5 ms·

I've always been extremely pessimistic regarding the slow erosion of rights in a digital world that's increasingly controlled by players too big to regulate. Ye

by ajxs 5y ago

I've always been extremely pessimistic regarding the slow erosion of rights in a digital world that's increasingly controlled by players too big to regulate. Yet why am I always so shocked when things like this happen? If you asked me at any point in the past whether I think things are going to get better, or worse, I would unequivocally have said the latter? Yet when things do get worse in some totally foreseeable but awful way, I'm inexplicably shocked and appalled. Maybe for all of my pessimism, my imagination for calamity is actually terrible.

sofixa 5y ago
What do Covid tests by a pharmaceutical-ish company have to do with "digital world controlled by players too big to regulate"?
- ajxs 5y ago
  I was speaking very generally. I think that my concerns regarding the regulation of individual privacy in the digital realm, and my concerns about the regulation of the major players in 'surveillance capitalism' is shared by many. The brokering of PII is such a large, and interconnected business. I would like control over who has access to my medical data, my DNA included.
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    Is it capitalism or corporatism? What's free-market about being compelled by the state to use these services? https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci... Pick any major tech platform and you'll find similar connections. The CCP has their own platforms, just like Russia has their own. Digital ID, pushed by WEF isn't being promoted by the free-market. It is better described as corporatism. Hopefully this more accurate terminology will help diffuse the more contentious implications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Schwab#:~:text=Schwab%20as%20publisher,state%20governance%20systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Schwab#:~:text=Schwab%20....
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      'No true scottsman' free market strikes again. This is an inherent property of the system. Id we didn't have these sort of issues, Communism is a perfect system, USSR wasnt the real deal!
      - aww_dang 5y ago
        We can disagree on those premises, but hopefully agree that corporatism better describes the observed phenomenon. Maybe someone else here can take up the more contentious elements of your assertion. There's very little I can say here on HN about these points.
        Retric 5y ago
        Are you sure corporatism is the word your thinking of? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism Corporatocracy seems like a closer fit to the thrust of your argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy
        TrickardRixx 5y ago
        If "corporatism" is the name of the condition, then free-market capitalism is the virus that causes the infection.
        ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Indeed, I purposefully compare 'free market people' with Communists, both live in an imaginary world where human relationships are mechanistic like APIs. In their world everything is perfectly rational, there is no such thing as imbalance of power, market leverage, collusion between competitors, etc. In modern concience people clearly understand how an all-powerfull state can turn tyranical, but when an all-powerfull company turns tyranical it's always a surprise! So you will get "let free market do it's thing without government interference, remove safeguards, guardrails and regulation." Then free market finds that the best way to make money is to form cartels or illegally abuse people who can't afford a layer, or to sell digital eyeballs and organs that require a subscribtion to work and it's a surprised picachu face all over again For some reason these people are madly in love with a system that is basically just natural selection / evolution. They go around saying how planning is pointless because you can't be wiser than evolution is anyway. They seem to forget that evolution had 6 mass extinctions and that 99.9% of all specieces have gone extinct.
- ajb 5y ago
  Culture. Big players produce a body of professionals who are used to certain practices, and when these move to other companies, the practices propagate there. Especially if they make money - but even if they don't; as you see from the number of companies that employ a data engineer when they don't have enough data for one.
- rastignack 5y ago
  They were mandatory to validate a green pass, their results were associated with a QR code which has the potential to allow tracking.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  The company found itself in a commercial environment where it could exploit and monetize misbehavior. If we had legal protections of private data, including DNA, stealing people's DNA wouldn't be profitable. The "typical" behavior of harvesting every bit of customer information has resulted in a culture in which such exploitation is almost expected. Unelected technocrats are in charge, and it turns out that might not be the best way of running the world.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
verisimi 5y ago
Well, you can get a headstart on what is planned by looking through the rather tiresome WEF's website. Here is an example of what I mean: https://www.weforum.org/reports/advancing-digital-agency-the-power-of-data-intermediaries https://www.weforum.org/reports/advancing-digital-agency-the... "With the integration of screenless technology into everyday life, the data ecosystem is growing increasingly complicated. New ambient data collection methods bring many benefits, but they also have the potential to amplify mistrust between people and technology. In this Insight Report, the World Economic Forum’s Taskforce on Data Intermediaries explores the potential to outsource human decision points to an agent acting on an individual’s behalf, in the form of a data intermediary. " This is talking about have a trusted intermediary between you and your data. Its plainly a bad joke - morally, its unambigious - you own your data. But that cannot work with the planned infrastructure, so we have to go through a charade of building trust etc with google, Apple, 3-letter agencies, etc. Question: who will own/run those purported 'trusted intermediaries'? Government and business will provide leadership here... That doesn't make me feel all warm and cozy, no.
- ssivark 5y ago
  Data fiduciaries (if it’s anything like how it’s being done in India) seem like a very good idea, actually — so long as the entity holding the data has fiduciary responsibility to the users, and cannot merge/collude with the entity using the data for whatever. Enforcing this without corruption is obviously non-trivial, but it seems a substantially easier task to regulate the interface between clearly delineated entities (with competition on each side) than trying to regulate huge monoliths (Eg: Facebook) that are incentivized to make internal information flows look like a ball of mud architecture, to avoid legibility to outsiders and the consequent regulation.
  - verisimi 5y ago
    Name one responsible entity.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by ajxs 5y ago

sofixa 5y ago

What do Covid tests by a pharmaceutical-ish company have to do with "digital world controlled by players too big to regulate"?

ajxs 5y ago
I was speaking very generally. I think that my concerns regarding the regulation of individual privacy in the digital realm, and my concerns about the regulation of the major players in 'surveillance capitalism' is shared by many. The brokering of PII is such a large, and interconnected business. I would like control over who has access to my medical data, my DNA included.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Is it capitalism or corporatism? What's free-market about being compelled by the state to use these services? https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci... Pick any major tech platform and you'll find similar connections. The CCP has their own platforms, just like Russia has their own. Digital ID, pushed by WEF isn't being promoted by the free-market. It is better described as corporatism. Hopefully this more accurate terminology will help diffuse the more contentious implications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Schwab#:~:text=Schwab%20as%20publisher,state%20governance%20systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Schwab#:~:text=Schwab%20....
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    'No true scottsman' free market strikes again. This is an inherent property of the system. Id we didn't have these sort of issues, Communism is a perfect system, USSR wasnt the real deal!
    - aww_dang 5y ago
      We can disagree on those premises, but hopefully agree that corporatism better describes the observed phenomenon. Maybe someone else here can take up the more contentious elements of your assertion. There's very little I can say here on HN about these points.
      - Retric 5y ago
        Are you sure corporatism is the word your thinking of? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism Corporatocracy seems like a closer fit to the thrust of your argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy
      - TrickardRixx 5y ago
        If "corporatism" is the name of the condition, then free-market capitalism is the virus that causes the infection.
        ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Indeed, I purposefully compare 'free market people' with Communists, both live in an imaginary world where human relationships are mechanistic like APIs. In their world everything is perfectly rational, there is no such thing as imbalance of power, market leverage, collusion between competitors, etc. In modern concience people clearly understand how an all-powerfull state can turn tyranical, but when an all-powerfull company turns tyranical it's always a surprise! So you will get "let free market do it's thing without government interference, remove safeguards, guardrails and regulation." Then free market finds that the best way to make money is to form cartels or illegally abuse people who can't afford a layer, or to sell digital eyeballs and organs that require a subscribtion to work and it's a surprised picachu face all over again For some reason these people are madly in love with a system that is basically just natural selection / evolution. They go around saying how planning is pointless because you can't be wiser than evolution is anyway. They seem to forget that evolution had 6 mass extinctions and that 99.9% of all specieces have gone extinct.
ajb 5y ago
Culture. Big players produce a body of professionals who are used to certain practices, and when these move to other companies, the practices propagate there. Especially if they make money - but even if they don't; as you see from the number of companies that employ a data engineer when they don't have enough data for one.
rastignack 5y ago
They were mandatory to validate a green pass, their results were associated with a QR code which has the potential to allow tracking.
robbedpeter 5y ago
The company found itself in a commercial environment where it could exploit and monetize misbehavior. If we had legal protections of private data, including DNA, stealing people's DNA wouldn't be profitable. The "typical" behavior of harvesting every bit of customer information has resulted in a culture in which such exploitation is almost expected. Unelected technocrats are in charge, and it turns out that might not be the best way of running the world.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

verisimi 5y ago

Well, you can get a headstart on what is planned by looking through the rather tiresome WEF's website. Here is an example of what I mean: https://www.weforum.org/reports/advancing-digital-agency-the-power-of-data-intermediaries https://www.weforum.org/reports/advancing-digital-agency-the... "With the integration of screenless technology into everyday life, the data ecosystem is growing increasingly complicated. New ambient data collection methods bring many benefits, but they also have the potential to amplify mistrust between people and technology. In this Insight Report, the World Economic Forum’s Taskforce on Data Intermediaries explores the potential to outsource human decision points to an agent acting on an individual’s behalf, in the form of a data intermediary. " This is talking about have a trusted intermediary between you and your data. Its plainly a bad joke - morally, its unambigious - you own your data. But that cannot work with the planned infrastructure, so we have to go through a charade of building trust etc with google, Apple, 3-letter agencies, etc. Question: who will own/run those purported 'trusted intermediaries'? Government and business will provide leadership here... That doesn't make me feel all warm and cozy, no.

ssivark 5y ago
Data fiduciaries (if it’s anything like how it’s being done in India) seem like a very good idea, actually — so long as the entity holding the data has fiduciary responsibility to the users, and cannot merge/collude with the entity using the data for whatever. Enforcing this without corruption is obviously non-trivial, but it seems a substantially easier task to regulate the interface between clearly delineated entities (with competition on each side) than trying to regulate huge monoliths (Eg: Facebook) that are incentivized to make internal information flows look like a ball of mud architecture, to avoid legibility to outsiders and the consequent regulation.
- verisimi 5y ago
  Name one responsible entity.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]