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The counterargument is that regulation around collecting and permitting access to data simply widens the moat for incumbents. Facebook and Google can implement

by ethbro 7y ago

The counterargument is that regulation around collecting and permitting access to data simply widens the moat for incumbents. Facebook and Google can implement a 500-page law. A startup cannot. So I think it's important to keep "How are we encouraging competition in the marketplace?" in mind as these proposals go through.

bilbo0s 7y ago
I mean, as I said, "encouraging competition in the marketplace" is a separate discussion. If we start allowing marketplace needs to determine or even influence who gets to access a user's data, we're already moving away from the goal of the user being the final arbiter of who gets to access his data. Not to put too fine a point on it, but letting marketplace needs influence who gets access to a user's data is how we got to this point in the first place. It's a separate discussion, and it needs to be kept separate. Besides, whatever people come up with in that regard, the commercial entities that want access to users' data can really have no reasonable objection to obtaining strict, explicit consent to access that data. With the concomitant legally binding and criminally enforceable rules attached. Competition in the marketplace is good, but people are a society's priority. We can't lower the barriers to access on a user's private data in the name of, "this is good for business."
- emiliobumachar 7y ago
  > Competition in the marketplace is good, but people are a society's priority. We can't lower the barriers to access on a user's private data in the name of, "this is good for business." That's a reasonable position to take in the two joint discussions, but that's not "keeping the discussions separate", that's defining your priority and optimizing for it at the expense of other concerns. Dismissing those concerns because they are not important enough is fine, dismissing them as if they didn't belong to the discussion is dishonest. I contest that the discussions are separable at all. The same regulation can be very good disregarding its effect as a barrier to entry, and very bad not disregarding it. Whether or not any particular regulation is good on net depends on pros and cons analysis that actually takes all relevant cons into account.
Frondo 7y ago
What that could lead to is a build-up of social network information brokering services, like how PCI compliance forced people to stop storing CC numbers on their own. I'm okay with that. I worked on so many small e-commerce sites early in my career that just had a "CC" column in their user database, and it was all so sloppy and horrible. None of these would have been a big enough target for serious hacking, but also the security was never so good that an amateur couldn't walk off with 1,000 cards. Now, payments are all handled by people who treat that data much more seriously. I certainly trust Stripe or Shopify over random web dev X. If personal data starts being treated with that kind of care -- and the interoperability and exporting is also important -- I think that's only a good thing, even if it means that Google and facebook get a head start on that.

by ethbro 7y ago

bilbo0s 7y ago

I mean, as I said, "encouraging competition in the marketplace" is a separate discussion. If we start allowing marketplace needs to determine or even influence who gets to access a user's data, we're already moving away from the goal of the user being the final arbiter of who gets to access his data. Not to put too fine a point on it, but letting marketplace needs influence who gets access to a user's data is how we got to this point in the first place. It's a separate discussion, and it needs to be kept separate. Besides, whatever people come up with in that regard, the commercial entities that want access to users' data can really have no reasonable objection to obtaining strict, explicit consent to access that data. With the concomitant legally binding and criminally enforceable rules attached. Competition in the marketplace is good, but people are a society's priority. We can't lower the barriers to access on a user's private data in the name of, "this is good for business."

emiliobumachar 7y ago
> Competition in the marketplace is good, but people are a society's priority. We can't lower the barriers to access on a user's private data in the name of, "this is good for business." That's a reasonable position to take in the two joint discussions, but that's not "keeping the discussions separate", that's defining your priority and optimizing for it at the expense of other concerns. Dismissing those concerns because they are not important enough is fine, dismissing them as if they didn't belong to the discussion is dishonest. I contest that the discussions are separable at all. The same regulation can be very good disregarding its effect as a barrier to entry, and very bad not disregarding it. Whether or not any particular regulation is good on net depends on pros and cons analysis that actually takes all relevant cons into account.

Frondo 7y ago

What that could lead to is a build-up of social network information brokering services, like how PCI compliance forced people to stop storing CC numbers on their own. I'm okay with that. I worked on so many small e-commerce sites early in my career that just had a "CC" column in their user database, and it was all so sloppy and horrible. None of these would have been a big enough target for serious hacking, but also the security was never so good that an amateur couldn't walk off with 1,000 cards. Now, payments are all handled by people who treat that data much more seriously. I certainly trust Stripe or Shopify over random web dev X. If personal data starts being treated with that kind of care -- and the interoperability and exporting is also important -- I think that's only a good thing, even if it means that Google and facebook get a head start on that.