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Or, maybe they just care a lot less about privacy than you do. I'm certainly not poor but I'd happily save a couple dollars per shopping trip in exchange for th

• diffeomorphism 7y ago
  Oh, no no. You see these people are happy to be exploited. It seems like the height of arrogance to demand that they cannot be exploited. But I don't feel exploited, so nobody else can possibly be right? Surely, you don't need to ask that, since you know better already.
  • TulliusCicero 7y ago
    How is it "exploiting" to give personal info in exchange for saving money? As long as what's going on is transparent -- which I think is something regulations are good for -- why is it exploitative? Are those rewards systems for filling out surveys also exploitative?
    • humanrebar 7y ago
      It's fair to say that tracking is not obviously disclaimed as part of the sign up process. The loyalty rewards are emphasized, often exclusively.
      • TulliusCicero 7y ago
        Right, which is why I said regulations would be helpful for that.
    • alpaca128 7y ago
      > As long as what's going on is transparent I wouldn't consider "middle of some license agreement" to be transparent enough, and I'm sure most people aren't fully aware of what data is tracked and how it can be used.
      • TulliusCicero 7y ago
        Sure, so regulations that focus on transparency would be good. That's different from saying that trading privacy for discounts is inherently exploitative.
    • diffeomorphism 7y ago
      At the risk of Godwin'ing this thread: How is prostitution exploitative? You give out very personal "services" in exchange for the money you desperately need. It is perfectly transparent that you are being exploited, but it is not like you have a choice. If you think that is ridiculous hyperbole: Do you think any poor American actually has the luxury to say "No, I am happy to pay more for food."? I don't understand why you think that filling out surveys is even remotely related to covering basic needs, but if you think it is you must be very privileged.
      • TulliusCicero 7y ago
        Comparing grocery store discounts to prostitution is silly. By your reasoning, basically any kind of offer for almost anything can be construed as exploitative, because your working assumption is that a certain class of people is incapable of saying no to any kind of money or discount. Even if this is true, that's an underlying problem with the system, not with any one actor.
        • zweep 7y ago
          Well yes, that is why there are laws for minimum wage and slumlords.
      • scarejunba 7y ago
        This is an /r/selfawarewolves moment. Maybe prostitution isn't exploitative and in our rush to protect people we are imprisoning them.
• DownGoat 7y ago
  It's also likely naive to think that data will only be in the hands of the supermarket. Who do they share it with? There is no transparency for where your data ends up. What if you are okay with sharing the data with the supermarket, but not dissapprove of them selling it to a data broker. We need more fine grained control than just disallow everything, or allow everything with no restricions.
  • amelius 7y ago
    We should have a National Do-not-track Registry, just like we have a Do-not-call Registry [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Do_Not_Call_Registry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Do_Not_Call_Registry
    • Fjolsvith 7y ago
      And it would be ignored just as much.
• sabas123 7y ago
  Why would you make such a long post if you ignore OP's entire premise? Is it wrong for somebody to value privacy and is it moral to let the ability to act upon that be decided by if you have enough money to survive?
  • humanrebar 7y ago
    logicchains is saying regardless of the answer, customers should be able to decide for themselves instead of centrally enforcing ethics and morality. I don't think that's "ignoring the premise" as much as pointing out a flaw in the premise... Namely that an appropriate solution is presumed.
• teddyh 7y ago
  > I'd happily save a couple dollars per shopping trip in exchange for the supermarket having more details on my shopping habits You’re thinking about this all wrong. The “discount” is the actual real price; the price on the shelf is the punishment price for people who stubbornly refuse to give up their privacy.
  • LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    See it as the price of privacy (priced in).
  • Fjolsvith 7y ago
    > You’re thinking about this all wrong. The “discount” is the actual real price; the price on the shelf is the punishment price for people who stubbornly refuse to give up their privacy. It's all a negotiation. Try not to take it so personal.
• choward 7y ago
  Do you really think people know what they are giving up when they sign up for one of those? Are the stores being up front about what they are doing with your data? Of course not. It's buried in pages of TOS. When you're rushed at the register with a line behind you and you want to get the price that you saw when you picked up your items you're going to sign up as fast as you can. You don't have time to understand what you just got suckered into.
  • beatgammit 7y ago
    I just don't shop at stores that do that. I'd gladly pay an extra few dollars once and know to avoid a store than spend time filling out a form. In my area, I have three close options (within 2 miles), all of which have cards, but only one requires the card to get discounts. The other two offer discounts once you rack up enough points (every X points save $Y dollars) and allow you to "attach" discounts through their online portal to your card, which are separate from the discounts in their mailers and on the shelves. I alternate cards periodically (credit card rotating bonus categories, putting spend on rarely used cards to prevent them from being closed, etc), and I alternate stores, so I doubt they're able to track me well at all. Other than that, I shop at Costco, which obviously records all of my purchases. I buy mostly staples, so my data is probably not as interesting as someone who spends more (my spending barely makes "Executive" worth it).
• planb 7y ago
  Why is this opinion so underrepresented on hn? I'd like to see more discussions about this rather than just insults and name-calling. While I care about my privacy, this is just a feeling. I have no good answer when people ask me: "What is the worst thing that can happen if I give away that data?"
  • beatgammit 7y ago
    Just respond "SkyNet". :) Every dystopia starts with strict, individual tracking and erosion of individual rights in the name of "security" or "convenience". It doesn't mean we're headed there intentionally, but as they say, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". So my answer is, "I don't know, and I don't really want to find out".
• pergadad 7y ago
  This is not height of ignorance, this is the basis of much good policy: understanding that most people in most cases will not be able to fully evaluate the benefits & tradeoffs. Say you buy the same food every week and get a discount code. Awesome! Say you buy the same food every week (sweets, chips and other healthy food) then turn diabetic and change your diet The company, aware that you used to buy those products tries in every way possible to push you again to buy them (vouchers, targeted in-store advertisements, ...). Still good? I guess you have a choice but they certainly increase the temptation they would risk your health. Research shows its not that says - and mentally draining - to resist. But of course you're not aware of this effect as you simply skim through your voucher booklet. Picture the same but with alcohol/an alcoholic. Picture the same but they don't just use this but their own data firm resells this data to all other supermarkets in the area and now each shop bombards you with junk food/alcohol/... ads when you're trying hard to stay clean. Say you are a young woman and start buying wet wipes, creams, baby products. The company concludes that you are pregnant. They pass this info (not the actual sales but the data they derived - which you are not in control of!) on to a data firm in semi-anonymised format. The data firm de-anonymises you (after all that's their the expertise), combined this with your credit score and public records information and sells it on. For example a prospective employer does a 'due diligence' check and finds info that you are pregnant. They conclude that you are likely to go on maternity leave soon and decide not to hire you. It doesn't even matter whether the original purchased were for you, the processing and re-processing of data has just cost you a job. Or shopping data reveals that you regularly but adult diapers and a data firm concluded you are incontinent. This shoes on an employer's background checks and you lose out. Shopping data reveals you support children. A potential landlord refuses your request for apartment info because they don't want noise. You are renovating your parents' apartment. Shopping data reveals you bought a lot of glycerin in the past year and the FBI gets interested... And none of these even touch on data from pharmaceutical products (would you have gotten your current job if your employer had known you regularly take antidepressants?). These might be more or less stretched scenarios, but there are a billion of these. And some either are or will probably in the future become true. My point is: you have no idea how the data you produce is used, reused, interpreted, reinterpreted, sold, resold, etc. You don't actually know what the 20c saved on wet wipes has on your life in the near or far future. That's why policy needs to intervene and put a stop to the massive data collection and processing going on today. It's not going to increase prices - on the contrary, if this is not anymore an angle companies will put their prices back down to regular levels and don't need to artificially inflate them in order to give loyalty program members a 'discount'.
• zweep 7y ago
  When you sell your privacy you hurt all of us, and regulation is the tool for collective action problems. If you sell data to Walmart that lets them build a psychological profile of a shopper from their purchase history, they can use that to psychologically profile me.