8 ms·

Somehow organizations get an immense amount of value out of tracking everything you do, say, think, and buy; everywhere you go; and everyone you meet. Two quest

Somehow organizations get an immense amount of value out of tracking everything you do, say, think, and buy; everywhere you go; and everyone you meet. Two questions: 1. Why should they profit off of my data without my consent? (Hint: they shouldn't.) 2. Why is it so hard for me to get value out of it? Shit, if it's gonna be collected, aggregated, and analyzed anyway, I should just do it my damn self and actually get something out of it. It's like we need an open source community for personal data collection, aggregation, and analysis.

j56no 5y ago
there are ways to be paid, just don’t expect google/apple/fb to do that until they will be forced. eg see new eu laws coming forward, and some companies soon will disrupt this space. it will happen like gdpr, someone is already preparing for it, without making too much noise...
ianai 5y ago
Exactly, there’s a dollar value to you that they’re not paying you. You’d need a “property right” over it. (You are your own “property” already anyway.)
- amelius 5y ago
  Too late. You already clicked "I agree" on that EULA.
  - ianai 5y ago
    Since the civil war, you can’t sign ownership of yourself over to another. The ownership of data that intensive seems the same thing.
    - amelius 5y ago
      Ownership is the wrong word, since you will always own your data. The problem is others claiming to own it too.
    - lukifer 5y ago
      This is a fundamental, and perhaps insoluble, problem with the moral principle of liberty and self-ownership: to what extent should you be permitted to voluntarily limit, surrender, or exchange that ownership? One can certainly make a case that even limited-scope non-compete clauses in employment contracts are an affront to human dignity; on the other extreme, there are those who would claim that freedom necessarily includes the "right" to sell one's self into indefinite servitude. Where do we draw the line? I don't see an intrinsic "bright line" or Schelling Focus on the question. What is the "statute of limitations" on the Present Self being constrained by the choices of the Past Self (at least, in the context of contract enforcement)?
      - fuckyouriotshit 5y ago
        > Where do we draw the line? I can't claim to have a complete answer to that question, but it seems that every time that the line is drawn too far towards the direction of slavery (i.e. away from individual liberty) there is a substantial power-imbalance. That seems to suggest that any situation where there is a large power (information, monetary, etc.) asymmetry between two parties will lead to one side being heavily disadvantaged, almost certainly due to the intentional structure of that arrangement. If true, that would suggest that any circumstance where there could be a large power imbalance between parties must be carefully moderated and that limiting "individual freedom" by not allowing people to sign away their rights in a way that mostly benefits someone else could be a reasonable way of approaching this problem. Hopefully that made sense!
- infogulch 5y ago
  I think the root problem is the indirect nature of that dollar value. It's not concrete / obvious enough for normal people to understand it. Seems to be a sales / marketing problem as much as a technical one.
  - ianai 5y ago
    And I could imagine a similar line of reasoning being applied for the value of the land native Americans “sold” to the colonists - when they themselves didn’t have a conception of such ownership before or after that encounter.
jeffreygoesto 5y ago
I don't think so. It is not the data itself that has value. It is a game of information asymmetry and that corporations can make you desire things you wouldn't desire without that interaction. They then convert a fraction of that desire into money flowing from you to them that you otherwise would have kept. Maybe I am old school or too naive, but I don't see how I would make a personal margin with my own data.
- lanstin 5y ago
  If you had a clear list of "these sort of news items/OC from friends makes me more susceptible to being convinced by questionable ideas/donate money/stay up at night." then you could perhaps take steps to preserve your ability to stay more rational, more the way you want yourself to be and less easy to manipulate by ads/partisans/etc.
  - fuckyouriotshit 5y ago
    That sounds like it would be very useful, but doesn't really have a (monetary) "value" in the sense that most people use when talking about sharing the profits of the Data Economy. It'd be much more interesting to see that sort of data sharing/access occurring than simply saying that people are entitled to some percentage of the profit that was "generated using their data" (which would be highly susceptible to creative accounting). Preserving the privacy of individuals would still be challenging though.
- tangjurine 5y ago
  Let's say on average you need to see one hundred ads before you see something you want to buy. Now if you had personalized ads, maybe on average you need to see ten ads before you want to buy something. If you are already looking through a bunch of ads for the sole purpose of trying to buy something, then your personal data is valuable to you because it saves you time. But that's definitely not the situation with most big tech products.
whatever1 5y ago
You are getting free searches, email, messaging, photo storage etc
- briffle 5y ago
  I would pay a fee to some sites to keep using their service, without tracking/advertising. But they don't offer it as an option.
  - whatever1 5y ago
    There are paid options for example for email, but still people prefer the free options. Market has spoken. People just don't care about being tracked, specially if they get free goodies. As an anecdote: I am the only one in my extended family who does not use the car insurance tracker. Everyone is calling me out on why I dont get the "free" discount.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      "People just don't care" People are being massively lied to about what is veing tracked and what is being done with that info. Or maybe these services are a monopoly, where they could start eating babies and not loose their audience anyway The best is when a service is paid and it still traks you, like amazon
    - toss1 5y ago
      I'm with you I pay for email services (and make some use of gmail for junk/transactions). I also would never use one of the insurance trackers. They literally have zero clue of what they are doing and interpret things backwards. E.g., they interpret higher g-forces as bad driving. Yet, as someone who has been through countless high-performance driving and race schools, had racing lisenses, and won multiple racing championships, I can tell you that what high-performance driving, whether racing or getting out of emergencies, is about wringing out of the vehicle, suspenseion and tires, every last bit of grip to maximally accelerate, brake, and/or turn. Of course, I'm usually very smooth and low-g on public roads, but if I do something like maneuver around an animal in the road, they'd see a high-G maneuver and charge me for bad driving, when in fact, I probably saved them from a claim. It is a lovely concept, but the institutional idiocy really bothers me.
asiachick 5y ago
You're getting their service. You want to use Facebook to talk to your family and keep up with your friends. You pay them in info, they pay you with the service you're using. Same with every other site, vox, theverge, slashdot, etc... Sure there are a few companies you pay that also collect your data and I wish they didn't but even then they'd raise the price (maybe willing to pay more) if they didn't subside the service via your info
- mym1990 5y ago
  Not sure why the above got downvoted, it seems to echo the other sentiments. As a developer I have a hard time imagining building an application that doesn't use data to provide a higher level of experience in some way. Of course there is a very long rabbit hole on how data collected to create a novel experience then gets used in other ways to provide revenue. We just live in a world where applications are able to hide almost everything that is happening behind the scenes from the user, and advertising drives the majority of free applications, and this opens a gateway to major abuse...
teucris 5y ago
The response to expect with #2 is that you get paid back in the form of fast search results, map directions, live communications, personalized news feeds, targeted advertisements, etc. Pay no attention to the fact that you’re not getting versions of these things that maximize your benefit either...
- emodendroket 5y ago
  It wasn't that long ago that you'd buy a GPS unit for a few hundred dollars and updating the maps would be another $100+.
  - infogulch 5y ago
    And then there's https://www.openstreetmap.org https://www.openstreetmap.org which is arguably better than both.
paxys 5y ago
1. They are getting your consent 2. They are giving you value (via free services)
- neolog 5y ago
  What do you think consent means?
  - paxys 5y ago
    "If you use Facebook we will collect and sell all your data" "Okay, cool"
    - fuckyouriotshit 5y ago
      "If you don't use Facebook we will still collect[1] and sell all the data about you we can" "But I never agreed to that." "Too bad." Under what circumstances would you describe that as consensual? And that's not even getting into the concept of _informed_ consent; something that they clearly don't have given the amount of user anger that gets directed at Facebook every time when a new leak/breach/data collection method is revealed. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5921092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5921092 In addition to the fact that they collect information about people who don't join Facebook (and agree to the ToS) by virtue of the information that others (often unwittingly) submit to Facebook, like group photos, mobile phone address books, etc.
      - graphtrader 5y ago
        It is just strange how you have people like paxys arguing bullshit that they don't believe themselves. Just bored people trying to win an argument for fun. Good job paxys! You win. You are so smart! Here is pat on the back old chap.
tootie 5y ago
Google search being free is an absolute enormous amount of value. How much would you pay for a subscription to Google if it weren't free?
- jdgoesmarching 5y ago
  Maybe a decade ago. Now using Google is an exercise of filtering out Amazon affiliate blogspam clogging the first several pages of results. “Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers” -Larry and Sergey in 1998
  - judge2020 5y ago
    This has been fulfilled in full with YouTube and how creators fear demonetization.
    - creato 5y ago
      I don't think that's the same thing. If you are a youtube creator and you want your videos to be monetized, you need advertisers to want to advertise on your content. As amply demonstrated by many youtube creators, you are free to go out and land your own sponsorship deals, and then you don't need to worry about demonetization.
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    I don't know, I still would prefer the way it is now to a paid service
emodendroket 5y ago
I think many people find lots of value in search, free email, Android, and other services dependent on this model. The argument that you're not getting anything out of it rings false.
shiredude95 5y ago
value is in aggregation across the board, not at an individual level. a single signal is hardly a reliable metric

j56no 5y ago

there are ways to be paid, just don’t expect google/apple/fb to do that until they will be forced. eg see new eu laws coming forward, and some companies soon will disrupt this space. it will happen like gdpr, someone is already preparing for it, without making too much noise...

ianai 5y ago

Exactly, there’s a dollar value to you that they’re not paying you. You’d need a “property right” over it. (You are your own “property” already anyway.)

amelius 5y ago
Too late. You already clicked "I agree" on that EULA.
- ianai 5y ago
  Since the civil war, you can’t sign ownership of yourself over to another. The ownership of data that intensive seems the same thing.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Ownership is the wrong word, since you will always own your data. The problem is others claiming to own it too.
  - lukifer 5y ago
    This is a fundamental, and perhaps insoluble, problem with the moral principle of liberty and self-ownership: to what extent should you be permitted to voluntarily limit, surrender, or exchange that ownership? One can certainly make a case that even limited-scope non-compete clauses in employment contracts are an affront to human dignity; on the other extreme, there are those who would claim that freedom necessarily includes the "right" to sell one's self into indefinite servitude. Where do we draw the line? I don't see an intrinsic "bright line" or Schelling Focus on the question. What is the "statute of limitations" on the Present Self being constrained by the choices of the Past Self (at least, in the context of contract enforcement)?
    - fuckyouriotshit 5y ago
      > Where do we draw the line? I can't claim to have a complete answer to that question, but it seems that every time that the line is drawn too far towards the direction of slavery (i.e. away from individual liberty) there is a substantial power-imbalance. That seems to suggest that any situation where there is a large power (information, monetary, etc.) asymmetry between two parties will lead to one side being heavily disadvantaged, almost certainly due to the intentional structure of that arrangement. If true, that would suggest that any circumstance where there could be a large power imbalance between parties must be carefully moderated and that limiting "individual freedom" by not allowing people to sign away their rights in a way that mostly benefits someone else could be a reasonable way of approaching this problem. Hopefully that made sense!
infogulch 5y ago
I think the root problem is the indirect nature of that dollar value. It's not concrete / obvious enough for normal people to understand it. Seems to be a sales / marketing problem as much as a technical one.
- ianai 5y ago
  And I could imagine a similar line of reasoning being applied for the value of the land native Americans “sold” to the colonists - when they themselves didn’t have a conception of such ownership before or after that encounter.

jeffreygoesto 5y ago

I don't think so. It is not the data itself that has value. It is a game of information asymmetry and that corporations can make you desire things you wouldn't desire without that interaction. They then convert a fraction of that desire into money flowing from you to them that you otherwise would have kept. Maybe I am old school or too naive, but I don't see how I would make a personal margin with my own data.

lanstin 5y ago
If you had a clear list of "these sort of news items/OC from friends makes me more susceptible to being convinced by questionable ideas/donate money/stay up at night." then you could perhaps take steps to preserve your ability to stay more rational, more the way you want yourself to be and less easy to manipulate by ads/partisans/etc.
- fuckyouriotshit 5y ago
  That sounds like it would be very useful, but doesn't really have a (monetary) "value" in the sense that most people use when talking about sharing the profits of the Data Economy. It'd be much more interesting to see that sort of data sharing/access occurring than simply saying that people are entitled to some percentage of the profit that was "generated using their data" (which would be highly susceptible to creative accounting). Preserving the privacy of individuals would still be challenging though.
tangjurine 5y ago
Let's say on average you need to see one hundred ads before you see something you want to buy. Now if you had personalized ads, maybe on average you need to see ten ads before you want to buy something. If you are already looking through a bunch of ads for the sole purpose of trying to buy something, then your personal data is valuable to you because it saves you time. But that's definitely not the situation with most big tech products.

whatever1 5y ago

You are getting free searches, email, messaging, photo storage etc

briffle 5y ago
I would pay a fee to some sites to keep using their service, without tracking/advertising. But they don't offer it as an option.
- whatever1 5y ago
  There are paid options for example for email, but still people prefer the free options. Market has spoken. People just don't care about being tracked, specially if they get free goodies. As an anecdote: I am the only one in my extended family who does not use the car insurance tracker. Everyone is calling me out on why I dont get the "free" discount.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "People just don't care" People are being massively lied to about what is veing tracked and what is being done with that info. Or maybe these services are a monopoly, where they could start eating babies and not loose their audience anyway The best is when a service is paid and it still traks you, like amazon
  - toss1 5y ago
    I'm with you I pay for email services (and make some use of gmail for junk/transactions). I also would never use one of the insurance trackers. They literally have zero clue of what they are doing and interpret things backwards. E.g., they interpret higher g-forces as bad driving. Yet, as someone who has been through countless high-performance driving and race schools, had racing lisenses, and won multiple racing championships, I can tell you that what high-performance driving, whether racing or getting out of emergencies, is about wringing out of the vehicle, suspenseion and tires, every last bit of grip to maximally accelerate, brake, and/or turn. Of course, I'm usually very smooth and low-g on public roads, but if I do something like maneuver around an animal in the road, they'd see a high-G maneuver and charge me for bad driving, when in fact, I probably saved them from a claim. It is a lovely concept, but the institutional idiocy really bothers me.

asiachick 5y ago

You're getting their service. You want to use Facebook to talk to your family and keep up with your friends. You pay them in info, they pay you with the service you're using. Same with every other site, vox, theverge, slashdot, etc... Sure there are a few companies you pay that also collect your data and I wish they didn't but even then they'd raise the price (maybe willing to pay more) if they didn't subside the service via your info

mym1990 5y ago
Not sure why the above got downvoted, it seems to echo the other sentiments. As a developer I have a hard time imagining building an application that doesn't use data to provide a higher level of experience in some way. Of course there is a very long rabbit hole on how data collected to create a novel experience then gets used in other ways to provide revenue. We just live in a world where applications are able to hide almost everything that is happening behind the scenes from the user, and advertising drives the majority of free applications, and this opens a gateway to major abuse...

teucris 5y ago

The response to expect with #2 is that you get paid back in the form of fast search results, map directions, live communications, personalized news feeds, targeted advertisements, etc. Pay no attention to the fact that you’re not getting versions of these things that maximize your benefit either...

emodendroket 5y ago
It wasn't that long ago that you'd buy a GPS unit for a few hundred dollars and updating the maps would be another $100+.
- infogulch 5y ago
  And then there's https://www.openstreetmap.org https://www.openstreetmap.org which is arguably better than both.

paxys 5y ago

1. They are getting your consent 2. They are giving you value (via free services)

neolog 5y ago
What do you think consent means?
- paxys 5y ago
  "If you use Facebook we will collect and sell all your data" "Okay, cool"
  - fuckyouriotshit 5y ago
    "If you don't use Facebook we will still collect[1] and sell all the data about you we can" "But I never agreed to that." "Too bad." Under what circumstances would you describe that as consensual? And that's not even getting into the concept of _informed_ consent; something that they clearly don't have given the amount of user anger that gets directed at Facebook every time when a new leak/breach/data collection method is revealed. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5921092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5921092 In addition to the fact that they collect information about people who don't join Facebook (and agree to the ToS) by virtue of the information that others (often unwittingly) submit to Facebook, like group photos, mobile phone address books, etc.
    - graphtrader 5y ago
      It is just strange how you have people like paxys arguing bullshit that they don't believe themselves. Just bored people trying to win an argument for fun. Good job paxys! You win. You are so smart! Here is pat on the back old chap.

tootie 5y ago

Google search being free is an absolute enormous amount of value. How much would you pay for a subscription to Google if it weren't free?

jdgoesmarching 5y ago
Maybe a decade ago. Now using Google is an exercise of filtering out Amazon affiliate blogspam clogging the first several pages of results. “Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers” -Larry and Sergey in 1998
- judge2020 5y ago
  This has been fulfilled in full with YouTube and how creators fear demonetization.
  - creato 5y ago
    I don't think that's the same thing. If you are a youtube creator and you want your videos to be monetized, you need advertisers to want to advertise on your content. As amply demonstrated by many youtube creators, you are free to go out and land your own sponsorship deals, and then you don't need to worry about demonetization.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  I don't know, I still would prefer the way it is now to a paid service

emodendroket 5y ago

I think many people find lots of value in search, free email, Android, and other services dependent on this model. The argument that you're not getting anything out of it rings false.

shiredude95 5y ago

value is in aggregation across the board, not at an individual level. a single signal is hardly a reliable metric