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FTC Report Confirms: Commercial Surveillance Is Out of Control
- glitcher 2y agoReport link at beginning of article: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-staff-report-finds-large-social-media-video-streaming-companies-have-engaged-vast-surveillance https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/... https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Social-Media-6b-Report-9-11-2024.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Social-Media-6b... Edit: added link to pdf
- techjamie 2y ago> Based on the data collected, the staff report said many companies assert that there are no children on their platforms because their services were not directed to children or did not allow children to create accounts. Funny how they have advertising cohorts drilled into every niche interest or happening, but they just can't perfect the technology to determine if someone is a child. Very elusive tech they've definitely been working day and night to implement for years. Almost like they benefit from acting blissfully ignorant.
- willis936 2y ago>they just can't perfect the technology to determine if someone is a child Oh they do. It's a very valuable demo and doubtlessly they worked day and night for years to perfect it. They want to shape the malleable minds of lifetime consumers. They have, with great success, for nearly a century.
- mrbluecoat 2y agoA four year investigation to tell us what we already know. The real question is: What is the federal government (or anyone else) going to do about it?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- llamaimperative 2y agoThere are plenty of people who "know" things that are actually wrong. This investigation is an important first step for the government to feel confident they know what's going on before exercising state power, which is, you know, a good thing. Vibes- or rumor-based exercise of state power is ill advised. The Biden FTC has been quite aggressive against all sorts of anti-consumer practices throughout the economy which tend to follow these types of reports. I suspect action is coming relatively soon.
- khana 2y ago[dead]
- janalsncm 2y agoA lot of people wonder why we study and document things that are already “common knowledge”. This is true of scientific studies as well. What a waste of money, right? The answer is, until you actually do the work you don’t actually know. Scientists and government officials can’t cite common knowledge. And even if you were right about the conclusion, the details matter. The amount matters. The mechanisms matter.
- SoftTalker 2y ago> government officials can’t cite common knowledge Government officials can cite whatever they want, including stuff they pulled out of their ass, as long as they have the votes.
- iterance 2y agoHigh-quality studies also lay out a methodology for evaluating, assessing, and ultimately characterizing the issue, so that the impact of policy changes can be properly assessed. Even showing that well-known investigatory methods function adequately for a given problem is of value. Put another way, "you can't control what you can't measure" (or in this case, characterize more generally).
- exfildotcloud 2y ago[dead]
- meonkeys 2y agoThis looks kinda sus. Why would or should anyone use this, @exfildotcloud?
- exfildotcloud 2y agoGood question. All encryption happens in the browser. I may release the code but it's really just Go Age WASM with a KV backend. What's suspicious?
- meonkeys 2y agoClosed source, and the HN account just for this purpose/service.
- dartos 2y agoSecond the closed source nature. Believing that something closed source is actually encrypting messages is the same as believing in “trust me bro” Tho, you can be open source without being FOSS if you want to give customers the ability to verify what you’re doing without giving away your IP.
- exfildotcloud 2y agoThank you. Age encryption is open source. I suppose I could open source it as I am not looking to make sell anything with this service. I am mostly looking for feedback. What would give you the peace of mind to use this with confidence? Considering that Signal, WhatApp, etc are all closed source tied with phone numbers requiring extra identifying info I put this together as an experiment. I will start on releasing the code and build.
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- agentultra 2y agoFinally. We all “know” that corporations will always choose profits over literally anything else. Glad to see the come back of the FTC. It seems we only get meaningful progress when there’s strong regulation. Other notable examples: the EPA. There was a time when people had to wear gas masks out doors in some cities because the pollution was so bad before regulations and enforcement came into place. Similar stories with CFC emissions. The development of the Internet has been accelerated under mostly conservative leadership which has been walking back regulations. And while much innovation has happened in that time I think a great deal more could have been achieved if it weren’t focused on this kind of profit-at-all-costs environment it’s been simmering in.
- mgraczyk 2y agoNeeding to wear gas masks outside sounds like a pretty bad, tangible harm caused by a lack of pollution regulation. Do you have any examples of similar tangible harm caused by lack of regulation on data collection?
- hotspot_one 2y agoPeople in Texas facing murder charges for traveling to other states to get an abortion. People facing criminal charges for helping people in Texas learn about what options for managing their own reproductive health and bodies.
- mgraczyk 2y agoDo you have a link for the first one? I don't think that has happened (although it could under Texas law as I understand it) Is there an actual case where data described in the article was used for anything like what you're suggesting? The actual cases involve people reporting each other (a man reporting a woman he is dating for example). Sounds to me like blaming the acid rain on the acid detectors
- shiroiushi 2y ago>a man reporting a woman he is dating for example That sounds like a good reason for any women in Texas to avoid dating any men in Texas.
- OneLeggedCat 2y ago> "While not every investigated company committed the same privacy violations, the conclusion is clear: companies prioritized profits over privacy. " Why wouldn't they? A capitalist shareholder system requires that they do exactly this, to whatever extent it does not impact sales. It's on citizens to demand regulation, and yet in the US, a probable majority of voting citizens don't like regulation, and think that government is too large or too untrustworthy. Combine that with the control that corporations have over our politicians, and further combine that with low public understanding of the issue, and there is nothing realistic that can be done. So I consider surveillance capitalism to be permanent in the US. Regardless of the fact that most people don't like being spied on and manipulated constantly. Perhaps some really large, really bad event could galvanize the public, but I doubt it.
- OutOfHere 2y agoAs true as that is, I think the people should still worry 100x more about government surveillance than about commercial surveillance. Commercial surveillance is only trying to sell you something you don't need. In contrast, government surveillance, with or without cooperation from commercial entities, is trying to lock you up for victimless crimes or on flimsy evidence because they have run out of real terrorists to fight. The government's data collection is vastly larger than of anyone else, all paid for by you with your taxes. Encryption, cybersecurity, and minimizing data retention are the primary ways to fight it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- janalsncm 2y agoWhen the government is allowed to buy information which would otherwise require a warrant, private surveillance becomes government surveillance.
- pixl97 2y agoExactly, there is no difference. In fact in some ways it is worse because the government can say with a straight face they aren't collecting your data and monitoring you... they just pay someone else for that service.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoYep, and I keep harping on that one simple point. If that data is collected at all, it will be used. Even with laws protecting it. Look how HiPAA has become something of a joke now between regular breaches and app everything, which skirt as much as they can.
- fallingknife 2y agoThey lean on social media companies to violate your 1st amendment rights and then buy from them to violate your 4th.
- 2y ago
- myprotegeai 2y agoA company recently demoed to me that they have the ability to see the work history, credit report, and bank balance of a visitor that visits a site with some tracking code, in under 500ms. They use this information for a product that qualifies leads for sales teams, so the sales team knows who is a waste of time to go after and who isn't. Creeps me the fuck out, and the owners seem to have no ethical qualms about buying, selling, and using this data.
- anjel 2y agoSoon to be combined with palantir face recognition tech. No need to chip your citizenry!
- bofadeez 2y agoSounds like vaporware. Might be possible for a negligibly small % of visitors. And even then cold outreach is not very effective.
- drdaeman 2y agoIt's basically same as classic approach of correlating salaries with ZIP codes, just with more parameters. Which sort of works statistically, because there are correlations - but is nothing more than a hallucination at individual visitor scale.
- bofadeez 2y agoThat seems more realistic. But even if a marketer theoretically had access to atomic level detail on every single prospect, there's not much they can do to manufacture demand. Humans are kind of smart and resistant to manipulation. Especially the ones with money.
- drdaeman 2y ago> Humans are kind of smart and resistant to manipulation. Especially the ones with money. I'm not sure. I think gaming/gambling industry having a concept of "whales" kind of disproves this.
- 29athrowaway 2y agoAnd what was the FTC doing all these years?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoElection year. The assumption is it is simultaneously posturing for current administration, validating its existence and funding to potential new one, and PR for the public. Before that? I don't remember that much from the past few years, but I think a good chunk of federal agencies were kinda in a weird stalemate ( which is kinda what the US is system is built for anyway ).
- Scipio_Afri 2y agoUnder a different administration in the previous 4 years. Any large institution takes some time to change, senate confirmations for the leads of major agencies don’t occur immediately upon swearing in of a new President - it’s often months later. Then, after that occurs, change from the top down occurs. Additionally for any sufficiently large group of people it takes a long time to get people to take any sort of collective action, let alone an organization with processes, years long funding and contracts already in place. Then there are sometimes/often legal challenges to the awarding of contracts, the issuing of regulations. How long do you think this study would’ve taken to execute by itself? Okay now how long do you think it would’ve taken to plan the methodology for what they should do to execute. Before that they have to have a proposal of what they would like to study and then get the money approved / allocated to do the previous work I just mentioned, such as a detailed methodology. Again, this administration has been in charge of the FTC for only 3 ish years and had to probably rebuild it towards focusing on holding businesses to account. Not quite sure what else you’re expecting, it takes companies as well many months and even years to change focus, or to deliver a robust product. And that’s generally with an agreed upon a singular focus.
- tsunamifury 2y agoThis will make optimal global pricing an insane world where everything will cost the maximum you can pay but the overall system will collapse as people will consume way less and be more miserable within it.
- sanchezxa 2y agoDamn...
- motohagiography 2y agothat horse left the barn over a decade ago. my attitude has changed to where I used to do security and privacy work to mitigate risk from a coming corporate cyberpunk dystopia, but now I think the idea of governments getting a monopoly on surveillance is the worst possible outcome. a real solution would be to legally privilege and disqualify classes of personal information from civil and non-violent criminal legal proceedings based on how they were collected, and PII collection sources material to commercial decisions must be disclosed in offers and contracts. insurers and creditors would actually have to take risk again instead of being rentiers, police are servants and not governors, and the provenance of PII as evidence would have to be proven as from a legal and prescribed source that included explicit consent. there is no stopping the flow of data collection, but we can improve laws to manage it.
- raxxorraxor 2y agoIt is not an either/or. You can just disallow to collect personal information and it would be valid for state and advertisers. Information is power and if insurances and producers know everything about you, you will be squeezed like a poor victim. On bad days I believe people that overshare information deserve that fate, but there isn't really an argument against just regulating collecting information or make them seriously accountable for this information being leaked with severe financial penalties. It wouldn't even be hard to regulate. Enforcement wouldn't be easy, but I guess the risk for many companies would just be too high to even try.
- t0bia_s 2y agoFor me it's hypocrisy to regulate surveillance of private companies by state. You have option to not use their data collecting technologies. You cannot opt out to surveillance by state! Let's not play game to makes states good guys and companies the bad boys.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> it's hypocrisy to regulate surveillance of private companies by state Now do arms.
- kristjank 2y agoI really hate to defend state surveillance here, but at least that provides me with some (arguably false) sense of security and uninterested crimefighting. The private sector private eyes provide me only with never-ending ad slurry that's been wearing me down by the day.
- raxxorraxor 2y agoI think hypocrisy is entirely the wrong term here if you do not want corporations to have the same rights as a state. It is true that the state should not collect this information either for that matter.
- squigz 2y agoThinking you can simply opt-out of the massive and pervasive data collection that companies engage in is extremely naive. Let's not play games to make companies the innocent bystanders and states the evil antagonist.
- t0bia_s 2y agoWhy would you voluntary use technologies that violates your privacy?
- kristjank 2y agoI have become more and more inclined to deem the advertising industry considerably worse than the military industrial complex, and I hope that some higher force smites the executives involved with great vengeance and furious anger someday.
- fromMars 2y agoThe information Credit Bureaus and Banks store is much scarier. They know your salary every place you've worked and lived. And with all the recent links anyone can find this information on the dark web.
- lyu07282 2y agoThe microsecond Kamala is in office Lina Khan is axed, that's my election prediction.
- oglop 2y agoYou are not kept in the dark. This is not 2016. If you use these companies you know good and god damn well what they are doing. Grow up and take responsibility for using them, or delete your data and get off. Zero sympathy in 2024 for people shocked by this. Also, you don’t own your data. That idea is itself an absurdity that is already meaningless. Once that is accepted life becomes much simpler. You want stock growth and tech jobs, that’s part of the deal. I didn’t make it and I’m not responsible for it but that’s how it is.