5 ms·
It should be illegal to send the data, and illegal to accept it; burn both sides of that bridge.
by wewtyflakes 5mo ago
It should be illegal to send the data, and illegal to accept it; burn both sides of that bridge.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 5mo agoWhy would politicians ever pass such a law? Who do you think they work for? update: Yeah, my bad. The point of this comment was to express my increasing cynicism at how we just keep seeing this kind of corporate behavior over and over again and how even when a tiny win is achieved on things like data collection, right to repair, ease for cancelling subscriptions, privacy, and so on and so on, they are so quickly over taken by new tactics or clawbacks/loopholes/non-enforcement of those laws. HN comments was probably the wrong place to vent and its too late to delete it.
- post-it 5mo agoWhat's the point of this kind of comment? Have pro-citizen anti-corporate laws never been passed in the past?
- wilg 5mo agoThe point of the comment is to spread toxic and deadly cynicism.
- traderj0e 5mo agoIf you never trust anyone, nobody will ever fool you except for yourself.
- arikrahman 5mo agoAnd also to karma farm. Thankfully the comment is greyed out for what it is.
- TheOtherHobbes 5mo agoYou never see corporate media doing anything like that.
- kevin_thibedeau 5mo agoOnly when Congress might be embarrassed. The VPPA exists so we can't find out what videos they watch in their spare time between orgies.
- tardedmeme 5mo agoSo it should be as easy as buying tracking data and searching for Congressmen. We can put up license plate readers around Washington too, since that's legal.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- guelo 5mo agoVery rarely. Most of the consumer protection laws were passed before Reagan in 1980. We did get the CFPB after the 2008 financial meltdown but it's been under attack ever since.
- anonym29 5mo ago"Citizens" United (which allows unlimited corporate political donations by classifying them as "speech", for those out of the loop) has fundamentally changed the core incentive structures of the modern political landscape. To compare a pre-CU world to a post-CU world when it comes to matters at the intersection of corporate interests and government regulatory / legislative power is comparing apples to oranges. We need to overturn CU if we want to be able to go back to a world where government serves people rather than multinational conglomerates.
- parineum 5mo ago> We need to overturn CU Or we could stop looking at SCOTUS to fix legislation and ask the branch of government who's job it is to fix legislation, Congress.
- anonym29 5mo agoThat would be nice in principle, yes, but in a CU world, that's asking the fox to vote to lock itself out of the hen house. In practice most of the foxes that promise to do so never actually will. What's your proposal to solve this?
- parineum 5mo agoFrankly, I think it's much less of an issue than it's made out to be. If money meant so much, Donald Trump wouldn't have beat Jeb Bush on the way to beating Hilary Clinton. To me, money in politics is the red herring to keep you from looking at the real election reform that needs to happen, some combination of open primaries (to remove the effect of primaries going to more extreme candidates rather than centrists) and an alternative to first past the post elections to allow people to vote for who they like without worrying about throwing away their votes (there are many different systems to do this, they're all major improvements). The money in politics is used by the parties to back their preferred candidates and the voters go along with it in the general elections because they don't want to waste their votes. The money helps them do the bad thing but it isn't the bad thing.
- lovich 5mo agoDoesn’t really seem like the environment where the common persons going to get more rights or protections since the POTUS and SCOTUS are currently ripping those up while Congress sits in the cuck chair.
- wat10000 5mo agoIdeally because we'd vote in politicians who would do it, and vote out those who didn't.
- nomorewords 5mo agoIs that even possible in the US anymore with donations and corporate backing being so important to a campaign?
- applfanboysbgon 5mo agoI don't believe donations or corporate backing had anything to do with Trump, for example, winning. Trump won because he genuinely appeals to the average voting American. American voters are willingly choosing to support these politicians and all of the consequences that entails.
- dgellow 5mo agoFor the president election, maybe, but without corporate backing of the GOP he would have to face an adversarial congress. Or at least, that’s the hope
- fn-mote 5mo agoYou can believe the latter but the former ignores everything we know about the effectiveness of advertising. And also about the targeting of swing districts.
- triceratops 5mo agoBoth can be true.
- exe34 5mo agoTo discount advertising and manipulation in this context amounts to conspiracy theory in my opinion.
- wat10000 5mo agoIt's possible. Ultimately the voters do make the decision, even if they can be swayed. How realistic it might be, I can't say. We certainly need a lot more engagement with the process. There are far too many people ignoring the primaries and then complaining about their lack of choice in the general.
- applfanboysbgon 5mo agoThey work for the people. In some countries, people actually vote for politicians that benefit the population. In other countries, people repeatedly vote for politicians despite knowing that those politicians are only interested in enriching themselves, with a track record going back decades of doing nothing but that. The problem, then, is the voters in certain countries, not the politicians.
- dexterdog 5mo agoAnd in some countries people are only given a choice of two, neither of which benefit the population.
- roughly 5mo agoMany of those countries have mechanisms by which one can express their preferences earlier in the process, ones which have been successfully used to pivot major political parties in new and unexpected directions, although those mechanisms are more complicated than just showing up at the end and whining about the results, so usually it's only motivated individuals and entities which leverage them.
- grassfedgeek 5mo agoIn some countries a major party has succeeded in convincing a majority of voters to vote against their self interest by leveraging "red meat" topics such as abortion, jesus and guns.
- bell-cot 5mo agoI wouldn't be surprised if both are illegal. But these days, the correlation between "X is illegal" and "larger org's do not do X" just ain't what it yousta be.
- idle_zealot 5mo agoMy understanding is that it's legal with opt-in, but the opt-in is allowed to be confusing, opaque, and sticky, so most people "consent" without informed consideration. We really need to revisit contract law in a modern context. Call me crazy but I don't think it's reasonable that our society operates in such a way that easily 90+% of people are subject to contract terms they signed but don't know or understand.
- mrguyorama 5mo agoDamn near anything in business in the US is allowed with "opt in" where the opt in is literally the scene from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, including the part where you don't get to come after the factory for your death and dismemberment as stated in 1pt font after an entire chapter of reading to dull your attention.
- PaulHoule 5mo agoOn top of the GDPR/American concept of "it is all OK if there is consent" which applies to most organization, health related organizations face stronger HIPPA regulations in the US.
- filoeleven 5mo agoeasily 90+% of people are subject to tens of thousands of pages of contract terms they signed but don't know or understand. It's madness.
- worik 5mo agoHere in New Zealand those pages and pages of fine print are disappearing as they are no longer enforceable. The only things in a contract that can be enforced must be stated plainly and clearly Turns out there are o ly a few conditions that are actually necessary
- goda90 5mo agoEvery piece of data collected should be an opt-in both for the initial collection and any sharing to a third party. There should be an explanation for why it is collected and an explanation for what features are not possible if it is not collected. It should be a violation of the law to disable a feature based on failure to opt-in for data points that aren't absolutely necessary for the operation of that feature.
- traderj0e 5mo agoAt least make it an explicitly protected right to lie about your race in any context. It's a lot easier to ruin a dataset than it is to hide from it.
- tardedmeme 5mo agoWhat would happen if you just lied? I guess you wouldn't get healthcare coverage once they found out? But isn't there something in law about material damages, they'd have to prove you cost them money by choosing the wrong race?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- dylan604 5mo agoIf it's an official government form, there's usually verbiage stating that knowingly and willingly falsifying information is considered perjury or some such wording.
- traderj0e 5mo agoYeah I was about to lie one time then saw that. Whoever does the PSAT thinks I'm black though.
- 1659447091 5mo ago> What would happen if you just lied? What is lying in this case? Where is the official government backed race classification list? If you look at the options they don't even know what they mean by "race". There are options asking if you are hispanic, which my definition of the meaning takes the Spanish speaker form, what about french or german speakers why are they discriminated against? And surely when they list colors they can't be talking about people. I don't know what white race is, or black as I have never seen people of either of those colors, unless and except if they mean for hair color, shades of brown and peach maybe then okay. Then they add some regions and a couple countries, by why are so many left out if thats what they mean by race? I would really prefer they gave a proper taxonomy here, until that happens they can not say that whatever you entered is lying or wrong.
- 2ndorderthought 5mo agoWell the tech companies/offense contractors are probably using it to enrich the department of wars efforts. Hmm I wonder what they want race and citizenship data for? Ohhh... Oh...
- kevin_thibedeau 5mo agoIt's a tracking pixel. They fool you into sending it.
- afavour 5mo agoA technicality without a meaningful difference. Users didn't consent to sending it, nor were they aware of it.
- janalsncm 5mo agoThe relevant facts are that the website owner voluntarily put the tracking code on their own website, and the tracking code worked as designed.
- worik 5mo ago> The relevant facts are that the website owner voluntarily put the tracking code... The civil discussion should now be about the punishment for that. Regulation is required for handling people's data
- dylan604 5mo agoSounds like that will work similar to incarcerating drug users instead of the drug makers and distribution network?
- joquarky 5mo agoThe former can't afford lawyers.
- janalsncm 5mo agoIn your analogy I would argue the website owners are analogous to the distribution network and Meta/Tiktok are analogous to the manufacturers. But I also don’t think it’s perfect because usually drug users know they are buying drugs whereas with tracking pixels it’s being done secretly.
- analog31 5mo agoI think possession of the data should be illegal. And it should be subject to statutory damages, like music piracy.