3 ms·

Obvious LOL. Stupid question, but did anyone ever /trust/ online social sites to do what they claimed when it came to managing user data?

im3w1l 3y ago
I'm a pessimist and usually suspect the worst. But when they actually do it, you can bet I still hold it against them.
A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
Who knows. Maybe this will actually make people hesitate to trust everything to a private 'platform'. Maybe this will finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back and maybe even makes people consider the real issue at play ( platforms vs protocols ) and maybe even make appropriate conclusions. I am a dreamer.
- none_to_remain 3y ago
  For a "protocol" of any note, wouldn't you expect there to be various actors archiving everything posted via that protocol?
  - MiguelX413 3y ago
    Not anything with a reasonable expectation of privacy, which would either only be federated to the nodes of the people who are supposed to see it or not at all. Decentralized platforms are identical to the vast majority of the internet in their archivability, the distinction is in their administration.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    I think the only right answer here is: it depends on use case. Not everyone wants everything archived for potential future use. Some people not only want, but are also mandated by law to have an appropriate archive of their communications. My point is that we should be able to figure out options for both and anything in between, where user has control over it. This is the important part. As a user, I used to be able to have some modicum of control over what happens on the machines I own and the data I send to others. Over the years, that control was slowly wrangled from the population under various guises ( cloud, convenience and so on ). But instead of discussing protocols that would, hopefully, behave in deterministic and predictable ways, we discuss platforms and their pinkyswear promises not to do something. It is a lot to ask these days, because a lot of people got really used to 'easy' and 'free' internet. And that is before we get to the technical issues you mention.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    99.9%+ plus of the time, no one really cares about most things that most people post on the web. And you can probably get it deleted from something like The Wayback Machine. But if you actually post something that attracts attention, it's probably gotten copied and is out of the bottle without even any real mechanism to request its deletion.
hosh 3y ago
Especially now that user generated content is AI training gold. User data has always been the core of freemium apps and “aggregators”: land-grab as many users as you can with a free, great product, so you can own a lot user data. We just didn’t have an obvious use for all that data until now. Reddit won’t budge on the API pricing because they can make more selling datasets. But if they are smart, they’d rate limit free API access, and charge for the firehose — because then they’d have a user-generated content farm. But you still have the issue that people keep expecting their free apps to be free, not realizing they have been selling their data all along. Remember FourSquare? They started as a neat way for people to socially compete in “checkins” for a place. They found their profit in selling that location data for business analytics and real estate analysis. The implications extend beyond commercial concerns when datasets like that are purchased by governments to circumvent wiretapping warrant requirements.
- shmatt 3y ago
  > But if they are smart, they’d rate limit free API access They are, up to 100 requests per minute is still free post change Someone could make a lot of money by building a paid Reddit app with everything people want, and a BYO API key, similar to what people are doing with OpenAI keys
gordian-not 3y ago
i was under the impression they have to because of gdpr
- sdfghswe 3y ago
  I was under the impression that if the data doesn't personally identify a person, GDPR doesn't apply.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
impomura 3y ago
IDK what's so fun about it man. We used to think that agreements between users and providers were binding. That they were stronger than good faith. US law is based on that, I think. Everything that's not based in Europe is fucked and it's not even remotely fun.
- sdfghswe 3y ago
  This behavior of "user says he wants to delete the data, company says it deleted it, but they actually haven't" has happened so many times just in my life time. What's so funny about it is that some people STILL haven't learned their lesson. I learned the lesson the very first time I've seen it happen.
nirui 3y ago
I have a mental test that I always do when trying to evaluate the privacy protection guarantee offered by an online service, it goes like this: imagine if a malicious actor is holding the top most owner of the service at gun point, and demanding for my user data, will the owner risk their own life to obey the privacy agreement? Probably not. Of course, the mental test is very extreme, but it proofs that the guarantees offered will fail and be violated when some threshold is exceed. It's not a sign and done deal.

im3w1l 3y ago

I'm a pessimist and usually suspect the worst. But when they actually do it, you can bet I still hold it against them.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago

Who knows. Maybe this will actually make people hesitate to trust everything to a private 'platform'. Maybe this will finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back and maybe even makes people consider the real issue at play ( platforms vs protocols ) and maybe even make appropriate conclusions. I am a dreamer.

none_to_remain 3y ago
For a "protocol" of any note, wouldn't you expect there to be various actors archiving everything posted via that protocol?
- MiguelX413 3y ago
  Not anything with a reasonable expectation of privacy, which would either only be federated to the nodes of the people who are supposed to see it or not at all. Decentralized platforms are identical to the vast majority of the internet in their archivability, the distinction is in their administration.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  I think the only right answer here is: it depends on use case. Not everyone wants everything archived for potential future use. Some people not only want, but are also mandated by law to have an appropriate archive of their communications. My point is that we should be able to figure out options for both and anything in between, where user has control over it. This is the important part. As a user, I used to be able to have some modicum of control over what happens on the machines I own and the data I send to others. Over the years, that control was slowly wrangled from the population under various guises ( cloud, convenience and so on ). But instead of discussing protocols that would, hopefully, behave in deterministic and predictable ways, we discuss platforms and their pinkyswear promises not to do something. It is a lot to ask these days, because a lot of people got really used to 'easy' and 'free' internet. And that is before we get to the technical issues you mention.
- ghaff 3y ago
  99.9%+ plus of the time, no one really cares about most things that most people post on the web. And you can probably get it deleted from something like The Wayback Machine. But if you actually post something that attracts attention, it's probably gotten copied and is out of the bottle without even any real mechanism to request its deletion.

hosh 3y ago

Especially now that user generated content is AI training gold. User data has always been the core of freemium apps and “aggregators”: land-grab as many users as you can with a free, great product, so you can own a lot user data. We just didn’t have an obvious use for all that data until now. Reddit won’t budge on the API pricing because they can make more selling datasets. But if they are smart, they’d rate limit free API access, and charge for the firehose — because then they’d have a user-generated content farm. But you still have the issue that people keep expecting their free apps to be free, not realizing they have been selling their data all along. Remember FourSquare? They started as a neat way for people to socially compete in “checkins” for a place. They found their profit in selling that location data for business analytics and real estate analysis. The implications extend beyond commercial concerns when datasets like that are purchased by governments to circumvent wiretapping warrant requirements.

shmatt 3y ago
> But if they are smart, they’d rate limit free API access They are, up to 100 requests per minute is still free post change Someone could make a lot of money by building a paid Reddit app with everything people want, and a BYO API key, similar to what people are doing with OpenAI keys

gordian-not 3y ago

i was under the impression they have to because of gdpr

sdfghswe 3y ago
I was under the impression that if the data doesn't personally identify a person, GDPR doesn't apply.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

impomura 3y ago

IDK what's so fun about it man. We used to think that agreements between users and providers were binding. That they were stronger than good faith. US law is based on that, I think. Everything that's not based in Europe is fucked and it's not even remotely fun.

sdfghswe 3y ago
This behavior of "user says he wants to delete the data, company says it deleted it, but they actually haven't" has happened so many times just in my life time. What's so funny about it is that some people STILL haven't learned their lesson. I learned the lesson the very first time I've seen it happen.

nirui 3y ago

I have a mental test that I always do when trying to evaluate the privacy protection guarantee offered by an online service, it goes like this: imagine if a malicious actor is holding the top most owner of the service at gun point, and demanding for my user data, will the owner risk their own life to obey the privacy agreement? Probably not. Of course, the mental test is very extreme, but it proofs that the guarantees offered will fail and be violated when some threshold is exceed. It's not a sign and done deal.