
  - laughinghan 7y ago
    What does keeping surveillance records of your customers' online activity indefinitely have to do with not treating customers like crap? Offline businesses now and always don't and have never had indefinite surveillance records of their customer's behavior. Is it your position that offline businesses are incapable of not treating their customers like crap? Besides which, aggregated data that can't be de-anonymized would be exempted, as described by Maciej Ceglowski. The 90-day limit is only on fine-grained, personally-identifiable behavioral data that isn't explicitly shared (the content of my HN comment should of course be kept forever/until I delete it; but there's no reason to keep the IP address I used, other than aggregate statistics about what cities people access HN from).

by mtgx 7y ago

laughinghan 7y ago

This is brilliant, I've never thought of it this way. In a sense, GDPR already kind of does this, increasing the burden of storing user data. Would be interesting to consider dramatically ramp up this burden---maybe with a literal tax---for behavioral data stored longer than 90 days (or some other grace period), like a weaker version of Maciej Ceglowski's Six Fixes. https://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you.htm#six_fixes https://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you...

lugg 7y ago
That's just going to optimise for short term thinking. Your customers will probably just get treated like crap long term.
- laughinghan 7y ago
  What does keeping surveillance records of your customers' online activity indefinitely have to do with not treating customers like crap? Offline businesses now and always don't and have never had indefinite surveillance records of their customer's behavior. Is it your position that offline businesses are incapable of not treating their customers like crap? Besides which, aggregated data that can't be de-anonymized would be exempted, as described by Maciej Ceglowski. The 90-day limit is only on fine-grained, personally-identifiable behavioral data that isn't explicitly shared (the content of my HN comment should of course be kept forever/until I delete it; but there's no reason to keep the IP address I used, other than aggregate statistics about what cities people access HN from).