5 ms·

Data privacy is one of the least important issues of our day. People (especially on HN) foam at the mouth about it but are unable to produce specific harms Goog

by cm2012 3y ago

Data privacy is one of the least important issues of our day. People (especially on HN) foam at the mouth about it but are unable to produce specific harms Google and Meta ad tracking creates.

srcreigh 3y ago
The opportunity cost of the advertising industry is incalculable. Entire industries are snuffed because kingpin ad networks can make a few dollars per year per person by having a free app with ads in that space. Less choice for the consumer, less competition, lower quality.
- jraby3 3y ago
  There are pretty clear benefits to some advertising. Email, YouTube, calendar, maps are all incredibly useful services we are lucky to have. There needs to be a line or safeguard as well as an option to pay a reasonable price for these free services to keep your data safe. YouTube is unfairly overpriced for the ad free option as are most of these free services.
  - srcreigh 3y ago
    The greatest loss of the 21st century is how far behind we are in all the industries you list. Not to mention news. The option to pay today’s kingpin isn’t any recompense.
  - fangorn 3y ago
    Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's freudian, but email existed before Google, so did calendar. Youtube was an acquisition. Maps, well, there are great alternatives now that do not require anal-probe-level surveillance to find an address or a route. Just publicly fund the services that are useful to people. If "government" (i.e. us) can pay for a square for people to meet at, why not "digital spaces"? And if someone's thinking "but government will use this data to surveil people!" - this ship has sailed, they have access to everything that's not e2ee, and even that's not guaranteed. Government is practically the only body that can be expected to follow laws and act with people's best interest in mind. Some governments even do, just need a non-dystopian one... And yes, there's commercial space in government/local authority-operated places. That's fine, just make sure to boot those that decide to install the equivalent of cameras and microphones on their storefront.
    - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      > Youtube was an acquisition And the relied on VC money before that. It wasn't self-sustaining financially.
  - rollcat 3y ago
    Email and calendar were doing perfectly fine before pervasive online tracking. Have you checked OpenStreetMaps? It may lag behind Google or Apple for things like shop opening hours, but I'd choose it 11 out of 10 times over anything else when going hiking in the mountains. Feels like every stone is marked. YouTube? This one is a tough call. It was generating losses for a decade, maybe a decade and a half. Perhaps it should've been a publicly funded service. If you enjoyed this comment, please like and subscribe.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > Email, YouTube, calendar, maps are all incredibly useful services we are lucky to have. None of which require advertising.
  - pulpfictional 3y ago
    That needs money, not advertising.
- cm2012 3y ago
  What you're saying is: people prefer free products with ads and that annoys you because you prefer paying for products without ads. That's not a moral issue.
  - srcreigh 3y ago
    Enough people use for free products, free products take over, paid products no longer exist (or reduced options by 50x), free products stagnate, we end up behind on quality of services by a long shot.
rendall 3y ago
Must I "produce specific harms" before I have the right not to consent to my data collection? Isn't "I don't like it" enough? Metadata analysis can deduce quite a lot about you. Your sexual predilections or your political or religious outlook, for instance. Who you spend time with and where you spend it and what you do when you are together, for another. Who you care about, who they care about, who they spend time together with... Not only do you have to trust that the people who have access to this data about you will use it only to advertise to you, but you also have to trust everyone who will ever have access to this data in the future, too. You might dismiss that there is any inherent risk to total strangers knowing intimate details about you, but I personally think the risk of this is a "specific harm". I think your stance is a version of "I do nothing wrong, therefore I have nothing to hide, therefore surveillance is nothing to worry about". With respect, it's naive.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  > Must I "produce specific harms" before I have the right not to consent to my data collection? Isn't "I don't like it" enough? Of course you must. I don't like it when people fart near me, but I don't have a "right to not consent to farting near me". Some people "don't like it" when other people look at them in public, but they don't have a "right to not be looked at in public".
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    They did still manage to clear this bar in their comment. > You might dismiss that there is any inherent risk to total strangers knowing intimate details about you, but I personally think the risk of this is a "specific harm". It would be interesting to discuss the merits of this idea. Call center employees are often heavily restricted in their access to user data for the precise reason that specific harms -- stalking, fraud, etc. -- actually occur.
- cm2012 3y ago
  That's why I say it's a low priority issue. Could there be an issue in the future? Possibly. Are privacy laws like GDPR worth the economic and other harms? Probably not. The amount of wasted programmer hours alone has far overcome the negative impacts of big tech ad tracking. Neither real life or the internet are anonymous. We live with other people. But Google and Meta in particular have an amazing 15 year track record of basically never leaking user data. Various national governments have been much worse in this regard.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lewhoo 3y ago
Spoken like a true salesman.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
criddell 3y ago
Google has handed over user data to Hong Kong authorities. Chances are Meta and Apple have as well. It's possible that the Chinese government has never sought information on individuals for political reasons but I wouldn't trust that to be true. If you were in China, would you feel comfortable clicking on a pro-democracy ad running on Meta? Wouldn't just the fact that Meta determined you were a good candidate for that ad bother you?
- cm2012 3y ago
  Google and Meta are both banned in China because they wouldn't give the party everything it wanted. Not to mention your ISP has all the same info (with more detail!) and also will give it to the government.
  - criddell 3y ago
    You're making my point better than I did. The unregulated collection of data on people will lead to real harm. If all that data couldn't lead to real harm, then Google and Meta would have no problem handing it over to whatever authority wants it.
    - cm2012 3y ago
      That doesn't follow and is very stretched logic.
      - criddell 3y ago
        If companies that track everything we do online were to start freely sharing this information with governments around the world, do you think it would lead to real harm? The answer is clearly yes. Therefore users should have control over the data that a company collects about them and their activities.
JohnFen 3y ago
> Data privacy is one of the least important issues of our day To you. To others, it's one of the most important. > but are unable to produce specific harms Google and Meta ad tracking creates. I think that some harms have been articulated repeatedly. And I would argue that just being under constant surveillance is, itself, a harm. But, really, this is irrelevant in terms of the principle involved. Even if it were 100% harmless, that doesn't mean anything at all in terms of the fact that we should all have the ability to live our lives without having someone constantly spying on us. Human rights don't stop being rights in the absence of particularlized, articulable harms.
- cm2012 3y ago
  I don't buy that "constant surveillance" from big tech is a harm, I think it's dramatized language for something quite banal. Which is why I want to see actual harms before being against it! There are many benefits to society from effective advertising.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    I fail to see how these statements are dissimilar with regard to specific examples. > I would argue that just being under constant surveillance is, itself, a harm. > There are many benefits to society from effective advertising. It's not difficult for me to imagine abuses that could possibly occur given constant surveillance similar to how it's not difficult for me to imagine benefits that could possibly arise with targeted advertising. But since we're not imagining and are instead providing examples: what are some actual benefits to targeted advertising? What benefit(s) should I expect to see from this targeting and where can I go to see this benefit?
    - cm2012 3y ago
      With no targeted advertising: 1) you will still get ads, it's just lowest common denominator teeth whitening and weight loss that anybody can buy. 2) it would be much harder to subsidize entertainment that relies on ads. 3) New and emerging businesses rely on ads much more than category leaders to be heard of. Worse ads means a more powerful incumbent advantage.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
What is the specific harm if someone takes naked pictures of me without consent? Just the loss of my dignity as a human being. That's an abstract non-economic loss. My data is my own data. Someone using it, along with dark art individual ad targeting methods to influence my preferences, is also the loss of my dignity as a human being. All humans deserve to be free of such coercive manipulation. The fact that big economic firms are the ones doing this, is doubly problematic because our "democratic"-capitalistic systems are to a fairly high degree one-dollar-one-vote systems.
loteck 3y ago
Fortunately many smart folks can anticipate major systemic issues that threaten to create exponential and devastating societal harms, and start working on them as early as possible. Would the following statement be you, in 1980? "Climate change is one of the least important issues of our day. The few people who care about it are unable to produce specific harms burning coal and oil creates." (Downvoted for the inflammatory mouth foam comment, FYI.)
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
And on the other hand, private data is something nearly nobody talks about. Actually sensitive data about you is not handled in anything approaching a systematic and careful way, and that's the data that gets exposed in massive leaks that we should be caring about. But rather than talk about that, people talk about not wanting cookies, because they're more creeped out by that than having to change their social security number.

by cm2012 3y ago

Data privacy is one of the least important issues of our day. People (especially on HN) foam at the mouth about it but are unable to produce specific harms Google and Meta ad tracking creates.

srcreigh 3y ago

The opportunity cost of the advertising industry is incalculable. Entire industries are snuffed because kingpin ad networks can make a few dollars per year per person by having a free app with ads in that space. Less choice for the consumer, less competition, lower quality.

jraby3 3y ago
There are pretty clear benefits to some advertising. Email, YouTube, calendar, maps are all incredibly useful services we are lucky to have. There needs to be a line or safeguard as well as an option to pay a reasonable price for these free services to keep your data safe. YouTube is unfairly overpriced for the ad free option as are most of these free services.
- srcreigh 3y ago
  The greatest loss of the 21st century is how far behind we are in all the industries you list. Not to mention news. The option to pay today’s kingpin isn’t any recompense.
- fangorn 3y ago
  Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's freudian, but email existed before Google, so did calendar. Youtube was an acquisition. Maps, well, there are great alternatives now that do not require anal-probe-level surveillance to find an address or a route. Just publicly fund the services that are useful to people. If "government" (i.e. us) can pay for a square for people to meet at, why not "digital spaces"? And if someone's thinking "but government will use this data to surveil people!" - this ship has sailed, they have access to everything that's not e2ee, and even that's not guaranteed. Government is practically the only body that can be expected to follow laws and act with people's best interest in mind. Some governments even do, just need a non-dystopian one... And yes, there's commercial space in government/local authority-operated places. That's fine, just make sure to boot those that decide to install the equivalent of cameras and microphones on their storefront.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    > Youtube was an acquisition And the relied on VC money before that. It wasn't self-sustaining financially.
- rollcat 3y ago
  Email and calendar were doing perfectly fine before pervasive online tracking. Have you checked OpenStreetMaps? It may lag behind Google or Apple for things like shop opening hours, but I'd choose it 11 out of 10 times over anything else when going hiking in the mountains. Feels like every stone is marked. YouTube? This one is a tough call. It was generating losses for a decade, maybe a decade and a half. Perhaps it should've been a publicly funded service. If you enjoyed this comment, please like and subscribe.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Email, YouTube, calendar, maps are all incredibly useful services we are lucky to have. None of which require advertising.
- pulpfictional 3y ago
  That needs money, not advertising.
cm2012 3y ago
What you're saying is: people prefer free products with ads and that annoys you because you prefer paying for products without ads. That's not a moral issue.
- srcreigh 3y ago
  Enough people use for free products, free products take over, paid products no longer exist (or reduced options by 50x), free products stagnate, we end up behind on quality of services by a long shot.

rendall 3y ago

Must I "produce specific harms" before I have the right not to consent to my data collection? Isn't "I don't like it" enough? Metadata analysis can deduce quite a lot about you. Your sexual predilections or your political or religious outlook, for instance. Who you spend time with and where you spend it and what you do when you are together, for another. Who you care about, who they care about, who they spend time together with... Not only do you have to trust that the people who have access to this data about you will use it only to advertise to you, but you also have to trust everyone who will ever have access to this data in the future, too. You might dismiss that there is any inherent risk to total strangers knowing intimate details about you, but I personally think the risk of this is a "specific harm". I think your stance is a version of "I do nothing wrong, therefore I have nothing to hide, therefore surveillance is nothing to worry about". With respect, it's naive.

renewiltord 3y ago
> Must I "produce specific harms" before I have the right not to consent to my data collection? Isn't "I don't like it" enough? Of course you must. I don't like it when people fart near me, but I don't have a "right to not consent to farting near me". Some people "don't like it" when other people look at them in public, but they don't have a "right to not be looked at in public".
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  They did still manage to clear this bar in their comment. > You might dismiss that there is any inherent risk to total strangers knowing intimate details about you, but I personally think the risk of this is a "specific harm". It would be interesting to discuss the merits of this idea. Call center employees are often heavily restricted in their access to user data for the precise reason that specific harms -- stalking, fraud, etc. -- actually occur.
cm2012 3y ago
That's why I say it's a low priority issue. Could there be an issue in the future? Possibly. Are privacy laws like GDPR worth the economic and other harms? Probably not. The amount of wasted programmer hours alone has far overcome the negative impacts of big tech ad tracking. Neither real life or the internet are anonymous. We live with other people. But Google and Meta in particular have an amazing 15 year track record of basically never leaking user data. Various national governments have been much worse in this regard.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lewhoo 3y ago

Spoken like a true salesman.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

criddell 3y ago

Google has handed over user data to Hong Kong authorities. Chances are Meta and Apple have as well. It's possible that the Chinese government has never sought information on individuals for political reasons but I wouldn't trust that to be true. If you were in China, would you feel comfortable clicking on a pro-democracy ad running on Meta? Wouldn't just the fact that Meta determined you were a good candidate for that ad bother you?

cm2012 3y ago
Google and Meta are both banned in China because they wouldn't give the party everything it wanted. Not to mention your ISP has all the same info (with more detail!) and also will give it to the government.
- criddell 3y ago
  You're making my point better than I did. The unregulated collection of data on people will lead to real harm. If all that data couldn't lead to real harm, then Google and Meta would have no problem handing it over to whatever authority wants it.
  - cm2012 3y ago
    That doesn't follow and is very stretched logic.
    - criddell 3y ago
      If companies that track everything we do online were to start freely sharing this information with governments around the world, do you think it would lead to real harm? The answer is clearly yes. Therefore users should have control over the data that a company collects about them and their activities.

JohnFen 3y ago

> Data privacy is one of the least important issues of our day To you. To others, it's one of the most important. > but are unable to produce specific harms Google and Meta ad tracking creates. I think that some harms have been articulated repeatedly. And I would argue that just being under constant surveillance is, itself, a harm. But, really, this is irrelevant in terms of the principle involved. Even if it were 100% harmless, that doesn't mean anything at all in terms of the fact that we should all have the ability to live our lives without having someone constantly spying on us. Human rights don't stop being rights in the absence of particularlized, articulable harms.

cm2012 3y ago
I don't buy that "constant surveillance" from big tech is a harm, I think it's dramatized language for something quite banal. Which is why I want to see actual harms before being against it! There are many benefits to society from effective advertising.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  I fail to see how these statements are dissimilar with regard to specific examples. > I would argue that just being under constant surveillance is, itself, a harm. > There are many benefits to society from effective advertising. It's not difficult for me to imagine abuses that could possibly occur given constant surveillance similar to how it's not difficult for me to imagine benefits that could possibly arise with targeted advertising. But since we're not imagining and are instead providing examples: what are some actual benefits to targeted advertising? What benefit(s) should I expect to see from this targeting and where can I go to see this benefit?
  - cm2012 3y ago
    With no targeted advertising: 1) you will still get ads, it's just lowest common denominator teeth whitening and weight loss that anybody can buy. 2) it would be much harder to subsidize entertainment that relies on ads. 3) New and emerging businesses rely on ads much more than category leaders to be heard of. Worse ads means a more powerful incumbent advantage.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

What is the specific harm if someone takes naked pictures of me without consent? Just the loss of my dignity as a human being. That's an abstract non-economic loss. My data is my own data. Someone using it, along with dark art individual ad targeting methods to influence my preferences, is also the loss of my dignity as a human being. All humans deserve to be free of such coercive manipulation. The fact that big economic firms are the ones doing this, is doubly problematic because our "democratic"-capitalistic systems are to a fairly high degree one-dollar-one-vote systems.

loteck 3y ago

Fortunately many smart folks can anticipate major systemic issues that threaten to create exponential and devastating societal harms, and start working on them as early as possible. Would the following statement be you, in 1980? "Climate change is one of the least important issues of our day. The few people who care about it are unable to produce specific harms burning coal and oil creates." (Downvoted for the inflammatory mouth foam comment, FYI.)

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

And on the other hand, private data is something nearly nobody talks about. Actually sensitive data about you is not handled in anything approaching a systematic and careful way, and that's the data that gets exposed in massive leaks that we should be caring about. But rather than talk about that, people talk about not wanting cookies, because they're more creeped out by that than having to change their social security number.