4 ms·

Can you be more specific, with examples? Who did what?

by bionhoward 3y ago

themitigating 3y ago
You need an example of a bad thing happening because regulations didn't exist?
orwin 3y ago
Uber and Airbnb?
- chii 3y ago
  Uber brought ride sharing and cracked the taxi market wide open - perhaps to the benefit of riders. Airbnb is also a boon for travellers looking to stay cheap, and a boon for property owners to cash in on underutilized real estate. The "harm" that has been cited to have been caused by them are only the incumbents that do not move with the market or times.
  - jddj 3y ago
    It's like a necker cube. Glance at it and she looks like a renter or typical youth of a city with tourism but poor purchasing power/ social mobility, but stare a bit longer and relax your focus and she becomes an incumbent who doesn't move with the market or times
  - orwin 3y ago
    You don't live in a European city near the sea. Airbnb is a plague. We used to use a house sharing in summer, we did it for years, until Airbnb killed it. It was an exchange 1 to 1 in term of population, we now do x5 to x10 in summer. Now that the harm is done (speculation on housing priced out teachers and low income workers, old, niche stores turned into tourist traps), we finally have regulation. A bit too late. But at least the mayor is adding 20k housing units (+20%), driving the price down and making speculators eat a fat loss. Uber was regulated much faster so it's impact have mostly been positive, unless you've been raped by a predator as they used to not check their drivers. You have to regulate ahead of time, even if it's soft and toothless in the beginning. Check the EU proposal to regulate AI, it seems really, really soft.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
Asbestos. Phthalates. Fen-phen. Chloroflorocarbons. Leaded gasoline. All were legal because no harm had been shown... yet.
- nickpp 3y ago
  Was the potential harm well known and accepted before showing it existed? How?!
- cm2012 3y ago
  "Modern crop of CEOs" All of those examples are primarily damage done pre 80s
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Phthalates? Aren't those currently an issue, right now, in water? Aren't they currently being used in plastic? Or did I get the name wrong?
    - revelio 3y ago
      The name is right but the claims of clear badness are suspect. https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/ https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/
epolanski 3y ago
User privacy, cambridge analytica, facebook, and the impact those together had in several elections, most especially Trump 2016 and Brexit.
- cm2012 3y ago
  Cambridge Analytica had basically no effect on any election. People who actually understand online advertising consider it a joke. The "organic" social stuff that helped Trump 2016 (leaked Democrat emails, etc) had nothing to do with privacy or ads.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    Cambridge Analytica's sold their services literally as "election management agency" and promised to be able to influence a large number of undecided voters. More than 87M people were profiled, and more than 3M people were targeted by Cambridge Analytica in 11 key states during the election to feed them the content that would swing their indecision towards Trump based on their psychological profile and preferences. Trump paid for that, and Michigan and Pennsylvania and New Hampshire were all very close. To boldly state that CA had no impact on US elections, Brexit and I don't remember which South American election when the people involved in it literally sold it and used previous results as evidence seems a bit of a stretch. I might be wrong, but there's no clear way of knowing unless votes were not anonymous.
    - cm2012 3y ago
      Imagine that someone says Trump hacked the voting computers by writing code on a piece of paper and slotting it into the machines. The CA thing is the same level of stupid. The targeting would just be senselessly bad based on CA's methodology.
- nickpp 3y ago
  What was the actual, documented, damage on the "user privacy" issue though? The only effect I know is targeted ads which seems like a net benefit to me.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I can be, but, really, why should I? It would take about twenty seconds with Google, to come up with hundreds of examples. Some, better than others.
- revelio 3y ago
  They may seem obvious to you, but to a lot of us, it's not obvious at all. Vague notions of "damage" could refer to anything, like harming competition. Different value systems and all that.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    Well, the original post was "Stop me if you can." Basically, if there's no rule saying I can't do it, then I should do it, until rules are developed to stop it; regardless of the morality or danger. I suspect that one way to make people more careful, is to make future rules and regulations retroactive. For example, if I had developed a fintech product that was a legal ponzi scheme, or a downloader that is a legal way of accessing copyrighted material, because of loopholes, and those loopholes are closed, after the fact (happens all the time), then, if the new remedies can be applied to the "legal" implementations that were in effect before the closing of the loopholes, I suspect that it would make the "loopholer" a wee bit more cautious. But that won't happen. There's way too many ways that it could go off the rails. So people will keep on bending, folding, spindling, and mutilating, until they are stopped by a steel door, slamming down in front of them. I strongly suspect that a lot of companies are set up to harvest as much as possible, before the door slams, so they can reap the benefits.
    - chii 3y ago
      > if the new remedies can be applied to the "legal" implementations that were in effect before the closing of the loopholes, I suspect that it would make the "loopholer" a wee bit more cautious. and there's moral implications about applying new rules retroactively. What you do today that is completely legal, should not be punished tomorrow even if it was decided in the future that it is illegal. Otherwise, there would be a chilling effect on innovation.
dinvlad 3y ago
[flagged]

Can you be more specific, with examples? Who did what?

themitigating 3y ago

You need an example of a bad thing happening because regulations didn't exist?

orwin 3y ago

Uber and Airbnb?

chii 3y ago
Uber brought ride sharing and cracked the taxi market wide open - perhaps to the benefit of riders. Airbnb is also a boon for travellers looking to stay cheap, and a boon for property owners to cash in on underutilized real estate. The "harm" that has been cited to have been caused by them are only the incumbents that do not move with the market or times.
- jddj 3y ago
  It's like a necker cube. Glance at it and she looks like a renter or typical youth of a city with tourism but poor purchasing power/ social mobility, but stare a bit longer and relax your focus and she becomes an incumbent who doesn't move with the market or times
- orwin 3y ago
  You don't live in a European city near the sea. Airbnb is a plague. We used to use a house sharing in summer, we did it for years, until Airbnb killed it. It was an exchange 1 to 1 in term of population, we now do x5 to x10 in summer. Now that the harm is done (speculation on housing priced out teachers and low income workers, old, niche stores turned into tourist traps), we finally have regulation. A bit too late. But at least the mayor is adding 20k housing units (+20%), driving the price down and making speculators eat a fat loss. Uber was regulated much faster so it's impact have mostly been positive, unless you've been raped by a predator as they used to not check their drivers. You have to regulate ahead of time, even if it's soft and toothless in the beginning. Check the EU proposal to regulate AI, it seems really, really soft.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

Asbestos. Phthalates. Fen-phen. Chloroflorocarbons. Leaded gasoline. All were legal because no harm had been shown... yet.

nickpp 3y ago
Was the potential harm well known and accepted before showing it existed? How?!
cm2012 3y ago
"Modern crop of CEOs" All of those examples are primarily damage done pre 80s
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Phthalates? Aren't those currently an issue, right now, in water? Aren't they currently being used in plastic? Or did I get the name wrong?
  - revelio 3y ago
    The name is right but the claims of clear badness are suspect. https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/ https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/

epolanski 3y ago

User privacy, cambridge analytica, facebook, and the impact those together had in several elections, most especially Trump 2016 and Brexit.

cm2012 3y ago
Cambridge Analytica had basically no effect on any election. People who actually understand online advertising consider it a joke. The "organic" social stuff that helped Trump 2016 (leaked Democrat emails, etc) had nothing to do with privacy or ads.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Cambridge Analytica's sold their services literally as "election management agency" and promised to be able to influence a large number of undecided voters. More than 87M people were profiled, and more than 3M people were targeted by Cambridge Analytica in 11 key states during the election to feed them the content that would swing their indecision towards Trump based on their psychological profile and preferences. Trump paid for that, and Michigan and Pennsylvania and New Hampshire were all very close. To boldly state that CA had no impact on US elections, Brexit and I don't remember which South American election when the people involved in it literally sold it and used previous results as evidence seems a bit of a stretch. I might be wrong, but there's no clear way of knowing unless votes were not anonymous.
  - cm2012 3y ago
    Imagine that someone says Trump hacked the voting computers by writing code on a piece of paper and slotting it into the machines. The CA thing is the same level of stupid. The targeting would just be senselessly bad based on CA's methodology.
nickpp 3y ago
What was the actual, documented, damage on the "user privacy" issue though? The only effect I know is targeted ads which seems like a net benefit to me.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I can be, but, really, why should I? It would take about twenty seconds with Google, to come up with hundreds of examples. Some, better than others.

revelio 3y ago
They may seem obvious to you, but to a lot of us, it's not obvious at all. Vague notions of "damage" could refer to anything, like harming competition. Different value systems and all that.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Well, the original post was "Stop me if you can." Basically, if there's no rule saying I can't do it, then I should do it, until rules are developed to stop it; regardless of the morality or danger. I suspect that one way to make people more careful, is to make future rules and regulations retroactive. For example, if I had developed a fintech product that was a legal ponzi scheme, or a downloader that is a legal way of accessing copyrighted material, because of loopholes, and those loopholes are closed, after the fact (happens all the time), then, if the new remedies can be applied to the "legal" implementations that were in effect before the closing of the loopholes, I suspect that it would make the "loopholer" a wee bit more cautious. But that won't happen. There's way too many ways that it could go off the rails. So people will keep on bending, folding, spindling, and mutilating, until they are stopped by a steel door, slamming down in front of them. I strongly suspect that a lot of companies are set up to harvest as much as possible, before the door slams, so they can reap the benefits.
  - chii 3y ago
    > if the new remedies can be applied to the "legal" implementations that were in effect before the closing of the loopholes, I suspect that it would make the "loopholer" a wee bit more cautious. and there's moral implications about applying new rules retroactively. What you do today that is completely legal, should not be punished tomorrow even if it was decided in the future that it is illegal. Otherwise, there would be a chilling effect on innovation.

dinvlad 3y ago

[flagged]