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I'm confused why hacker news thinks collecting demographic data is a bad thing, and is all about regulating it... when everyone's personal website has google an

I'm confused why hacker news thinks collecting demographic data is a bad thing, and is all about regulating it... when everyone's personal website has google analytics installed and is doing the exact same thing. Yet we don't bat an eye at it.

Vervious 6y ago
Seriously though, doesn't it strike any of you as absolutely hypocritical? We're attacking data collection in public spaces in real life, while defending it in our own domain (virtual life). I know that a lot of tech industry paychecks come from monetizing people's data...
- zucker42 6y ago
  It's quite possibly different people arguing either side.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  Part of the difference is scope and purpose. I'm ok with Amazon using my purchase, and product viewing data, to recommend products I might like to purchase. I'm even ok with them using aggregated data to determine where to invest in white-labled products, fix UX issues, or find fraud rings. What I'm not ok with, is them selling my data, combining it with cellphone data, netflix viewing data, creditcard data, magazine subscriptions, email subscriptions, and many others, and building personal profiles that governments, political organizations, and commercial enterprises I don't have a direct relationship with to abuse. I don't think it is a slippery-slope from from the more narrow, single-firm use case to the broad-profile-being abused. GDPR and similar regulation is one way we can get there. We are going to need probably another generation of people and laws to figure out the right regulatory norms and frameworks, but it seems like a tractable problem.
  - soared 6y ago
    Amazon doesn't sell your data. You can't have a legitimate discussion about this on HN because no one does their research and so just make outrageously incorrect claims like that. Netflix, apple, etc don't sell data. There is no such thing as building a 'personal profile' by combining data from all these different sources. Data is licensed in aggregate, and typically anything under 1,000 user ids can't be used. Unless your bringing in data yourself, you can't build profiles on individuals. I 100% agree that we need major privacy regulation, but the first step in that is putting in effort to actually understand and discuss the facts.
    - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
      Credit card providers most certainly sell your data. Data brokers have detailed profiles on everyone. They don't anonymize anything when their whole business is selling names and addresses of hyper-specific demographics.
      - soared 6y ago
        Source? You can read my comment history - I’ve worked extensively in this exact industry. I literally built bespoke audience segments directly with visa and oracle, which have strict rules including the number of people in an audience and the type of purchase/retailers included. It’s not hyper-targeted, unless you consider something like “everyone who bought a flight flying through LAX in the past 3 months using their Visa card” as such. That segment is probably around 1MM ids, which gets scaled up with machine learning to 5MM similar people (the minimum size for any visa audience segment). 5MM people is about 35MM IDs (cookies, device ids, etc). They 100% do not sell names, addresses, or any personally identifiable information because that’s super illegal.
        kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
        Acxiom has been doing this for 50 years. Their database is extensive. How do you think targeted direct mail works?
    - jacobr1 6y ago
      > Data is licensed in aggregate, and typically anything under 1,000 user ids can't be used. You are correct that the reputable companies I used in my strawman apply practices like this. But it is certainly not the case that this is universal. I've worked professionally with all sorts of a data brokers (for anti-abuse/fraud purposes) and there are many who deal with non-anonymized datasets, especially if we are talking about firms that evolved out the direct-marketing space. Further, there are many ways to make use of semi-anonymized data that while, not strictly joining private information, are able to perform profile appends and data imputation in ways that allow for inferences many would consider privacy violations regardless of the fact the technical construction methods don't directly access specific profiles and are at some level stochastic. But all that was besides my point, which was perhaps lost with a bad example. HN readers can be both FOR increased use of customer data for acute purposes and AGAINST broader abuses of such data without being hypocritical. There is a relevant distinction to be drawn.
zucker42 6y ago
There's a real, specific concern here that doesn't apply to Google analytics on blogs. The concern is that if this data is available for purchase by a company consumers haven't heard of, it's available for purchase by police. Police could use location details to track, arrest, or harass people they don't like. And this has implications outside the U.S. as well. But also I think you'll find that some of the same people in this thread also complain about Google analytics. My personal website, for example, does not use Google analytics.
rhizome 6y ago
Not everyone's. The majority, probably, sure, but it's not at all required or anything. And "hacker news thinks collecting demographic data is a bad thing" is uncharitably broad.
driverdan 6y ago
What makes you think we don't care about both?
tjpnz 6y ago
I suspect the target audience of many a website would be blocking GA too.
PascLeRasc 6y ago
I don't mean to ask in bad faith - does Google Analytics collect information about my race/age/other personal information, or just data about my computer? I haven't personally used GA so I don't know.

Vervious 6y ago

Seriously though, doesn't it strike any of you as absolutely hypocritical? We're attacking data collection in public spaces in real life, while defending it in our own domain (virtual life). I know that a lot of tech industry paychecks come from monetizing people's data...

zucker42 6y ago
It's quite possibly different people arguing either side.
jacobr1 6y ago
Part of the difference is scope and purpose. I'm ok with Amazon using my purchase, and product viewing data, to recommend products I might like to purchase. I'm even ok with them using aggregated data to determine where to invest in white-labled products, fix UX issues, or find fraud rings. What I'm not ok with, is them selling my data, combining it with cellphone data, netflix viewing data, creditcard data, magazine subscriptions, email subscriptions, and many others, and building personal profiles that governments, political organizations, and commercial enterprises I don't have a direct relationship with to abuse. I don't think it is a slippery-slope from from the more narrow, single-firm use case to the broad-profile-being abused. GDPR and similar regulation is one way we can get there. We are going to need probably another generation of people and laws to figure out the right regulatory norms and frameworks, but it seems like a tractable problem.
- soared 6y ago
  Amazon doesn't sell your data. You can't have a legitimate discussion about this on HN because no one does their research and so just make outrageously incorrect claims like that. Netflix, apple, etc don't sell data. There is no such thing as building a 'personal profile' by combining data from all these different sources. Data is licensed in aggregate, and typically anything under 1,000 user ids can't be used. Unless your bringing in data yourself, you can't build profiles on individuals. I 100% agree that we need major privacy regulation, but the first step in that is putting in effort to actually understand and discuss the facts.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    Credit card providers most certainly sell your data. Data brokers have detailed profiles on everyone. They don't anonymize anything when their whole business is selling names and addresses of hyper-specific demographics.
    - soared 6y ago
      Source? You can read my comment history - I’ve worked extensively in this exact industry. I literally built bespoke audience segments directly with visa and oracle, which have strict rules including the number of people in an audience and the type of purchase/retailers included. It’s not hyper-targeted, unless you consider something like “everyone who bought a flight flying through LAX in the past 3 months using their Visa card” as such. That segment is probably around 1MM ids, which gets scaled up with machine learning to 5MM similar people (the minimum size for any visa audience segment). 5MM people is about 35MM IDs (cookies, device ids, etc). They 100% do not sell names, addresses, or any personally identifiable information because that’s super illegal.
      - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
        Acxiom has been doing this for 50 years. Their database is extensive. How do you think targeted direct mail works?
  - jacobr1 6y ago
    > Data is licensed in aggregate, and typically anything under 1,000 user ids can't be used. You are correct that the reputable companies I used in my strawman apply practices like this. But it is certainly not the case that this is universal. I've worked professionally with all sorts of a data brokers (for anti-abuse/fraud purposes) and there are many who deal with non-anonymized datasets, especially if we are talking about firms that evolved out the direct-marketing space. Further, there are many ways to make use of semi-anonymized data that while, not strictly joining private information, are able to perform profile appends and data imputation in ways that allow for inferences many would consider privacy violations regardless of the fact the technical construction methods don't directly access specific profiles and are at some level stochastic. But all that was besides my point, which was perhaps lost with a bad example. HN readers can be both FOR increased use of customer data for acute purposes and AGAINST broader abuses of such data without being hypocritical. There is a relevant distinction to be drawn.

zucker42 6y ago

There's a real, specific concern here that doesn't apply to Google analytics on blogs. The concern is that if this data is available for purchase by a company consumers haven't heard of, it's available for purchase by police. Police could use location details to track, arrest, or harass people they don't like. And this has implications outside the U.S. as well. But also I think you'll find that some of the same people in this thread also complain about Google analytics. My personal website, for example, does not use Google analytics.

rhizome 6y ago

Not everyone's. The majority, probably, sure, but it's not at all required or anything. And "hacker news thinks collecting demographic data is a bad thing" is uncharitably broad.

driverdan 6y ago

What makes you think we don't care about both?

tjpnz 6y ago

I suspect the target audience of many a website would be blocking GA too.

PascLeRasc 6y ago

I don't mean to ask in bad faith - does Google Analytics collect information about my race/age/other personal information, or just data about my computer? I haven't personally used GA so I don't know.