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But privacy laws are pointless and should be repealed. All this noise about cookie privacy, fingerprinting, FLoC, tracking, etc. --- what are the actual harms

But privacy laws are pointless and should be repealed. All this noise about cookie privacy, fingerprinting, FLoC, tracking, etc. --- what are the actual harms that make these things bad? Has anyone in the real world ever experienced a concrete harm arising from interest targeting? Doubtful. The EU privacy regime imposes a heavy regulatory burden in exchange for nothing. Information is a non-rivalrous good. Further limiting its dissemination will increase friction all over the internet, impose new transaction costs on previously free interactions, and make the whole network less useful for everyone. And for what? Assuaging the paranoia of a tiny fragile and vocal minority of privacy activists? Sorry, but that's not worth breaking the internet.

Santosh83 5y ago
Information is power. The more information about more people with more depth to the graph is amassed by Big Tech and 3-letter agencies, the more soft power is accrued over large groups of people, economies, processes and even nations. And this ability is currently asymmetric. While Big Tech and Big Govt knows nearly everything about everybody, ordinary citizens are denied data and transparency. And even if the data may be hypothetically available, its scale precludes analysis by anyone except highly funded groups. Lack of privacy does translate to enormous soft power. It doesn't have to result in death, although the potential is there for that too. Democracy and individual liberty become meaningless except on paper. I'm not sure that's what we want, in exchange for a few conveniences in the palm of our hands.
- quotemstr 5y ago
  > The more information about more people with more depth to the graph is amassed by Big Tech and 3-letter agencies, the more soft power is accrued over large groups of people, economies, processes and even nations. Is there any evidence that Big Tech and Big Government are actually controlling people by tagging them in some database (which no human actually inspects) as being interested in hiking gear and cookie recipes? Give me a break. What you've described isn't a concrete harm, but an emotion --- specifically, fear. Lots of fears are baseless. So is this one. We shouldn't organize society around the baseless fears of tiny vocal minorities.
  - antris 5y ago
    Companies who track your information, including FAANG get regularly investigated and often fined for violating antitrust laws when they use the data they've gathered to limit or outright kill competition. I find it disingenuous to ask for evidence of some kind of vague "companies controlling people" when it's obvious that they do it on a larger scale all the time. No, companies do not mind control people on an individual level, but what they do has all the traditional effects of monopolies/oligopolies that are not democratically controlled by the people affected but a handful of rich executives. I'm not even going to go to the "advertising controls people" dialog tree. If it's not obvious why having the power of putting anything you want in front of billions of people is powerful, then I don't think there's a discussion worth having.
    - quotemstr 5y ago
      > it's not obvious why having the power of putting anything you want in front of billions of people is powerful, then I don't think there's a discussion worth having There it is. It's not about tracking per se. It's really about control over advertising and information dissemination more broadly. Motte: preserving user privacy by blocking cookies Bailey: let's tightly control who can put messages in front of the general public
      - antris 5y ago
        Is putting barriers into how huge multinational companies can exploit their data farming to cement an unchallengeable position in the market and kill off competition or dissent within the system "tight control into who can put messages in front of the general public"? You are framing this as if I am somehow advocating censorship towards people, yet I am advocating the opposite position. Executives shouldn't be given a such huge powers of data mining and information distribution and ability shut powerless opposition and competition out. This is about preserving equal voice to all people, and preventing juggernauts from squashing it.
  - handrous 5y ago
    We call it stalking when an individual does it. It should be, flatly, illegal to collect that sort of data about people without a business need to do so, and illegal to use it for any other purpose, transfer it to any other entity without the same restrictions on its use, et c., when it's needed (like: credit card companies and banks obviously need to know where & when you spend money, but they shouldn't be able to use those data for anything else at all—no aggregating and re-selling to others, no mining spending trends for investment intelligence, no targeting ads at you based on it, none of that).
M2Ys4U 5y ago
Privacy is a human right, and respecting it does not, in any way whatsoever, break the internet.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  Specifically, Article 12 of the UDHR states: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human... Why isn't this Article at the forefront of any and all conversation re: privacy?
  - quotemstr 5y ago
    Who defines what "privacy" means? You? Why? Can you point me to the place where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights talks about cookies and FLoC? The UCHR is not a blank check for banning anything you want in the name of "privacy". There are a lot of angry people in this thread stating what they want, but none have offered an argument for why we should structure society around their whims. Sorry, but "you shouldn't be able to collect information" isn't an argument. It's a wish. Nobody is under any obligation to indulge the wishes of random strangers.
    - duckmysick 5y ago
      There's nothing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights about privacy regarding medical records, but various jurisdictions agree that it's worth protecting. > Sorry, but "you shouldn't be able to collect information" isn't an argument. How about "private entities shouldn't be able to collect my information without my explicit consent". > It's a wish. Nobody is under any obligation to indulge the wishes of random strangers. Yours included.
      - freediver 5y ago
        > How about "private entities shouldn't be able to collect my information without my explicit consent". If the information is public, no consent is needed. Privacy is about trusting someone with private information and expecting they will not do anything with it that you would not approve of.
cratermoon 5y ago
> what are the actual harms The kind of question can only be asked by someone who has never been abused by a domestic partner, never been on the wrong end of debt collectors, the law, disgruntled employees, doxxers, or other real and persistent threats that are enabled by the data collection and aggregation that is the foundation of interest targeting.
- quotemstr 5y ago
  Do abusive domestic partners, debt collectors, random employees, or angry doxxers have access to targeted advertising interest data? The "harm" you're discussing is hypothetical and extremely unlikely. I'm asking for concrete examples.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    Debt collectors are huge data broker clients. (And sellers too - junk debt can go both ways on these markets.) Disgruntled employees leak a fair bit too.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    40% of police officer families experience domestic violence: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...

Santosh83 5y ago

Information is power. The more information about more people with more depth to the graph is amassed by Big Tech and 3-letter agencies, the more soft power is accrued over large groups of people, economies, processes and even nations. And this ability is currently asymmetric. While Big Tech and Big Govt knows nearly everything about everybody, ordinary citizens are denied data and transparency. And even if the data may be hypothetically available, its scale precludes analysis by anyone except highly funded groups. Lack of privacy does translate to enormous soft power. It doesn't have to result in death, although the potential is there for that too. Democracy and individual liberty become meaningless except on paper. I'm not sure that's what we want, in exchange for a few conveniences in the palm of our hands.

quotemstr 5y ago
> The more information about more people with more depth to the graph is amassed by Big Tech and 3-letter agencies, the more soft power is accrued over large groups of people, economies, processes and even nations. Is there any evidence that Big Tech and Big Government are actually controlling people by tagging them in some database (which no human actually inspects) as being interested in hiking gear and cookie recipes? Give me a break. What you've described isn't a concrete harm, but an emotion --- specifically, fear. Lots of fears are baseless. So is this one. We shouldn't organize society around the baseless fears of tiny vocal minorities.
- antris 5y ago
  Companies who track your information, including FAANG get regularly investigated and often fined for violating antitrust laws when they use the data they've gathered to limit or outright kill competition. I find it disingenuous to ask for evidence of some kind of vague "companies controlling people" when it's obvious that they do it on a larger scale all the time. No, companies do not mind control people on an individual level, but what they do has all the traditional effects of monopolies/oligopolies that are not democratically controlled by the people affected but a handful of rich executives. I'm not even going to go to the "advertising controls people" dialog tree. If it's not obvious why having the power of putting anything you want in front of billions of people is powerful, then I don't think there's a discussion worth having.
  - quotemstr 5y ago
    > it's not obvious why having the power of putting anything you want in front of billions of people is powerful, then I don't think there's a discussion worth having There it is. It's not about tracking per se. It's really about control over advertising and information dissemination more broadly. Motte: preserving user privacy by blocking cookies Bailey: let's tightly control who can put messages in front of the general public
    - antris 5y ago
      Is putting barriers into how huge multinational companies can exploit their data farming to cement an unchallengeable position in the market and kill off competition or dissent within the system "tight control into who can put messages in front of the general public"? You are framing this as if I am somehow advocating censorship towards people, yet I am advocating the opposite position. Executives shouldn't be given a such huge powers of data mining and information distribution and ability shut powerless opposition and competition out. This is about preserving equal voice to all people, and preventing juggernauts from squashing it.
- handrous 5y ago
  We call it stalking when an individual does it. It should be, flatly, illegal to collect that sort of data about people without a business need to do so, and illegal to use it for any other purpose, transfer it to any other entity without the same restrictions on its use, et c., when it's needed (like: credit card companies and banks obviously need to know where & when you spend money, but they shouldn't be able to use those data for anything else at all—no aggregating and re-selling to others, no mining spending trends for investment intelligence, no targeting ads at you based on it, none of that).

M2Ys4U 5y ago

Privacy is a human right, and respecting it does not, in any way whatsoever, break the internet.

wintermutestwin 5y ago
Specifically, Article 12 of the UDHR states: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human... Why isn't this Article at the forefront of any and all conversation re: privacy?
- quotemstr 5y ago
  Who defines what "privacy" means? You? Why? Can you point me to the place where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights talks about cookies and FLoC? The UCHR is not a blank check for banning anything you want in the name of "privacy". There are a lot of angry people in this thread stating what they want, but none have offered an argument for why we should structure society around their whims. Sorry, but "you shouldn't be able to collect information" isn't an argument. It's a wish. Nobody is under any obligation to indulge the wishes of random strangers.
  - duckmysick 5y ago
    There's nothing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights about privacy regarding medical records, but various jurisdictions agree that it's worth protecting. > Sorry, but "you shouldn't be able to collect information" isn't an argument. How about "private entities shouldn't be able to collect my information without my explicit consent". > It's a wish. Nobody is under any obligation to indulge the wishes of random strangers. Yours included.
    - freediver 5y ago
      > How about "private entities shouldn't be able to collect my information without my explicit consent". If the information is public, no consent is needed. Privacy is about trusting someone with private information and expecting they will not do anything with it that you would not approve of.

cratermoon 5y ago

> what are the actual harms The kind of question can only be asked by someone who has never been abused by a domestic partner, never been on the wrong end of debt collectors, the law, disgruntled employees, doxxers, or other real and persistent threats that are enabled by the data collection and aggregation that is the foundation of interest targeting.

quotemstr 5y ago
Do abusive domestic partners, debt collectors, random employees, or angry doxxers have access to targeted advertising interest data? The "harm" you're discussing is hypothetical and extremely unlikely. I'm asking for concrete examples.
- morelisp 5y ago
  Debt collectors are huge data broker clients. (And sellers too - junk debt can go both ways on these markets.) Disgruntled employees leak a fair bit too.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  40% of police officer families experience domestic violence: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...