7 ms·

I don't care if they have my data. My data is useless to me. Have it. I don't even think it's worth that much in the first place. I care that they make the web

I don't care if they have my data. My data is useless to me. Have it. I don't even think it's worth that much in the first place. I care that they make the web a crappy, unusable, annoying place. They make the browsing experience less secure. They slow down the webpages and eat bandwidth. They look ugly. It' my goddamn pc, i very well can choose what to run on it.

jqpabc123 5y ago
I don't care if they have my data. You should. They're inventing new ways to use this data against you all the time. For example, there has been some effort to profile you based on the price you pay for goods on the internet. They assign you a "sucker score". Once you're classified as a sucker, the price you get offered is higher than what a "non-sucker" might receive. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-online-shopping-makes-suckers-of-us-all/521448/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-onl...
- RealityVoid 5y ago
  Ok, what more can they do with it? Is that the worst scenario? Inequal pricing? Not really a _new_ ideea, and I doubt that make a large enough impact to make me care.
  - hnburnsy 5y ago
    Expose to others that you are pregnant (reportedly)
  - jqpabc123 5y ago
    No, that is absolutely not the worst scenario. People are being refused jobs and treated as criminal suspects based on their location profile. Insurance rates are being increased based on these profiles. Real estate agents and auto dealerships are starting to use this data in their negotiations with you.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      > Insurance rates are being increased based on these profiles Let's be honest here, rich people get better insurance rates. Not because of some nefarious scheme to impoverish the poor, but because they claim less (which is the primary driver of insurance cost). Additionally, many (if not all) insurance companies use things like your home address as a factor in pricing, which again benefits people living in rich(er) areas. Firstly, I don't think that your web data would be particularly predictive for insurance, without substantial modelling/dimensionality reduction and secondly, such modelling/DR is gonna be a very difficult sell to regulators, who typically demand a fully explained model for premium calculation. Secondly, much of this is illegal in the EU, you should probably elect representatives who'll ban this for you.
      - jqpabc123 5y ago
        Firstly, I don't think that your web data would be particularly predictive for insurance... No? They use a multitude of sources (Facebook for example) and factors such as "Do you buy premium beer" to judge how much of a sucker you are and adjust their price according. There have been cases in the US with rates varying significantly among individuals who live in the same neighborhood with similar size houses and coverages. Again, the rate they initially offer and any subsequent increases depends on how much of a sucker they think you are.
        disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        Who? I'm willing to bet substantial money that none of the major US based insurers use Facebook data in any real sense. This is one of those things that sounds plausible to people not in insurance, but I'd you look at the regulatory structure makes little sense. What they do use is prior claim history and public records (credit, driver license etc). That's most likely where the differences you've seen come from.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  And such practices, based on personalized profiles, should most likely be illegal. (Various other practices like these have been made illegal as well) Personally, I don't care that they're doing this (to me). I care more that they shouldn't be able to legally do it. And also, as other people have said: it's ads that are the problem. Not personalized ads. Ads in general. They're ugly, bad, awful, battery-sucking, headache-inducing, loud, autoplaying, CPU-hungry, slow, very bad no good. Seriously.
  - jqpabc123 5y ago
    Buying and selling personal info is a multi-billion dollar industry with almost no regulation. One of Trump's first acts as POTUS was to allow your ISP to get in on this action.
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      I should hope not. The US having that kind of legal say in what my ISP in Europe can do would be worrisome.
bambax 5y ago
I kind of care about my data, but like you, what I really want is to not see any ad ever. Which is what I have right now. If it goes away I don't know how I would cope. Maybe it would reduce my Internet consumption, which would be a good thing overall...?

jqpabc123 5y ago

I don't care if they have my data. You should. They're inventing new ways to use this data against you all the time. For example, there has been some effort to profile you based on the price you pay for goods on the internet. They assign you a "sucker score". Once you're classified as a sucker, the price you get offered is higher than what a "non-sucker" might receive. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-online-shopping-makes-suckers-of-us-all/521448/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-onl...

RealityVoid 5y ago
Ok, what more can they do with it? Is that the worst scenario? Inequal pricing? Not really a _new_ ideea, and I doubt that make a large enough impact to make me care.
- hnburnsy 5y ago
  Expose to others that you are pregnant (reportedly)
- jqpabc123 5y ago
  No, that is absolutely not the worst scenario. People are being refused jobs and treated as criminal suspects based on their location profile. Insurance rates are being increased based on these profiles. Real estate agents and auto dealerships are starting to use this data in their negotiations with you.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    > Insurance rates are being increased based on these profiles Let's be honest here, rich people get better insurance rates. Not because of some nefarious scheme to impoverish the poor, but because they claim less (which is the primary driver of insurance cost). Additionally, many (if not all) insurance companies use things like your home address as a factor in pricing, which again benefits people living in rich(er) areas. Firstly, I don't think that your web data would be particularly predictive for insurance, without substantial modelling/dimensionality reduction and secondly, such modelling/DR is gonna be a very difficult sell to regulators, who typically demand a fully explained model for premium calculation. Secondly, much of this is illegal in the EU, you should probably elect representatives who'll ban this for you.
    - jqpabc123 5y ago
      Firstly, I don't think that your web data would be particularly predictive for insurance... No? They use a multitude of sources (Facebook for example) and factors such as "Do you buy premium beer" to judge how much of a sucker you are and adjust their price according. There have been cases in the US with rates varying significantly among individuals who live in the same neighborhood with similar size houses and coverages. Again, the rate they initially offer and any subsequent increases depends on how much of a sucker they think you are.
      - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        Who? I'm willing to bet substantial money that none of the major US based insurers use Facebook data in any real sense. This is one of those things that sounds plausible to people not in insurance, but I'd you look at the regulatory structure makes little sense. What they do use is prior claim history and public records (credit, driver license etc). That's most likely where the differences you've seen come from.
scrollaway 5y ago
And such practices, based on personalized profiles, should most likely be illegal. (Various other practices like these have been made illegal as well) Personally, I don't care that they're doing this (to me). I care more that they shouldn't be able to legally do it. And also, as other people have said: it's ads that are the problem. Not personalized ads. Ads in general. They're ugly, bad, awful, battery-sucking, headache-inducing, loud, autoplaying, CPU-hungry, slow, very bad no good. Seriously.
- jqpabc123 5y ago
  Buying and selling personal info is a multi-billion dollar industry with almost no regulation. One of Trump's first acts as POTUS was to allow your ISP to get in on this action.
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    I should hope not. The US having that kind of legal say in what my ISP in Europe can do would be worrisome.

bambax 5y ago

I kind of care about my data, but like you, what I really want is to not see any ad ever. Which is what I have right now. If it goes away I don't know how I would cope. Maybe it would reduce my Internet consumption, which would be a good thing overall...?