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Is it really true that collecting only anonymous, stateless data has the same value as stateful, identifiable data? What kind of insights do we lose? Is it si

• ryukafalz 7y ago
  >Is it really true that collecting only anonymous, stateless data has the same value as stateful, identifiable data? Value to whom? >What kind of insights do we lose? Is it simply just advertisers who lose, or will we also lose other things? Who is "we"? Who gets to collect that data, control access to it, etc? How do they get it? Who would lose other things in the absence of that data collection? >For example, if I can track your path around a city, wouldn’t I be able to make better predictions about traffic then if I could only track the aggregated count of locations that had been visited over the course of a time period? Maybe, but that doesn't mean I want you tracking me.
• usee316284 7y ago
  > if I could only track the aggregated count of locations that had been visited over the course of a time period? Buy you can't. Metadata. And then they is the Google problem. If other are collecting everything they may have a competitive advantage in the future. To the poit your business will most certainly die.
• patcon 7y ago
  > is it really true that collecting only anonymous, stateless data has the same value as stateful, identifiable data If you place more value on knowledge of the collective rather than the specifics of the individual (which is arguably a good way for governance and stewardship bodies to operate) then I feel like it might be true. to me, the perk of this totally non-specific data is that it can theoretically be public, and so there's less incentive to advocate for scary information asymmetry in private hands (neither corp nor gov). Yes, there's asymmetry in who can derive insight from public aggregate data, but in theory access can be ubiquitous, and that's less than the towering asymmetry (of access) that currently exists with our understandable lip service to personal privacy