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I live in the EU, but not in one of the countries from your first two paragraphs. So, I really wonder about those "interesting experiences" with people tracked

• Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  In eastern Europe, the original people doing the tracking and analyzing were your favorite local secret police of course. (take your pick, and I'm sure we can google some examples). I'm pretty sure they'd be quite jealous of some of the modern advertising companies. That said, even if you're in a west European country with a long and proud democratic tradition (like -say- the Netherlands); you can find examples of people accidentally revealing information about themselves in a census (to wit: religious affiliation) thinking What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Well, the neighbors invaded, demanded the census data, and then hauled off everyone with the Wrong Affiliation to be worked to death and/or gassed. Again, you can imagine it would have been much easier for them if they could have just raided Facebook's offices; but fortunately Facebook didn't yet exist back then. But even if you have a stalwart democracy surrounded on all sides by the sea, you can still get in trouble if discrimination is rife. See for instance the case of Alan Turing, a man who helped Great Britain shorten WWII by at least a year, and saved many lives. However, people found out his sexual orientation, and he ended up being driven to suicide. One could eg. imagine using Mr. Turing's social graph (derived from advertising/tracking/location/phone metadata) to track down further people to arrest. It should also be somewhat easy to guess someone's orientation based on what sites they visit, for instance.
  • nickpp 5y ago
    I did say a couple posts above that if the government is doing the tracking - then yeah, I would be worried. But if I had something (just or unjust) to hide, I would certainly not rely on a government regulation to protect me. I would simply not trust it and I would use my own methods of protection. Finally, you presented me with a few valid historical cases which I am not sure are even close: none of them involved a private company tracking people and ending up in tragedy. I would've waited until I had at least such a case before banning the practice altogether. And I would've also considered the cost of my boneheaded regulation: the cost to implement it (billions) and the cost to abide to it when encountering every f-ing day on each new website: thousands of man-lives wasted.
    • Kim_Bruning 5y ago
      Well, if someone holds the information, among other things, governments will make laws to be able to get at said information. Or they just send intelligence agencies in to go after it in the first place. If you've ever seen any presentations or news articles about/by Ed Snowden for instance, you'll know to what lengths even a solid democratic government like the USA might go to. And, you're right. Though previously tracking has only ever caused death/injury/severe_national_embarrassment when the data has been obtained by governments, censuses, counties, post offices, phone companies, and possibly social media companies that start with F; so far social media companies that start with Z have not caused any problems that have been reported in the news where I live. We should therefore trust social media companies that start with Z, because they have a flawless track record.