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This is one of the more important regulations big tech should be subjected to in my opinion. Let me pay for the services I use, with believable guarantees that

This is one of the more important regulations big tech should be subjected to in my opinion. Let me pay for the services I use, with believable guarantees that my data is not used or sold in any way by the service provider. And regulate the cost to be a reasonable margin over production costs of these services. Hosting my hosting my posts and photos should not be that expensive.

EGreg 7y ago
“believable guarantees” lol If it can be scraped and stored, FB will do it just because. And then apologize if caught, but keep storing it. Because why not? They figure, if it can be stored, someone is doing it. They can take every advantage they can get for their “friends you may know...” and user retention.
- beefield 7y ago
  It's not that difficult if there is a will. Just let big tech know that if they break this law, they are going to be fined all the way to bankrupty without hesitation. Once shareholders have lost their money, government as the biggest debtor will sell the company back to market. Couple of rounds of this and even the more stubborn company starts to think differently.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  If they’re forced to offer a paid tier without ads for a fixed price then their incentive would be to do so in the most profitable way possible by reducing engineering overheads & the cost of storing that data. Currently they do it because they assume there’s a correlation between the extents to which they violate your privacy and revenue. If the revenue is locked static then this breaks down and the incentives change.
scarejunba 7y ago
I've seen lots of people say this but like maybe a fraction of people use GSuite like I do (even my phone number is on my GSuite). Big talk from HN usually. Maybe you'll do it but a fraction of people do. There are no ads in GSuite mail. So you take the fraction of people who will do that and see if it's worth building. Answer: it's not worth it for practically anyone. It's like building a Bitcoin integration. Everyone "would buy if it would accept Bitcoin" but come on, no one is actually in that narrow space of utility where the difference in buying is adding Bitcoin or not. If you guys build software maybe you'll see it yourself. Go ahead and try it. Maybe one in five hundred of you will see positive results.
- beefield 7y ago
  Can you also use google search without ads & tracking? I do not claim that it would be good business from big tech. Vice versa. That's why they would need to be regulated to offer that. To me, it would not even matter if it was pretty much nobody using that paid service. Just having the option would be important.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > I've seen lots of people say this but like maybe a fraction of people use GSuite like I do (even my phone number is on my GSuite). GSuite is, quite famously, not equivalent to Google's consumer offerings except for ads. It's an enterprise targeted service with some extra enterprise features but delayed, if any, access to lots of features that go to the consumer versions. Plus, the consumer versions of many of the pieces in GSuite also don't have ads. So, it's really not a good barometer for how many people would swap out an ad-infested service for an otherwise-equivalent paid ad-free service.

EGreg 7y ago

“believable guarantees” lol If it can be scraped and stored, FB will do it just because. And then apologize if caught, but keep storing it. Because why not? They figure, if it can be stored, someone is doing it. They can take every advantage they can get for their “friends you may know...” and user retention.

beefield 7y ago
It's not that difficult if there is a will. Just let big tech know that if they break this law, they are going to be fined all the way to bankrupty without hesitation. Once shareholders have lost their money, government as the biggest debtor will sell the company back to market. Couple of rounds of this and even the more stubborn company starts to think differently.
Nextgrid 7y ago
If they’re forced to offer a paid tier without ads for a fixed price then their incentive would be to do so in the most profitable way possible by reducing engineering overheads & the cost of storing that data. Currently they do it because they assume there’s a correlation between the extents to which they violate your privacy and revenue. If the revenue is locked static then this breaks down and the incentives change.

scarejunba 7y ago

I've seen lots of people say this but like maybe a fraction of people use GSuite like I do (even my phone number is on my GSuite). Big talk from HN usually. Maybe you'll do it but a fraction of people do. There are no ads in GSuite mail. So you take the fraction of people who will do that and see if it's worth building. Answer: it's not worth it for practically anyone. It's like building a Bitcoin integration. Everyone "would buy if it would accept Bitcoin" but come on, no one is actually in that narrow space of utility where the difference in buying is adding Bitcoin or not. If you guys build software maybe you'll see it yourself. Go ahead and try it. Maybe one in five hundred of you will see positive results.

beefield 7y ago
Can you also use google search without ads & tracking? I do not claim that it would be good business from big tech. Vice versa. That's why they would need to be regulated to offer that. To me, it would not even matter if it was pretty much nobody using that paid service. Just having the option would be important.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> I've seen lots of people say this but like maybe a fraction of people use GSuite like I do (even my phone number is on my GSuite). GSuite is, quite famously, not equivalent to Google's consumer offerings except for ads. It's an enterprise targeted service with some extra enterprise features but delayed, if any, access to lots of features that go to the consumer versions. Plus, the consumer versions of many of the pieces in GSuite also don't have ads. So, it's really not a good barometer for how many people would swap out an ad-infested service for an otherwise-equivalent paid ad-free service.