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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? Prob

by 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.

rendall 3y ago
You downplay the risk, but don't really address it head on. There is data out there about you and your family. Recall the tendency of human beings to arbitrarily discriminate or even perpetrate genocide. Hopefully, there will never be a legal framework requiring Google nor Meta (nor any of the literally thousands of data tracking companies) to hand over this data to powerful organizations who intend harm to you or your descendents, but if it came to that, hopefully Google, Meta and every one of the thousands of data tracking companies do the right thing and withhold data that could identify you as a suspect political minority and predict your movements. Maybe there's something more mundane and relatively benign. Employment or benefits withheld because of your tendency to procrastinate and watch 80s action films. Your grand niece is canceled because you held views considered problematic by her generation. Your only argument against this seems to be that it's unlikely. Perhaps, but that's argument from personal incredulity, not an argument that it won't happen. I would love for you to walk me through a rock solid argument that it cannot possibly happen. Or, you know, we could establish a legal framework and social convention now whereby you can demand data about you and your dependents be collected only with your informed consent and deleted at will, just to not have to ever need to cross that bridge.
- cm2012 3y ago
  Government risk from Meta and Google is meaningless. The ISPs have all the same data anyway. Also all the data is out there and me and my family in a million databases. Just like in the 80s with the yellow books.
TheIronMark 3y ago
Meta literally allowed their data to be used by Cambridge Analytica in a fashion that likely swayed the 2016 US election. EDIT: Well, this was certainly wrong. I'm leaving this up as a testament to not double-checking my assumptions.
- cm2012 3y ago
  Literally every part of this sentence is wrong which shows the state of this discourse. 1) CA created their own data with quizzes on FB that people filled out and gave to CA. Even if you banned ad tracking sending people surveys and quizzes is still legal. The FB network only made the quizzes more viral. 2) The CA data was 100% useless for ad targeting and had no impact on the Trump campaigns (any professional advertisers can tell you this, it's not controversial). The big election interference impact was Russia leaking the DNC emails and other hacked stuff to string along the Hillary emails newsline.
  - TheIronMark 3y ago
    It's fair to say Meta didn't give the data, but they provided a platform that allowed CA to develop the app which gathered the data. On the topic of data privacy, that's a bad step by Meta.
    - cm2012 3y ago
      At the time the programmer zeitgeist was calling FB evil for having a walled garden and not sharing data. Them opening up the API was applauded by the tech industry and HN (look up the archives). And it still has nothing to do with FB privacy efforts today which is just light years beyond where it was in 2012.

by cm2012 3y ago

rendall 3y ago

You downplay the risk, but don't really address it head on. There is data out there about you and your family. Recall the tendency of human beings to arbitrarily discriminate or even perpetrate genocide. Hopefully, there will never be a legal framework requiring Google nor Meta (nor any of the literally thousands of data tracking companies) to hand over this data to powerful organizations who intend harm to you or your descendents, but if it came to that, hopefully Google, Meta and every one of the thousands of data tracking companies do the right thing and withhold data that could identify you as a suspect political minority and predict your movements. Maybe there's something more mundane and relatively benign. Employment or benefits withheld because of your tendency to procrastinate and watch 80s action films. Your grand niece is canceled because you held views considered problematic by her generation. Your only argument against this seems to be that it's unlikely. Perhaps, but that's argument from personal incredulity, not an argument that it won't happen. I would love for you to walk me through a rock solid argument that it cannot possibly happen. Or, you know, we could establish a legal framework and social convention now whereby you can demand data about you and your dependents be collected only with your informed consent and deleted at will, just to not have to ever need to cross that bridge.

cm2012 3y ago
Government risk from Meta and Google is meaningless. The ISPs have all the same data anyway. Also all the data is out there and me and my family in a million databases. Just like in the 80s with the yellow books.

TheIronMark 3y ago

Meta literally allowed their data to be used by Cambridge Analytica in a fashion that likely swayed the 2016 US election. EDIT: Well, this was certainly wrong. I'm leaving this up as a testament to not double-checking my assumptions.

cm2012 3y ago
Literally every part of this sentence is wrong which shows the state of this discourse. 1) CA created their own data with quizzes on FB that people filled out and gave to CA. Even if you banned ad tracking sending people surveys and quizzes is still legal. The FB network only made the quizzes more viral. 2) The CA data was 100% useless for ad targeting and had no impact on the Trump campaigns (any professional advertisers can tell you this, it's not controversial). The big election interference impact was Russia leaking the DNC emails and other hacked stuff to string along the Hillary emails newsline.
- TheIronMark 3y ago
  It's fair to say Meta didn't give the data, but they provided a platform that allowed CA to develop the app which gathered the data. On the topic of data privacy, that's a bad step by Meta.
  - cm2012 3y ago
    At the time the programmer zeitgeist was calling FB evil for having a walled garden and not sharing data. Them opening up the API was applauded by the tech industry and HN (look up the archives). And it still has nothing to do with FB privacy efforts today which is just light years beyond where it was in 2012.