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Not really. I've participated in public communication since I was a kid. IRC, public forums, etc... Advertisers and platform monetization are definitely part o

by kodah 5y ago

Not really. I've participated in public communication since I was a kid. IRC, public forums, etc... Advertisers and platform monetization are definitely part of the problem, don't get me wrong. I just signalled that I'm willing to iterate on that problem. When my mother gets a call on her cellphone by a recruiter looking for me when we share zero relationships online it signals a pretty desperate issue in how data is being used, correlated, and exploited. The public side of these APIs is just an exacerbation of those issues, because they're the same APIs an advertiser uses. You painting me as someone who is trying to avoid repercussions is interesting. Do you normally assume the worst about people when you debate them?

slg 5y ago
>You painting me as someone who is trying to avoid repercussions is interesting. Do you normally assume the worst about people when you debate them? I think you are assuming a specific connotation on "repercussions". I'm not talking about "repercussions" in the coded "cancel culture" way. I am saying that you want the positives of speaking in public without the unwanted negatives. That is the literal definition of avoiding repercussions. If your public speaking establishes you as some type of expert, people are naturally going to start reaching out to talk to you. That is the nature of public discourse. What that recruiter did is wildly unethical, but it is a natural repercussion of publicly showing traits of the person the recruiter is looking to hire. There are downsides to being a public citizen. You don't get a free pass to act unethically in order to avoid those downsides.
- kodah 5y ago
  > I think you are assuming a specific connotation on "repercussions" Use more careful wording then. In my eyes, you're here to deny that a problem exists (for average people, not experts) and you're advocating for me to not participate in communities which I was historically able to participate in without having my data exfiltrated or stored in perpetuity. I've argued in the past that limits to public data could perceivably exist, I think this is reasonable, but to a denialist nothing is reasonable. The framing you propose is quite rosey, but then you immediately walk it back with how bad it is, but that it's a "natural" repercussion. So, while I want to do something about it before it becomes a bigger problem that can't be contained you're happy to sit back and say there's nothing to see here. But hey, feel free to keep commenting on my ethics without questioning your own.
  - slg 5y ago
    I don't know what to tell you. I feel pretty comfortable with my ethical stance here of "Don't abuse a public resource or intentionally create more work for other people purely for your own personal convenience."
    - kodah 5y ago
      I think I've made it pretty clear "personal convenience" is not the issue at stake here. I guess you're just arguing in bad faith at this point.
      - slg 5y ago
        As you said previously... >Do you normally assume the worst about people when you debate them? I don't know what I said here that seemed to offended you. If you point out something that truly crossed a line, I can apologize. You weren't the one who my original comment was directed towards and in your very first comment you admitted yourself that this type of behavior was potentially unethical. I don't think I have said anything worse than that and I don't know what I did that you consider bad faith. The one example you gave of a negative result was a recruiter calling your mother. Stopping that falls under the category of "personal convenience". We all get unwanted calls from time to time. It is annoying, but it takes a couple minutes out of your day and you move on. No reason to take that as justification for flooding public sites with "multi GB files full of random data" which is where the conversation started.
        kodah 5y ago
        Yeah, that's not "personal convenience". I would say this borders on safety. I don't think it's that difficult to imagine how this same dataset in the hands of a bad actor is to be abused. In your case, my assumptions of you are based on how you continually downplay concerns to "not happening" or "that's no big deal". You also readily accused me of avoiding repercussions, then walking back and walking forward those claims in some kafka-esque dance. "Arguing in bad faith" also doesn't mean you've offended me. It's just a realization that you have some other motivation at stake here. People don't just recategorize a safety and privacy issue as "personal convenience" while dancing around calling it a problem.

by kodah 5y ago

slg 5y ago

>You painting me as someone who is trying to avoid repercussions is interesting. Do you normally assume the worst about people when you debate them? I think you are assuming a specific connotation on "repercussions". I'm not talking about "repercussions" in the coded "cancel culture" way. I am saying that you want the positives of speaking in public without the unwanted negatives. That is the literal definition of avoiding repercussions. If your public speaking establishes you as some type of expert, people are naturally going to start reaching out to talk to you. That is the nature of public discourse. What that recruiter did is wildly unethical, but it is a natural repercussion of publicly showing traits of the person the recruiter is looking to hire. There are downsides to being a public citizen. You don't get a free pass to act unethically in order to avoid those downsides.

kodah 5y ago
> I think you are assuming a specific connotation on "repercussions" Use more careful wording then. In my eyes, you're here to deny that a problem exists (for average people, not experts) and you're advocating for me to not participate in communities which I was historically able to participate in without having my data exfiltrated or stored in perpetuity. I've argued in the past that limits to public data could perceivably exist, I think this is reasonable, but to a denialist nothing is reasonable. The framing you propose is quite rosey, but then you immediately walk it back with how bad it is, but that it's a "natural" repercussion. So, while I want to do something about it before it becomes a bigger problem that can't be contained you're happy to sit back and say there's nothing to see here. But hey, feel free to keep commenting on my ethics without questioning your own.
- slg 5y ago
  I don't know what to tell you. I feel pretty comfortable with my ethical stance here of "Don't abuse a public resource or intentionally create more work for other people purely for your own personal convenience."
  - kodah 5y ago
    I think I've made it pretty clear "personal convenience" is not the issue at stake here. I guess you're just arguing in bad faith at this point.
    - slg 5y ago
      As you said previously... >Do you normally assume the worst about people when you debate them? I don't know what I said here that seemed to offended you. If you point out something that truly crossed a line, I can apologize. You weren't the one who my original comment was directed towards and in your very first comment you admitted yourself that this type of behavior was potentially unethical. I don't think I have said anything worse than that and I don't know what I did that you consider bad faith. The one example you gave of a negative result was a recruiter calling your mother. Stopping that falls under the category of "personal convenience". We all get unwanted calls from time to time. It is annoying, but it takes a couple minutes out of your day and you move on. No reason to take that as justification for flooding public sites with "multi GB files full of random data" which is where the conversation started.
      - kodah 5y ago
        Yeah, that's not "personal convenience". I would say this borders on safety. I don't think it's that difficult to imagine how this same dataset in the hands of a bad actor is to be abused. In your case, my assumptions of you are based on how you continually downplay concerns to "not happening" or "that's no big deal". You also readily accused me of avoiding repercussions, then walking back and walking forward those claims in some kafka-esque dance. "Arguing in bad faith" also doesn't mean you've offended me. It's just a realization that you have some other motivation at stake here. People don't just recategorize a safety and privacy issue as "personal convenience" while dancing around calling it a problem.