5 ms·

Making it illegal so no legitimate business can do it without incredible risk of being sued/charged out of existence seems quite feasible.

AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
You really don’t think companies would figure out a way around any such “illegality” or just use it anti competitively as is being done throughout the EU with its ham-handed policies?
- shantly 7y ago
  I find this kind of defeatism entirely baffling. Regulating corporations is hard so we shouldn't try? This is a lot less complicated than many sorts of regulation we attempt. Just give up on all of it, it's pointless? Where's the bottom on this line of thought?
  - AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
    Yes, it's pointless. There is nothing illegal about what is going on now, and nothing which should be illegal about what is going on. In this context, "regulating" simply means making a behavior we didn't see coming illegal. It's a short-sighted, unimaginative, and blatantly violent way to solve a problem which stems entirely from the consumer public, not from big bad corporations. It will be used by major corps as an anti-competitive weapon against smaller up-start competition - an outcome we should expect from all such attempts at "regulating" the tech oligarchy.
    - shantly 7y ago
      > There is nothing illegal about what is going on now, and nothing which should be illegal about what is going on. In this context, "regulating" simply means making a behavior we didn't see coming illegal. When we don't like they way corporate-driven markets (so... all of them, really) are developing we should attempt to change things until they develop a way we like, where "we" is any interest group. If we're not harnessing the activity of companies to the collective good, why let our democratic states charter them in the first place?
      - AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
        > we should attempt to change things until they develop a way we like, where "we" is any interest group. OK, then my interest group is "respecting contracts and continuing to place the burden on consumers to make informed decisions, and on corporations to not commit fraud." What you present is, frankly, a disgusting way to think, and gives absolutely no volition to or consideration of the rights of the individuals who work in and operate these companies. Their rights are just as valid as yours, and you have no legitimate right to change or invalidate the contractual relationship a company has with its customers. It's also not a "free software" way to think about the problem. FOSS methodology suggests that you present a better alternative, not to use the violence of central authorities to force your way upon everyone else. > democratic states Speak for yourself buddy. I live in a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.
        shantly 7y ago
        Companies are creations of the state. We should do with them what we think most valuable and likely to create the best environment. This may, and probably does, include permitting them a wide variety of liberties and privileges. > > democratic states > Speak for yourself buddy. I live in a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. FYI the colloquial usage of "democratic" or "democracy" is also the way actual political scientists use it when dealing in generalities of this sort, so splitting this straw is not some I'm-better-educated-on-this-than-you "gotcha", and signals the opposite of what you're intending.
        mthoms 7y ago
        Your argument would be much better served if you didn't use words like disgusting and violent to describe the ideas(s) presented by the other poster. Frankly, it sounds like you're more interested in escalating this into an idealogical flame war than participating in a civilized discussion. There's nothing inherently violent about a democratically elected government regulating the commercial activities of corporations according to the wishes of its people.
        LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
        When there are entities constantly spamming [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes in a mad raving way on all channels, at full treble, exploiting privacy and advertising falshoods for the benefit of the few, and the bullshit jobs of the masses, while trashing the cultural, mental AND physical environment, then I'm all for denying them that possibilty. They can fuck off and go die somewhere, i won't miss them. Aye häff SPOQQN!
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      > nothing which should be illegal about what is going on. I think that collecting data about people without their informed consent should absolutely be illegal, for exactly the same reasons that it's illegal for companies to install surveillance equipment in your home without consent.
  - DataWorker 7y ago
    The same spirit was what kept slavery viable for so long. They said abolishing slavery wasn’t practical. Many had conflicting interests, as do many here.
- na85 7y ago
  So are you suggesting there's no way to defeat the tech oligarchy and we should just surrender to them?
  - AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
    We are the ones that enable the tech oligarchy. We are, therefore, surrendering to them right now. My suggestion is to use our brains and not rely on the useless and frivolous "services" these tech oligarchy participants provide. We give them their power.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      If one builds something better, people will use it. The challenge is that it's actually quite hard to build something better. Centralization has huge advantages of common-goal, ability to curtail and exclude antagonistic actors, and decreased barriers to flow of resources. I think the lack of alternatives to Facebook has a lot less to do with "evil" practices Facebook undertakes and a lot more to do with Facebook actually building a good tool that's easy to use for most people. Alternatives haven't hit that level of simplicity.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      > We are, therefore, surrendering to them right now. Who's "we"? I am not surrendering to them.
    - na85 7y ago
      Isn't that the same "just don't get addicted to nicotine" argument, but updated to the modern era?
- JohnFen 7y ago
  Worst case, such a ban would be a speed bump. But even just a speed bump would be an improvement over the way things are now.
ekianjo 7y ago
How do you make illegal monitoring access to services? Because at the core this is what tracking is based on. Even if you trickled tracking down to IP addresses and time of usage only you could still have a very useful database of users across services. Oh and by the way, tracking was not invented by Internet companies, all payment systems and credit cards have been doing tracking for ages before that and selling their data to third parties.
- shantly 7y ago
  Oh yeah, I strongly agree those need to be stopped to. We keep hand wringing over all these leaks and such and "oh gee how to we improve security?", when the clear solution is to not allow it in the first place. That way a leak doesn't become some lame civil matter, but "oh, you had this plainly-illegal-to-collect info? Looks like your business is over" (which would be a rare occurrence, if it were actually that risky to do it, since it'd be hard to keep such collection secret given how many people would be involved and so how many potential whistle blowers there would be, and how large a "paper" trail is necessarily involved in mass-scale data collection, making it extremely easy to investigate and prove)
spaced-out 7y ago
Very few voters will support a bill that will result in them having to pay for things like email, facebook, youtube, etc...
- shantly 7y ago
  Internet service used to include basic services like email and newsgroups. Still "paid", but effectively bundled, and a tiny part of the total cost.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    They do so nowadays, too. At least around where i am. Inconvenient when you change ISPs.

AndrewUnmuted 7y ago

You really don’t think companies would figure out a way around any such “illegality” or just use it anti competitively as is being done throughout the EU with its ham-handed policies?

shantly 7y ago
I find this kind of defeatism entirely baffling. Regulating corporations is hard so we shouldn't try? This is a lot less complicated than many sorts of regulation we attempt. Just give up on all of it, it's pointless? Where's the bottom on this line of thought?
- AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
  Yes, it's pointless. There is nothing illegal about what is going on now, and nothing which should be illegal about what is going on. In this context, "regulating" simply means making a behavior we didn't see coming illegal. It's a short-sighted, unimaginative, and blatantly violent way to solve a problem which stems entirely from the consumer public, not from big bad corporations. It will be used by major corps as an anti-competitive weapon against smaller up-start competition - an outcome we should expect from all such attempts at "regulating" the tech oligarchy.
  - shantly 7y ago
    > There is nothing illegal about what is going on now, and nothing which should be illegal about what is going on. In this context, "regulating" simply means making a behavior we didn't see coming illegal. When we don't like they way corporate-driven markets (so... all of them, really) are developing we should attempt to change things until they develop a way we like, where "we" is any interest group. If we're not harnessing the activity of companies to the collective good, why let our democratic states charter them in the first place?
    - AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
      > we should attempt to change things until they develop a way we like, where "we" is any interest group. OK, then my interest group is "respecting contracts and continuing to place the burden on consumers to make informed decisions, and on corporations to not commit fraud." What you present is, frankly, a disgusting way to think, and gives absolutely no volition to or consideration of the rights of the individuals who work in and operate these companies. Their rights are just as valid as yours, and you have no legitimate right to change or invalidate the contractual relationship a company has with its customers. It's also not a "free software" way to think about the problem. FOSS methodology suggests that you present a better alternative, not to use the violence of central authorities to force your way upon everyone else. > democratic states Speak for yourself buddy. I live in a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.
      - shantly 7y ago
        Companies are creations of the state. We should do with them what we think most valuable and likely to create the best environment. This may, and probably does, include permitting them a wide variety of liberties and privileges. > > democratic states > Speak for yourself buddy. I live in a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. FYI the colloquial usage of "democratic" or "democracy" is also the way actual political scientists use it when dealing in generalities of this sort, so splitting this straw is not some I'm-better-educated-on-this-than-you "gotcha", and signals the opposite of what you're intending.
      - mthoms 7y ago
        Your argument would be much better served if you didn't use words like disgusting and violent to describe the ideas(s) presented by the other poster. Frankly, it sounds like you're more interested in escalating this into an idealogical flame war than participating in a civilized discussion. There's nothing inherently violent about a democratically elected government regulating the commercial activities of corporations according to the wishes of its people.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
        When there are entities constantly spamming [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes in a mad raving way on all channels, at full treble, exploiting privacy and advertising falshoods for the benefit of the few, and the bullshit jobs of the masses, while trashing the cultural, mental AND physical environment, then I'm all for denying them that possibilty. They can fuck off and go die somewhere, i won't miss them. Aye häff SPOQQN!
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > nothing which should be illegal about what is going on. I think that collecting data about people without their informed consent should absolutely be illegal, for exactly the same reasons that it's illegal for companies to install surveillance equipment in your home without consent.
- DataWorker 7y ago
  The same spirit was what kept slavery viable for so long. They said abolishing slavery wasn’t practical. Many had conflicting interests, as do many here.
na85 7y ago
So are you suggesting there's no way to defeat the tech oligarchy and we should just surrender to them?
- AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
  We are the ones that enable the tech oligarchy. We are, therefore, surrendering to them right now. My suggestion is to use our brains and not rely on the useless and frivolous "services" these tech oligarchy participants provide. We give them their power.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    If one builds something better, people will use it. The challenge is that it's actually quite hard to build something better. Centralization has huge advantages of common-goal, ability to curtail and exclude antagonistic actors, and decreased barriers to flow of resources. I think the lack of alternatives to Facebook has a lot less to do with "evil" practices Facebook undertakes and a lot more to do with Facebook actually building a good tool that's easy to use for most people. Alternatives haven't hit that level of simplicity.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > We are, therefore, surrendering to them right now. Who's "we"? I am not surrendering to them.
  - na85 7y ago
    Isn't that the same "just don't get addicted to nicotine" argument, but updated to the modern era?
JohnFen 7y ago
Worst case, such a ban would be a speed bump. But even just a speed bump would be an improvement over the way things are now.

ekianjo 7y ago

How do you make illegal monitoring access to services? Because at the core this is what tracking is based on. Even if you trickled tracking down to IP addresses and time of usage only you could still have a very useful database of users across services. Oh and by the way, tracking was not invented by Internet companies, all payment systems and credit cards have been doing tracking for ages before that and selling their data to third parties.

shantly 7y ago
Oh yeah, I strongly agree those need to be stopped to. We keep hand wringing over all these leaks and such and "oh gee how to we improve security?", when the clear solution is to not allow it in the first place. That way a leak doesn't become some lame civil matter, but "oh, you had this plainly-illegal-to-collect info? Looks like your business is over" (which would be a rare occurrence, if it were actually that risky to do it, since it'd be hard to keep such collection secret given how many people would be involved and so how many potential whistle blowers there would be, and how large a "paper" trail is necessarily involved in mass-scale data collection, making it extremely easy to investigate and prove)

spaced-out 7y ago

Very few voters will support a bill that will result in them having to pay for things like email, facebook, youtube, etc...

shantly 7y ago
Internet service used to include basic services like email and newsgroups. Still "paid", but effectively bundled, and a tiny part of the total cost.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
  They do so nowadays, too. At least around where i am. Inconvenient when you change ISPs.