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My shared secret with HN, my password, is an identity? I don't think you'll find a lot of people who agree with that definition of the word. As for the use of

My shared secret with HN, my password, is an identity? I don't think you'll find a lot of people who agree with that definition of the word. As for the use of photos of me that are owned by other people, I'm pretty certain that neither CCPA nor GDPR cover those. The EU might have some relevant privacy laws, but they're not relevant to the "dichotomy" you brought up, because no one expects to be unidentifiable in a photo in which their face is identifiably visible.

danans 7y ago
No. But in the HN context, your user id is. If HN decided one day to monetize the site by showing you ads based on your posts, the kind of discussions you frequent, or your location, then it's a profile of personal info.
- laughinghan 7y ago
  I am 100% okay with HN doing whatsoever they'd like with posts I've made that I haven't deleted. I know they have them. I personally wrote them here with my own two hands. I am 100% not okay with HN doing anything at all with my location information. Why would they have that information in the first place? Why would they keep it? The discussions I frequent are more of a gray area; I favor Maciej Ceglowski's Six Fixes a lot: https://idlewords.com/six_fixes.htm https://idlewords.com/six_fixes.htm But all of this is irrelevant to the thread you're replying to, because my user id is anonymous.
  - danans 7y ago
    > Why would they have that information in the first place? IP based geolocalization? > But all of this is irrelevant to the thread you're replying to, because my user id is anonymous. Just because your hacker news user id is anonymous doesn't mean your account can't have an ad targeting profile built based on it if HN decided. They are sort of independent, and most sites don't care so much about who you actually are, but rather that you can be shown relevant ads. > I favor Maciej Ceglowski's Six Fixes a lot Those are very interesting. Thanks for sharing!
    - laughinghan 7y ago
      To clarify, I happen to be technically sophisticated enough to know that yes, unless I use a VPN, websites can guess what city I'm in based on my IP. But I'm saying rhetorically, as someone surfing the Web, it doesn't feel like part of my contract with HN that they know my location. Everyone knows no one reads terms of service, but even if people did, they don't generally specify location, just that they collect "information about your visit". Or they might mention that they collect your IP, but most people don't know what an IP address it is, much less have an intuition for how specific of location information it reveals (some probably think you can backtrace the IP and send the cyberpolice after them). That's why ad targeting profiles shouldn't be built on that kind of incidentally-provided behavioral data. As per the Six Fixes, ads should only be targeted to the content of the page I'm looking at, just like a dead-tree newspaper. Note that this can be achieved either technically, i.e. anonymous browsing, or legally, e.g. requiring my permission to track me to build an ad targeting profile. That's not a conflict, that's anonymity and control over data about me as two sides of the same coin. Btw I highly recommended Maciej Ceglowski's other works, e.g. https://idlewords.com/talks/haunted_by_data.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/haunted_by_data.htm
danShumway 7y ago
Your identity on HN is your profile and posts, and your shared secret is how you prove you own that identity. Is that actually uncommon? I would call `laughinghan` an identity. > As for the use of photos of me that are owned by other people, I'm pretty certain that neither CCPA nor GDPR cover those. You're talking about specific laws, and I'm talking about general principles. The dichotomy I'm supposing is between complete anonymity and complete ownership over my own data. Owning data means being able to restrict how other people use it. No expects to be unidentifiable in a photo where their face is visible. But if I own my face, I expect to be able to issue a takedown request to sites who post images of my face without my permission. If I genuinely own my address, or my contacts, and a third-party site makes them publicly available, I should be able to do something about that, the same way that I would be able to restrict them from distributing a piece of IP I owned. CCPA and GDPR don't cover individuals, just companies. This is a compromise, because it's just not feasible right now to have a version of GDPR that covers what ordinary citizens share. But there's nothing special about companies. If I'm committed to a world where I own my data, I don't want my rights to vanish just because the information was posted on a blog instead of Facebook. And that's where you start to see this conflict -- because in order to maintain control over data, you have to, well... maintain control over data. You have to know who's posting it and who it belongs to. People who advocate primarily for anonymity are opposed to that kind of world. Their extremes look different. In the real world, most people will be somewhere in the middle. They'll lean towards data ownership on some things, and anonymity on others. For example, I doubt that many people on HN believe that companies should be able to operate anonymously. Even though anonymity/ownership is not a binary choice, different people are going to be lean towards different sides of the continuum, and that's where you see these conflicts.
- laughinghan 7y ago
  You're making no sense. If someone publishes a link between my address and my name, or my address and an online handle of mine or something, in order to remove that link I would have to prove that I am the person with that name at that address, or that I am the person with that online handle or whatever, but there's no fundamental reason I would have to further identify myself in any way. There's no conflict between anonymity and control here. Their having that information about me has hurt my anonymity, but controlling that information in no way further hurts my anonymity. The possibility of corporations being anonymous is not an example of a tradeoff between anonymity and control either. If the operator of a company had the option of being anonymous, that would be giving them more control over information about them. More control = the option of more anonymity, because there's no tradeoff or conflict, they're two aspects of the same thing.

danans 7y ago

No. But in the HN context, your user id is. If HN decided one day to monetize the site by showing you ads based on your posts, the kind of discussions you frequent, or your location, then it's a profile of personal info.

laughinghan 7y ago
I am 100% okay with HN doing whatsoever they'd like with posts I've made that I haven't deleted. I know they have them. I personally wrote them here with my own two hands. I am 100% not okay with HN doing anything at all with my location information. Why would they have that information in the first place? Why would they keep it? The discussions I frequent are more of a gray area; I favor Maciej Ceglowski's Six Fixes a lot: https://idlewords.com/six_fixes.htm https://idlewords.com/six_fixes.htm But all of this is irrelevant to the thread you're replying to, because my user id is anonymous.
- danans 7y ago
  > Why would they have that information in the first place? IP based geolocalization? > But all of this is irrelevant to the thread you're replying to, because my user id is anonymous. Just because your hacker news user id is anonymous doesn't mean your account can't have an ad targeting profile built based on it if HN decided. They are sort of independent, and most sites don't care so much about who you actually are, but rather that you can be shown relevant ads. > I favor Maciej Ceglowski's Six Fixes a lot Those are very interesting. Thanks for sharing!
  - laughinghan 7y ago
    To clarify, I happen to be technically sophisticated enough to know that yes, unless I use a VPN, websites can guess what city I'm in based on my IP. But I'm saying rhetorically, as someone surfing the Web, it doesn't feel like part of my contract with HN that they know my location. Everyone knows no one reads terms of service, but even if people did, they don't generally specify location, just that they collect "information about your visit". Or they might mention that they collect your IP, but most people don't know what an IP address it is, much less have an intuition for how specific of location information it reveals (some probably think you can backtrace the IP and send the cyberpolice after them). That's why ad targeting profiles shouldn't be built on that kind of incidentally-provided behavioral data. As per the Six Fixes, ads should only be targeted to the content of the page I'm looking at, just like a dead-tree newspaper. Note that this can be achieved either technically, i.e. anonymous browsing, or legally, e.g. requiring my permission to track me to build an ad targeting profile. That's not a conflict, that's anonymity and control over data about me as two sides of the same coin. Btw I highly recommended Maciej Ceglowski's other works, e.g. https://idlewords.com/talks/haunted_by_data.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/haunted_by_data.htm

danShumway 7y ago

Your identity on HN is your profile and posts, and your shared secret is how you prove you own that identity. Is that actually uncommon? I would call `laughinghan` an identity. > As for the use of photos of me that are owned by other people, I'm pretty certain that neither CCPA nor GDPR cover those. You're talking about specific laws, and I'm talking about general principles. The dichotomy I'm supposing is between complete anonymity and complete ownership over my own data. Owning data means being able to restrict how other people use it. No expects to be unidentifiable in a photo where their face is visible. But if I own my face, I expect to be able to issue a takedown request to sites who post images of my face without my permission. If I genuinely own my address, or my contacts, and a third-party site makes them publicly available, I should be able to do something about that, the same way that I would be able to restrict them from distributing a piece of IP I owned. CCPA and GDPR don't cover individuals, just companies. This is a compromise, because it's just not feasible right now to have a version of GDPR that covers what ordinary citizens share. But there's nothing special about companies. If I'm committed to a world where I own my data, I don't want my rights to vanish just because the information was posted on a blog instead of Facebook. And that's where you start to see this conflict -- because in order to maintain control over data, you have to, well... maintain control over data. You have to know who's posting it and who it belongs to. People who advocate primarily for anonymity are opposed to that kind of world. Their extremes look different. In the real world, most people will be somewhere in the middle. They'll lean towards data ownership on some things, and anonymity on others. For example, I doubt that many people on HN believe that companies should be able to operate anonymously. Even though anonymity/ownership is not a binary choice, different people are going to be lean towards different sides of the continuum, and that's where you see these conflicts.

laughinghan 7y ago
You're making no sense. If someone publishes a link between my address and my name, or my address and an online handle of mine or something, in order to remove that link I would have to prove that I am the person with that name at that address, or that I am the person with that online handle or whatever, but there's no fundamental reason I would have to further identify myself in any way. There's no conflict between anonymity and control here. Their having that information about me has hurt my anonymity, but controlling that information in no way further hurts my anonymity. The possibility of corporations being anonymous is not an example of a tradeoff between anonymity and control either. If the operator of a company had the option of being anonymous, that would be giving them more control over information about them. More control = the option of more anonymity, because there's no tradeoff or conflict, they're two aspects of the same thing.