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I really don't understand the extreme hostility to data collection and data markets. No one likes ads, but no one wants to have to pay a subscription fee to eve

I really don't understand the extreme hostility to data collection and data markets. No one likes ads, but no one wants to have to pay a subscription fee to every single site on the internet. If I'm going to see ads, I'd rather them be something I might potentially find useful than something irrelevant. If I end up buying their product, the exchange is mutually beneficial and both parties walk away with value from the exchange. What's really great is that it can really help small businesses and startups over large corporations. Brands like Coca Cola can afford to canvas the world with their logo, but a business with a handful of employees must use their marketing budget very carefully. User data and profiling makes it realistic to find those people naturally through their internet habits. Even if this is being used by politicians, I don't see the harm. If you think people can't think for themselves in the face of political advertising campaigns, then I don't see why you'd also believe that those same people can be trusted with the responsibility of the vote. I can understand the need for treating data carefully and making sure the data is sufficiently scrubbed for personal identification, but this issue is something different.

rapind 7y ago
Because it's rife with bad actors due to a lack of regulation. And even the good actors are kind of forced to be bad actors in order to compete. Lacking better regulation it's just a horrible business model for consumers, with really no exceptions since anyone who plays nice will ultimately lose out to less scrupulous players.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > And even the good actors This sounds like snark, but I don't intend it that way. I genuinely want to know. Who are the good actors? I really can't see any.
  - rapind 7y ago
    I naively consider(ed?) Google a good actor. I still kind of buy that they want to be at least. I'm sure others think differently though and I'm definitely not going to defend them. (Android, Dragonfly)
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      Yeah, I think differently. I think Google is one of the major bad actors.
- TheAceOfHearts 7y ago
  Could you provide some examples of the kinds of regulations that you believe are required?
  - rapind 7y ago
    Privacy mainly and ownership of data. Something along the lines of GDPR in spirit. I also think the details / fine print matter or loopholes will be found. I think though that appropriate regulation is going to seriously hamper if not utterly destroy the business models of some really big players.
_r_o_y_ 7y ago
My problem at least is the fog behind it all, let me make the choice of whether I let you sell my information or pay you directly, don't make me assume that everything free comes with strings attached.
magashna 7y ago
That's on the product advertiser. No one needs my data to figure out that if I'm browsing recipes.com I might be interested in $cookwareSale
kelnos 7y ago
> no one wants to have to pay a subscription fee to every single site on the internet. If we had a reasonable micropayments system so I could spend a few cents per article I read online from non-subscription sites, I'd be thrilled. I do not want to see ads, ever. I do not want companies collecting or selling my activity patterns. If I've signed up for something, I don't want my personal details sold to someone else in order to fund the service. I will gladly pay my proportion of what's necessary to keep the service running in order to avoid the "you're not the customer, you're the product" mentality. I totally understand that probably most people don't think the way I do. They are happy to exchange their privacy for free stuff, and in some cases wouldn't be able to afford to pay if this wasn't an option. But it's just sad that's the case.
- oehpr 7y ago
  Right? This is always the false dichotomy that gets put to us. "Either accept the ads or pay me 5 bucks a month" 5 bucks a month??!?! You were making 5 bucks a month off JUST ME WITH ADS?!!!! But it's not that at all. It's simply that credit cards are so heinously inefficient and unreliable and costly to manage that they need to charge that amount of money to not lose money on average. Dealing with fraud and charge backs and the cut the banks take and the cost per transaction. It's just how terrible of a payment system credit cards really are. If we were getting charged the actual price of the product, most people would happily pay! Load your browser up with 20 bucks and you'll have unobstructed internet for months. I think this goal is pretty much what Brave is going for, they get a lot of criticism for their implementation here. Of course I'm not shocked, this is a hard problem, and the demand for the solution is irrationally low.
  - chii 7y ago
    The individual user isn't worth 5 bucks in ads. But if you have millions, then they are worth that amount in aggregate, but only in aggregate. If they offered any price for subscribing ad free, the potential loss from the ad value of nonsubscribers could be well more than the gains in subscriber fees. Therefore, to offset this, subscription fees needs to be much higher than the average ad revenue per user.
- 7y ago
johndubchak 7y ago
I'm not certain why this viewpoint, a completely valid one, was down-voted. This is simply the other side of the argument.
JohnFen 7y ago
All of the following is my opinion only. > I really don't understand the extreme hostility to data collection and data markets. I can easily explain my extreme hostility to this: that it happens without my consent and that companies put so much work into actively evading the defenses I put up against it. > No one likes ads This isn't about ads. This is about data collection. If ads existed without the spying, I wouldn't have an issue. > What's really great is that it can really help small businesses and startups over large corporations. No, that's not really great. I'm all for helping small businesses, but not by allowing them to abuse me. > I can understand the need for treating data carefully and making sure the data is sufficiently scrubbed for personal identification That's important too, but it doesn't address the issue of consent. If data is being collected about me or my use of my machines without my informed consent, that's spying, period. I will treat anybody doing that as the attackers that they are.
- fphhotchips 7y ago
  Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying your only issue here is consent? Surely you could just not use the sites and services that evade your consent then? I'm sympathetic to the fact that "don't use services that track you" is easier said than done, but all the same, you do have that option.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    "Surely you could just not use the sites and services that evade your consent then?" No, really, you cannot. FB maintains shadow profles, even for nonusers. Google tracks virtually all Web traffic. And most email. Amazon backs or provisions a tremendous amount on online sevices. Comcast, TimeWarner, AT&T, and Verizon have absolute local, and effective national, monopolies on point-of-presence service across the US. Indigenous telco monopolies operate similarly elsewhere. Cloudfront, Limelight, Akamai. and other CDN, DNS, and interconnectivity providers see requests and traffic aggregated across huge opulations. Visa and Mastercard see a huge fraction of financial activity. And this doesn't even start to touch the vast B2B data services markets in advertising, marketing, finance, credit, risk, tol collection, healthcare (denial) systems, licence plate scanner, retail backends, payments processing, debt collection, and more. There really is no effective possibility of opting out. Even with denying yourself an effective role in modern society.
gameswithgo 7y ago
>but no one wants to have to pay a subscription fee to every single site on the internet I want to pay for the ones I use! It is increasingly becoming clear that free stuff is horrible.
8bitsrule 7y ago
It has been one year since the EU's GDPR law went into effect. What they did and why they did it is described in the PDF linked below. Some of their rationale is spelled out in Section 1.1.1. Key principles in Section 3. https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-coe-edps-2018-handbook-data-protection_en.pdf https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-co... There are plenty of opportunities for abuse here in the US, and we're all reminded of them constantly. The proliferation of ad-blockers and anti-tracking software shows that 'extreme hostility' is widespread. I have yet to see any substantial animus in the EU over the reasonable measures they've taken. Hopefully action on a state-by-state basis in the US will encourage the industry to demand explicit legal restrictions.
twsted 7y ago
> No one likes ads It's not a problem with ads. It's a problem with tracking and data collection. I do not want any company can follow my habits and have a list of my preferences, at least without my consent. I like general ads (with moderation), not customized based on my past purchases, where I can find out something new and interesting. Like it is on magazines.

rapind 7y ago

Because it's rife with bad actors due to a lack of regulation. And even the good actors are kind of forced to be bad actors in order to compete. Lacking better regulation it's just a horrible business model for consumers, with really no exceptions since anyone who plays nice will ultimately lose out to less scrupulous players.

JohnFen 7y ago
> And even the good actors This sounds like snark, but I don't intend it that way. I genuinely want to know. Who are the good actors? I really can't see any.
- rapind 7y ago
  I naively consider(ed?) Google a good actor. I still kind of buy that they want to be at least. I'm sure others think differently though and I'm definitely not going to defend them. (Android, Dragonfly)
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    Yeah, I think differently. I think Google is one of the major bad actors.
TheAceOfHearts 7y ago
Could you provide some examples of the kinds of regulations that you believe are required?
- rapind 7y ago
  Privacy mainly and ownership of data. Something along the lines of GDPR in spirit. I also think the details / fine print matter or loopholes will be found. I think though that appropriate regulation is going to seriously hamper if not utterly destroy the business models of some really big players.

_r_o_y_ 7y ago

My problem at least is the fog behind it all, let me make the choice of whether I let you sell my information or pay you directly, don't make me assume that everything free comes with strings attached.

magashna 7y ago

That's on the product advertiser. No one needs my data to figure out that if I'm browsing recipes.com I might be interested in $cookwareSale

kelnos 7y ago

> no one wants to have to pay a subscription fee to every single site on the internet. If we had a reasonable micropayments system so I could spend a few cents per article I read online from non-subscription sites, I'd be thrilled. I do not want to see ads, ever. I do not want companies collecting or selling my activity patterns. If I've signed up for something, I don't want my personal details sold to someone else in order to fund the service. I will gladly pay my proportion of what's necessary to keep the service running in order to avoid the "you're not the customer, you're the product" mentality. I totally understand that probably most people don't think the way I do. They are happy to exchange their privacy for free stuff, and in some cases wouldn't be able to afford to pay if this wasn't an option. But it's just sad that's the case.

oehpr 7y ago
Right? This is always the false dichotomy that gets put to us. "Either accept the ads or pay me 5 bucks a month" 5 bucks a month??!?! You were making 5 bucks a month off JUST ME WITH ADS?!!!! But it's not that at all. It's simply that credit cards are so heinously inefficient and unreliable and costly to manage that they need to charge that amount of money to not lose money on average. Dealing with fraud and charge backs and the cut the banks take and the cost per transaction. It's just how terrible of a payment system credit cards really are. If we were getting charged the actual price of the product, most people would happily pay! Load your browser up with 20 bucks and you'll have unobstructed internet for months. I think this goal is pretty much what Brave is going for, they get a lot of criticism for their implementation here. Of course I'm not shocked, this is a hard problem, and the demand for the solution is irrationally low.
- chii 7y ago
  The individual user isn't worth 5 bucks in ads. But if you have millions, then they are worth that amount in aggregate, but only in aggregate. If they offered any price for subscribing ad free, the potential loss from the ad value of nonsubscribers could be well more than the gains in subscriber fees. Therefore, to offset this, subscription fees needs to be much higher than the average ad revenue per user.
7y ago

johndubchak 7y ago

I'm not certain why this viewpoint, a completely valid one, was down-voted. This is simply the other side of the argument.

JohnFen 7y ago

All of the following is my opinion only. > I really don't understand the extreme hostility to data collection and data markets. I can easily explain my extreme hostility to this: that it happens without my consent and that companies put so much work into actively evading the defenses I put up against it. > No one likes ads This isn't about ads. This is about data collection. If ads existed without the spying, I wouldn't have an issue. > What's really great is that it can really help small businesses and startups over large corporations. No, that's not really great. I'm all for helping small businesses, but not by allowing them to abuse me. > I can understand the need for treating data carefully and making sure the data is sufficiently scrubbed for personal identification That's important too, but it doesn't address the issue of consent. If data is being collected about me or my use of my machines without my informed consent, that's spying, period. I will treat anybody doing that as the attackers that they are.

fphhotchips 7y ago
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying your only issue here is consent? Surely you could just not use the sites and services that evade your consent then? I'm sympathetic to the fact that "don't use services that track you" is easier said than done, but all the same, you do have that option.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  "Surely you could just not use the sites and services that evade your consent then?" No, really, you cannot. FB maintains shadow profles, even for nonusers. Google tracks virtually all Web traffic. And most email. Amazon backs or provisions a tremendous amount on online sevices. Comcast, TimeWarner, AT&T, and Verizon have absolute local, and effective national, monopolies on point-of-presence service across the US. Indigenous telco monopolies operate similarly elsewhere. Cloudfront, Limelight, Akamai. and other CDN, DNS, and interconnectivity providers see requests and traffic aggregated across huge opulations. Visa and Mastercard see a huge fraction of financial activity. And this doesn't even start to touch the vast B2B data services markets in advertising, marketing, finance, credit, risk, tol collection, healthcare (denial) systems, licence plate scanner, retail backends, payments processing, debt collection, and more. There really is no effective possibility of opting out. Even with denying yourself an effective role in modern society.

gameswithgo 7y ago

>but no one wants to have to pay a subscription fee to every single site on the internet I want to pay for the ones I use! It is increasingly becoming clear that free stuff is horrible.

8bitsrule 7y ago

It has been one year since the EU's GDPR law went into effect. What they did and why they did it is described in the PDF linked below. Some of their rationale is spelled out in Section 1.1.1. Key principles in Section 3. https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-coe-edps-2018-handbook-data-protection_en.pdf https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-co... There are plenty of opportunities for abuse here in the US, and we're all reminded of them constantly. The proliferation of ad-blockers and anti-tracking software shows that 'extreme hostility' is widespread. I have yet to see any substantial animus in the EU over the reasonable measures they've taken. Hopefully action on a state-by-state basis in the US will encourage the industry to demand explicit legal restrictions.

twsted 7y ago

> No one likes ads It's not a problem with ads. It's a problem with tracking and data collection. I do not want any company can follow my habits and have a list of my preferences, at least without my consent. I like general ads (with moderation), not customized based on my past purchases, where I can find out something new and interesting. Like it is on magazines.