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> People want their data to be public People don't want their data to be public. People want other people's data to be public. One's own data everyone thinks s

by yodon 7y ago

> People want their data to be public People don't want their data to be public. People want other people's data to be public. One's own data everyone thinks should be private and tightly controlled. This applies to people and businesses equally.

ppseafield 7y ago
I think the GP in this context means, e.g. LinkedIn wants their information to be public in the cases where it benefits them as a business. But then they want it to not be public when it doesn't benefit them. There is no such thing as "public information, except ..." - information is public, or it's not. If none of LinkedIn's data was public, they would have a much harder time getting people to sign up, and having as many users signed up as possible is part of their business model. From a copyright perspective (since that's what LinkedIn's lawyers claimed): imagine if a newspaper sued another newspaper, saying that - not just the content of its paper - the information in the newspaper was copyrighted and could not be accessed by "unauthorized" third party companies. Either you print it, or you don't!
derefr 7y ago
In this case, LinkedIn users kind of do want their “public profiles” to be public. They’re online CVs; by definition, if you make one, your goal is to get it into the hands of anyone who asks for it! LinkedIn, likewise, has built its business model on an implicit contract with its users that it’s going to show their CV to anyone who asks for it. I think LinkedIn users would be surprised that LinkedIn doesn’t let bots read (scrape) their public CV. A CV (individually, rather than in aggregate) is ultimately useful for only one thing: marketing the CV’s author’s skills. Why wouldn’t I want my marketable skills scraped into some private “talent matchmaking” agency’s databases, such that someone could find me—and hire me—when I show up as a result of some fancy OLAP query they paid that agency to run on their scraped data? It’s more roundabout than them just finding my CV on LinkedIn, but I’m still glad they found it!
- barrkel 7y ago
  Not so sure about that. Messages on LinkedIn are mediated in a single place, and you have a measure of control over how your profile shows up in searches. If your CV is scraped, you could end up anywhere and now you're getting recruiter spam from all over when you're not interested.
  - derefr 7y ago
    > If your CV is scraped, you could end up anywhere and now you're getting recruiter spam from all over when you're not interested. I would point out that this is still possible (even probable!) without any bots being involved at all. Back before CVs were online, humans working for recruitment agencies would “scrape” information from local, physical job boards by hand into their company’s databases (where “database” here could just mean a filing cabinet.) IMHO, the real solution to that is a spam filter (or an “agent”, in the old world.) Just because a lot of people want to talk to you, and most of them aren’t very interesting, doesn’t mean they need to be prevented from accessing you—they just need to be prioritized by interesting-ness, which is something you can do yourself, or hire a service to do for you.
- Dayshine 7y ago
  >I think LinkedIn users would be surprised that LinkedIn doesn’t let bots read (scrape) their public CV. LinkedIn is really really clear that: - They won't share you information with 3rd parties - You're not allowed to use information on LinkedIn for commercial purposes without their permission - Other users can view your personal data So, why would I expect random third party companies to be able to scrape and sell my personal information? My personal information is there for the individual use of others, and for authorised use by recruiters (who are vetted/managed by LinkedIn). I've chased down the convention spam mail I get using my GDPR rights, and surprise surprise, they got my details by scraping LinkedIn. That is absolutely not expected nor acceptable use of my data...
  - derefr 7y ago
    There’s a difference between “my information” and “the public webpage that I went through a publishing workflow to create from a curated selection of my information.” Let me put it this way: if I have a Wordpress blog, I’d certainly be miffed if Wordpress let bots see my drafts... but I’d also be miffed if Wordpress didn’t let bots (Google, for one!) see the published blog itself. It’s a blog; a public website! Anyone or anything with the URL is supposed to be able to retrieve the page! It’s not “my information” any more†; it’s been broadcast! † You might want to mentally analogize to copyright, but I don’t think it’s the right model for the intuition people have here. Instead, try mentally analogizing to confidentiality. When a classified document is published in the public sphere (e.g. as evidence in a trial, as testimony before congress, etc.), this forcibly declassifies it. No matter how much the originator of the document might want to still keep it a secret, the legal protections of confidentiality don’t apply to it any more: it’s out there now. Anyone who reads it could plausibly have just read the public-sphere copy, so there’s no longer any way to charge people who have knowledge of the previously-classified information with any crime.

by yodon 7y ago

ppseafield 7y ago

I think the GP in this context means, e.g. LinkedIn wants their information to be public in the cases where it benefits them as a business. But then they want it to not be public when it doesn't benefit them. There is no such thing as "public information, except ..." - information is public, or it's not. If none of LinkedIn's data was public, they would have a much harder time getting people to sign up, and having as many users signed up as possible is part of their business model. From a copyright perspective (since that's what LinkedIn's lawyers claimed): imagine if a newspaper sued another newspaper, saying that - not just the content of its paper - the information in the newspaper was copyrighted and could not be accessed by "unauthorized" third party companies. Either you print it, or you don't!

derefr 7y ago

In this case, LinkedIn users kind of do want their “public profiles” to be public. They’re online CVs; by definition, if you make one, your goal is to get it into the hands of anyone who asks for it! LinkedIn, likewise, has built its business model on an implicit contract with its users that it’s going to show their CV to anyone who asks for it. I think LinkedIn users would be surprised that LinkedIn doesn’t let bots read (scrape) their public CV. A CV (individually, rather than in aggregate) is ultimately useful for only one thing: marketing the CV’s author’s skills. Why wouldn’t I want my marketable skills scraped into some private “talent matchmaking” agency’s databases, such that someone could find me—and hire me—when I show up as a result of some fancy OLAP query they paid that agency to run on their scraped data? It’s more roundabout than them just finding my CV on LinkedIn, but I’m still glad they found it!

barrkel 7y ago
Not so sure about that. Messages on LinkedIn are mediated in a single place, and you have a measure of control over how your profile shows up in searches. If your CV is scraped, you could end up anywhere and now you're getting recruiter spam from all over when you're not interested.
- derefr 7y ago
  > If your CV is scraped, you could end up anywhere and now you're getting recruiter spam from all over when you're not interested. I would point out that this is still possible (even probable!) without any bots being involved at all. Back before CVs were online, humans working for recruitment agencies would “scrape” information from local, physical job boards by hand into their company’s databases (where “database” here could just mean a filing cabinet.) IMHO, the real solution to that is a spam filter (or an “agent”, in the old world.) Just because a lot of people want to talk to you, and most of them aren’t very interesting, doesn’t mean they need to be prevented from accessing you—they just need to be prioritized by interesting-ness, which is something you can do yourself, or hire a service to do for you.
Dayshine 7y ago
>I think LinkedIn users would be surprised that LinkedIn doesn’t let bots read (scrape) their public CV. LinkedIn is really really clear that: - They won't share you information with 3rd parties - You're not allowed to use information on LinkedIn for commercial purposes without their permission - Other users can view your personal data So, why would I expect random third party companies to be able to scrape and sell my personal information? My personal information is there for the individual use of others, and for authorised use by recruiters (who are vetted/managed by LinkedIn). I've chased down the convention spam mail I get using my GDPR rights, and surprise surprise, they got my details by scraping LinkedIn. That is absolutely not expected nor acceptable use of my data...
- derefr 7y ago
  There’s a difference between “my information” and “the public webpage that I went through a publishing workflow to create from a curated selection of my information.” Let me put it this way: if I have a Wordpress blog, I’d certainly be miffed if Wordpress let bots see my drafts... but I’d also be miffed if Wordpress didn’t let bots (Google, for one!) see the published blog itself. It’s a blog; a public website! Anyone or anything with the URL is supposed to be able to retrieve the page! It’s not “my information” any more†; it’s been broadcast! † You might want to mentally analogize to copyright, but I don’t think it’s the right model for the intuition people have here. Instead, try mentally analogizing to confidentiality. When a classified document is published in the public sphere (e.g. as evidence in a trial, as testimony before congress, etc.), this forcibly declassifies it. No matter how much the originator of the document might want to still keep it a secret, the legal protections of confidentiality don’t apply to it any more: it’s out there now. Anyone who reads it could plausibly have just read the public-sphere copy, so there’s no longer any way to charge people who have knowledge of the previously-classified information with any crime.