There's a whole genre of articles based on conflating two senses of "your," belonging to you, and about you. If I observe that you have blue eyes, that's a fact about you, but it doesn't belong to you, at least not without redefining what "belong" means.
It would be helpful if, instead of deliberately conflating these two senses of "your," articles on this subject went in the other direction and explicitly discussed the distinction.
We have from time to time redefined what "belong" means, but these redefinitions tend to be very complicated and have all sorts of unforeseen consequences. My guess is that a redefinition on the scale of facts about you = your property would be a disaster.
And here you're conflating "public facts about you" with "facts that only your cell phone / mattress / underpants / web browser know about you."
"Facts about you" falls into at least two categories: "Facts which you want and reasonably expect to remain private", and "facts which you display to the world and have no expectation of privacy about."
Which is fine as far as semantics go, but in the context of this thread the first category doesn't exist unless you're under 13 and in the US, or subject to the GDPR, or a few other nooks and crannies of international laws.
I think it is pretty easy. The moment you start storing this data outside your brain, it's "my" data. You can memorize or observe it all you want but not store it permanently or semi-permanently elsewhere.
I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later" (most skip the latter part anyway, if not confronted with a shitstorm) mentality.
> I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later"
Huh. I actually believe most western societies are incredibly tilted in the "ask permission" direction. You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing.
Personally, I prefer freedom: do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't violate someone's rights (and no, Imaginary Property doesn't count).
> You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing.
The rules are very selectively enforced depending on what class you belong to though.
As a guy with a pair of scissors, I can't start cutting hair without "asking permission" in the form of a license. As a guy with a cart, I can't sell hot dogs on the street corner without getting some sort of vending license.
I can't just start driving around and picking up random fares in my car without applying for a limousine license or taxi medallion.
But then you get Uber, whose business model was based around ignoring these regulations and scaling to such size where they were too big to prosecute (easily).
Just the same, I'll get fined if I catch too many fish from the local pond whether or not I've gone to the trouble of applying for a fishing license, but Acme Megacorp will go ahead and dump toxic waste into the same pond until it's forcibly stopped from doing so (and the taxpayers are forced to clean it up via Superfund).
Agreed. The little guy has to ask for permission; the big guy can usually ignore it. (There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.) That's why I'm so against the idea that, as a society, we should tilt even more in the direction of asking for permissions.
There's a simpler, shallower issue too: 'you' in headlines is a linkbait trope, so headline writers drop it in wherever they can. This one managed it twice. Presumably we're all wired to respond to "hey you!"
Since clickbait is against the site guidelines, we replace such titles with neutral ones. Usually we do that by copying a representative phrase from the article itself. But that was surprisingly hard to do this time.
The funny thing is based on the way you described belong...it really made me realize the collection of data really seems to be eerily similar to this definition:
>Obtaining information with reference to the identity, habits, conduct, movements, whereabouts, affiliations, associations, transactions, reputation, or character of any society, person of groups of persons.
Guess what that is? It’s, in part, the statutory (legal) definition of private investigator, which is prohibited by law without a license.
So sure under the law we don’t necessarily own that data about ourselves, but the collection of the data is highly regulated for a reason. Obviously tech companies obtain user consent to collect data (at least some of the time), but if PI’s can be regulated in their activities so can a tech company or digital product, and it’s not to difficult to see regulations that say a tech company can’t collect user data and turn around and sell it to third parties.
I am curious though, how exactly would such a legal framework be a disaster in your opinion?
Sure, the EU has essentially asserted in law that you own your data. That doesn't really make it true though.
I don't even think the EU was really addressing the moral/ethical nature of data with that law, politicians just wanted a way to remove defamatory content from the internet so they could regain control of their public image.
Just because something makes it into law doesn't mean it's reasonable/accurate/moral/just. In fact, I would argue most laws are created based on a groups narrow desire to achieve an immediate effect in the current society. Few laws are created with genuine exploration of larger implications on society/morality, and even fewer laws are created in the context of rights/what the government can/cant't control.
Seems like an is ought question that is long settled: look at the credit reporting agencies. We may be doing impressive new things and figuring out how to learn a lot more about people, but who owns data on a person is a dead and buried question.
Actually, GDPR seems to be explicitly designed so that no amount of checkboxes or legalese in terms&conditions can be sufficient to continue as-is, companies actually would have to change behavior to be compliant. Lots of previous threads have discussions about the particular details.
Of course, we'll have to see how it turns out in practice, but it's just a couple more months.
USA's credit reporting agencies are a bight on humanity. All the power with none of the accountability, ambiguous rules ruthlessly enforced, profiting from other people's misfortune.
The fact that credit reporting agencies currently are obviously abusing data that they're not able to safeguard doesn't mean that the question is dead and buried, quite the opposite - it means that the role of credit reporting agencies will have to change as their abilities will eventually get legally restricted and they won't be able to continue in this manner.
The next generation of technological progress has to be an answer to these questions.
Google and Facebook (and similar companies) have killed innovation with their monopolies and in order to break their monopolies new technologies must be invented that disrupt their business models.
It is interesting to see the NY Times advancing such avant garde ideas but it is good to see rising social consciousness of the limitations of current technology.
The media portrayal of the tech world would be more impactful if it weren't so hyperbolic, dramatized, and skewed. There are myriad valid complaints about the tech world, but Facebook paying you for you posting your photos is not one of them.
Facebook is free. Google search is free. 15gb of gmail/google drive is free. You get those free, truly amazing services for nothing because the companies found ways to generate value from the data being gathered. The cost to maintain that infrastructure and provide those great services is pretty high and has taken some brilliant engineers years of sweat. (I don't work for either so I'm not tooting my own horn, just giving credit where I believe credit is due)
I think as it currently stands (collect data on me and I get free 99.99% uptime, cloud available services for email, cloud drive, and social networking) is a pretty sweet deal.
They aren't free. You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Those companies pay advertising which increase prices plus their tech size profits. And because the stock market machine demands greater and greater profits they need larger stronger monopolies to generate those obscene profits.
> They aren't free. You pay for them in high prices for good and services.
Your reasoning is extremely fallacious because you're overlooking a lot of nuance.
Yes, it is true that in aggregate part of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. How much exactly depends on macroeconomic factors, industry dynamics, pricing power of distributors and retailers, and hundreds other variables. But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers.
However, advertising is valuable to advertisers because it works to some degree. And it works because people are influenced by it. Now, as an individual I have no control over what other people are doing and so I have no control over how valuable advertising is and how much is being spent on it and how much is being passed on to consumers. Therefore as an individual I look around me and prices are what they are and already have in them advertising costs which will not go up by me using service. Therefore as an individual the marginal cost of me using these services is effectively zero (imagine the ratio between the value of advertising to me and the aggregate value of advertising, that's effectively zero). As an individual those services are free.
So it depends on what your definition of "free" is. A) Would prices be lower if advertising didn't exist? Yes [0]. B) Would prices be lower to me if I didn't use these services? No. The thing is that in definition A) I don't really have a choice, so it's irrelevant. I only have a choice as an individual.
[0] And even here some people will disagree with you. What I call "free market fundamentalists" will argue that No, they wouldn't, because the advertising leads to higher sales and greater operational efficiency, so that advertising costs are exactly offset by lower per-unit costs.
> > But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers.
> If a company's only source of revenue is customers, then, by definition, customers are paying for all of advertising.
> > As an individual those services are free.
> Perhaps those are free to you, personally.
> Yet, on a global scale the sum is zero. If a company spends $$$ on advertising I'll eventually pay a fraction of it, directly or indirectly.
So you just repeated my points, but worse. For example, it is not true that the customers are paying for all of the advertising. The way to determine what customers are paying for is to see how the world with advertiising compares with the world without advertising, and there's many possibilities. A) with advertising the company revenues are higher by the same amount on a per-unit basis (companies pass all cost to consumers), B) with advertising company costs are higher by the same amount on a per-unit basis (meaning the companies pass all cost to shareholders in the form of lower margins and lower return on equity, or related metric), C) something in between. So it's not true that necessarily customers are paying for all of the advertising.
If we are speaking about a product that I have to pay for or a paid service, then I will end up paying a share of the R&D, maintenance, advertising.
If we are speaking about a service provided at no cost to me and the provider makes money off advertising, then I will end up paying some share of that if and only if my access to said service is charged by a 3rd party, eg a phone company that charges me for traffic, vs my home connection which is a flat rate, regardless if I use it or not.
And as long as we as consumers and employees act as individuals and for profit companies act has collectives we will always be at a huge negotiating dis-advantage.
The idea that corporations = people is foolish and obviously leading to a reality that doesn't fit the model.
The idea that corporations aren't people leads to evil.
"Oh, yes we harvested your data from all the sites you visited and used it to manipulate you in to buying stuff that harms your livelihood (gambling, say), but it's the _company_ that did it and so none of the controlling executives can be blamed!"
Except that has never, ever been the case. Before this trend of just going after the company as a whole came about, they would go after the executives.
>The idea that corporations aren't people leads to evil.
This seems to, at best, reside outside of practical application.
>The main target of the corporations-are-not-people crowd is the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling striking down limits on independent corporate spending in elections. After that case, groups sprang up to fight corporate personhood. Others rebranded themselves by newly taking aim at it. But they do not limit themselves to attacking the Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence. Most groups make a broader attack on corporations being able to assert any First Amendment speech rights at all; and some have called for disabusing all corporations or businesses of any constitutional right.
The idea that corporations aren't people means that any blame must rest with the people acting through and in the name of the corporation, and any rights and privileges asserted by those people must be their own individual rights.
Which is pretty much the opposite of the insulating effect of both your description and, more to the point, the status quo corporate form.
Ah, I think we have a communication failure, you're supporting the idea a "corporation is a legal person in itself". "Corporations are people" to me means they are a group, corpus, or body, of multiple individual humans who each should be answerable for their actions.
>part of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers //
Can you tell me who else will pay my advertising bill, because it can be a complete money pit and getting someone to pay for it without using revenue from customers would be great. Let me know bub.
> Can you tell me who else will pay my advertising bill, because it can be a complete money pit and getting someone to pay for it without using revenue from customers would be great. Let me know bub.
Not sure if your question is rhetorical or what. When you say "who else will pay "my" advertising bill". Who's "you" in this context? Are you a company, and consumer, what?
I just said it wasn't free and we pay extra with a markup. if we just paid for it and had choices we would pay a lot less that's all I'm saying. or some kind of buying club.
It's not like advertising didn't exist before the internet so blaming the tech giants solely for it's impact on society seems odd. They didn't create advertising, they simply took away advertising money from other mediums.
I think the parent commenter has a pretty straightforward point: the services are "free" in the common sense of the word, meaning you need not directly pay for them. You can reason about abstract value transfer relationships involving the concept of "free", but the core idea is that people are getting something in return for their money, and most people are observably okay with it.
> You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Those companies pay advertising which increase prices plus their tech size profits.
I don't think this is falsifiable. It sounds sort of feasible in the abstract, but how can we empirically measure that effect? As it stands, I could just as easily respond that, no, these companies make prices more efficient, because their advertising methodologies are more effective so companies spend less on their platforms than they would for equivalent ad campaigns elsewhere. Then we'd have to figure out how to investigate whether modern companies advertise more due to growth of the market, or because they have to due to catch up with everyone else using the tech advertising platforms. Narrowing down the answer, if there is one, would be nontrivial. Then I could also say that advertising makes tech services cheaper, because Facebook and Google earn more from user data than they would if they forced everyone to pay $20/month.
Which of us is right? We can't really say, it's effectively an opinion because, even if technically falsifiable, these claims are far from being empirically demonstrable.
Not sure I follow. You assert that a product will be designed to cost FOO, but then they decide to advertise and they increase the price to FOO + x. That's not how it works, the advertising costs are built in the original FOO, being presentations, conferences, regular ads, you name it.
Companies use advertising to increase their sales, either from 0 to something or from something to something more. Along with R&D, production costs, running costs and profit, the advertising cost is part of the planning from the start.
This is a conversation I have occasionally had with non tech friends. I'm sorry, you are the one being hyperbolic. It's like you haven't even noticed what's been happening the last 10 years or so.
> You get those free, truly amazing services
lol. Services that exist without an honest portrayal about what they do with the data they gather, or anything like clarity on the extent of what is possible.
Not content with that, they bend the service to better manipulate us not to provide a better service. Facebook run fun psychological experiments to see if they can manipulate their users - without calling for volunteers first or anything I recognise as ethics. How many times have FB been pulled up for being, cough, "less than honest"?
Google, especially, have built a reputation for simply gathering maximum possible data, then shuttering the product 18 months later. There is no reason a company Google's size need close Reader or Picasa or any number of others. Buy their in-home device or use G Drive? Hell no, i don't trust them to provide any availability once the data grab is complete. Sure if the company is entering leaner times you can understand canning some of their services, right now it's no more than a rounding error. So no, I'm in no rush to use any new Google offering - they don't exist long enough.
I think as it currently stands (collect data on me, lie to me, track me around the web as far as technically possible, track me off the service as far as technically possible, track me offline as far as possible, sell retargeting and other dubious tactics to ensure my life is 101% a buying consumer experience with no time off. In return I get a service that doesn't even meet the core need any more thanks to engagement algorithms bending it to meet FB and Google need not users') is a pretty terrifying deal.
Terrifying because we still think it's an honest exchange akin to swapping £1 for a bar of chocolate in a shop, just swap data for service. We still feel it's a fair exchange. Yeah, without honesty of even 10% of what is being done.
I'd actually like the sort of exchange you imply. Give me a great service in exchange for some data. Actually, yes, that seems fair so long as you use it reasonably. Hoovering up everything, with the Hoover turned up to 11, whilst implying "it's just a bit of data" is a confidence trick on the non-technical.
>Facebook run fun psychological experiments to see if they can manipulate their users - without calling for volunteers first or anything I recognise as ethics.
I've always wondered: How is that different from A/B testing, or any other marketing experiment?
I won't disagree with your statement, but there's a very large difference between intentionally changing a user's mood by modifying their news feed vs. indirectly and unintentionally affecting a users mood via an interface change.
> This is a conversation I have occasionally had with non tech friends. I'm sorry, you are the one being hyperbolic. It's like you haven't even noticed what's been happening the last 10 years or so.
In my opinion, you're mistaking apathy for ignorance. Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not the exchange is fair. I work in tech, have heard everything you just wrote many times, and my response is continually, "Eh, I'm okay with that." People I've spoken to about this outside of tech often don't know about the data collection to quite the extent you're talking about and don't care about it. When I mention how extensive the data collection is, they're often surprised, but often they still don't care. The most I've personally seen is a vague discomfort that didn't seem to persist, given the person's behavior didn't change at all.
It gets kind of frustrating for people like myself to hear this argument rehashed over and over in the way you've just presented it, as though people who are okay with their data being used simply "don't understand" or haven't been paying attention. Everything you wrote is - while clearly not neutrally presented - in the zeitgeist on HN. There's nothing really new about it, and you're only convincing the people who already agree with you. Yes, we know our data is being used, we get it. We're picking up what you're putting down. Right there with you. We just don't really care.
You can draw a normative conclusion about me based on that statement if you'd like. It probably sounds callous and asinine from your perspective, but like I said: reasonable people can disagree. Anecdotally speaking, most people I "enlighten" about the data hoovering you describe don't meaningfully change their behavior or preferences. Consider that when people are not aware of how their data is being used, it doesn't always mean they're being victimized; it can also mean they are vaguely aware that their data is "out there", and they implicitly don't care enough about it to investigate further. That's a valid position to take.
> outside of tech often don't know about the data collection to quite the extent you're talking about and don't care
Quite, but some of those very same people who don't care will call it creepy when they are on the receiving end of a retargeting campaign. Of course some don't care, or just find it funny. That's how I've got dragged in to those occasional conversations - typically a friend is spooked at the fact suddenly, somehow, as if by magic, the whole internet has decided they want to see ads for Gibson guitars, everywhere. Maybe they mentioned them in a FB comment a few weeks previously, or visited a review site with tracking etc.
I put it to you that they don't care because they have understood the transaction as one of £1 for a bar of chocolate. I give you some photos and emails in exchange for chat and service. "Who cares if Google/FB/NSA know when I have pizza" and so forth.
What they haven't (and yes, I realise I'm stretching this analogy far beyond breaking point) realised is buying that bar of chocolate results in the shop photocopying all their mail, weighing them, planting a bug to listen in to later conversations and having an employee follow them everywhere for the next few weeks - just in case they express another interest in chocolate.
> discomfort that didn't seem to persist, given the person's behavior didn't change at all.
I think network effect can cover most of that - continue to use Facebook because everyone they know is there, whilst having a vague perception that Facebook doesn't have their interests at heart.
It's still valid for them not to care, of course, but I think a much more honest explanation from the services of the extent they track, and what they can achieve in aggregate, is called for. I think that because people are still surprised by retargeting and similar techniques, and often describe it as creepy. I'm surprised that they're still surprised, to be honest, given how long it's been going on.
So clearly there is still some significant dissonance out there.
>So clearly there is still some significant dissonance out there.
And not only that, but useds aren't expected to try to quell their dissonance by being more adversarial to these mostly free services (some would say its not even an option because it is just impossible™ for them), and companies are expected to try to coddle to useds desires that they won't try to rectify for themselves by being more adversarial.
I don't see this ending well for the useds with cognitive dissonance.
> I don't see this ending well for the useds with cognitive dissonance.
Using Stallman-esque terminology like "useds" to refer to people really doesn't encourage anyone to listen to you who doesn't already agree with the point you're making. It's condescending, puerile and snarky to the detriment of discussion. It makes your point seem like the banner of an ideological crusade, not a well reasoned critique.
Consider that calling people "useds" en masse is an extremely poor way to go about convincing them of your perspective. It implicitly puts you above them intellectually and delegitimizes their opinions. If all you want to do is signal your ingroup to other people then using the term "useds" makes sense. But if you actually want people to listen to you who don't already agree, it comes across as tonedeaf.
You could simply use the common word which is not going to distract anyone and literally nothing of value would be lost.
>It implicitly puts you above them intellectually and delegitimizes their opinions
If one's opinion at the end of the day doesn't involve one changing one's behavior to combat the influences of those who use information about/relating to them, then sure one can call it out that I'm delegitimizing their opinion and implicitly putting myself above them intellectually, regardless of whether or not I think that is completely true based on what I have observed of people who are in a state of cognitive dissonance (self admitted or not) and continue to engage intimately with these platforms/services/devices/applications.
Still, it is ultimately up to everyone to change their own behavior in face of their own cognitive dissonance, instead of the usual discussions on here that are infantilizing and void of the reality of the situation, as if we as people have no sense of self agency.
>…If all you want to do is signal your ingroup to other people then using the term "useds" makes sense.…
This is probably closer to the truth.
In actuality, the reason I have been able to work with some of the data I have is because of useds, so in a sense I'm grateful because I get to research things that builds on what we know now (or more selfishly, I can get better personal insight into the behaviors of others around me). So if those who have cognitive dissonance don't want to listen to me, and continue on doing nothing except delegating their responsibility for their choices to others, that's fine, because the way things are now, it will only get better for those who will be able to leverage such.
For some services I agree with your sentiment. But we don't have metrics so there's no way to know if this is a fair deal.
Remember, they're showing us ads in addition to collecting volumes of information on us, so we're paying in two ways.
And frankly I don't mind the ads, by principle, but I do mind that a few companies are able to use them to track us nearly everywhere online without allowing me to review what they're collecting and who is collecting it.
Here in the US, we cried tyranny when our security agencies were collecting metadata to monitor threats. And then we gave everything we had to Facebook and Google and didn't bat an eye as they sold us to anyone who pays.
I think the problem is at a much higher level - why do companies have this motivation.
It's because we've structured our society (in Western Democracies) so that people grow rich if they can trick you in to buying stuff. The better they are at tricking you, the more they earn. The higher the price compared to the cost, the more they earn. The lower the longevity of the goods, the more chance to sell to you again.
Many of the incentives are towards fooling people rather than creating useful goods that enrich society with minimal environmental impact and maximum longevity.
It's unsustainable and leads to powerful (ie rich) people who are incentivised to parasitically feed on poorer people.
I think the problem is at a much lower level... This is the nature of competition and evolution. It's the natural progression of a game called "maximize the resources" where there are no rules against exploitation.
Which is why I think we need more regulation in this particular area to clearly define the rules we want everyone to play by.
What do you mean by "maximise resources", currently Western Capitalism is working towards wasting resources and externalising costs, and marginalising resources, that's going to break with massive environmental and social consequences.
And I'm skeptical about your assessment that this is merely a problem with "Western Capitalism". This is a problem of any system that doesn't have proper regulations to define the rules of the game in a fair way.
Who puts regulations in place about how many deer it is "fair" for a wolf to kill? And yet, the system has been running for longer than we are around to know about it. It is however when the humans tried to "regulate" the wolf population in Scotland, for example, that the forests were lost due to deer overpopulation. So I would argue that less regulations make the system regulate itself, which it does better than humans can do.
Fair enough. But animals don't have to follow the set of ethics/morals that we seem to value as a species.
I'm not saying that this system wouldn't be more prolific or that regulations would somehow cause it to evolve quicker or something. I'm saying that if we want to to work in a way that we believe is ethical and just, then we need to regulate it otherwise it will carry on in a predatory way.
Nature doesn't care whether Scotland has forests or not. Natural events can have catastrophic consequences on the environment. Ice ages and meteor strikes are pretty darn catastrophic. Invasive species were wiping out other species before humans came along (at a much lower rate). Any balance you see in nature will only last until something big enough happens to change it.
Humans have preferences about the environment we live in. When there are things we like and want to preserve, it's up to us to do something about it.
>For some services I agree with your sentiment. But we don't have metrics so there's no way to know if this is a fair deal.
"fair" is practically a weasel word. It doesn't have a universal standard. It doesn't mean anything until you explain what you consider to be fair. I once read a book on negotiations that called it "the F-word" - it was warning you to be wary of people using the word against you.
Think of this as a transaction between two parties doing business together. When business A is making a deal with business B, then A is not entitled to know how much money B will make out of it. It's perfectly fine to ask, but B not answering is very much within the rules (and is the norm). It is your job to do your own research to figure out how valuable your information is to them.
I also often see an attitude of "They make $20/year from the information I give them. So I should have the option to pay them $20/year for not tracking me." No business deal works that way. Each party sets their own requirements. If you demand that they offer paid services to stop tracking you, they get to say "No - you're welcome to use someone else's service if they give you that kind of a deal"
Finally, the way negotiations work: The focus will not be on what they make from your money, but how much you are willing to pay for the services you receive. The majority of people I know will not pay $10/mo for their email service. So the fact that Google may make $30/year from your use of Gmail is irrelevant. This is your BATNA.
>Remember, they're showing us ads in addition to collecting volumes of information on us, so we're paying in two ways.
And in how many ways are they paying you in services? Far more, I imagine.
>Here in the US, we cried tyranny when our security agencies were collecting metadata to monitor threats. And then we gave everything we had to Facebook and Google and didn't bat an eye as they sold us to anyone who pays.
We probably hang out in different crowds, but while government monitoring did make the news, the percentage of people I personally know who cared about it was less than those I know who say "I'm using a service other than the one provided by Google because they're already tracking me in so many ways".
BTW, although I use some Google services, by and large I do not. I do not actively use Gmail. It was very difficult for me to get used to the idea of letting them get to me via Android. I don't use my account on Youtube. I don't have a Facebook account. I don't use Twitter. I pay for my own email and web services. I tend to have privacy extensions on my browser. I don't use Whatsapp. My life is not at all miserable.
Collecting data on us, and showing us ads are not TWO different things.
It's the same thing... If they stop collecting data, they don't still get to keep the same ad revenue.
The ads are only worth the amount there are because of the hyper specific information you can target ads with. If you get rid of that, than the ad model falls apart. They might still be worth...something, but if it was just about anonymous eyeballs, probably every ad would just be for Coke and Coca Cola would pay extremely little for it.
Yes, data can be used to improve the effectiveness of advertisements but that doesn't mean they're the same thing. There are also data brokers who are in the business of buying and selling data not specifically for advertisement.
And before the ability to track everything you click on, search for, talk about with friends online there were industries built around advertisement that still offered targeting to some extent.
Ads can target users by classifying different channels/outlets for different purposes. So a website about gardening can offer ads for gardening supplies, etc. All without having to assemble massive databases about us.
There's a difference, don't let the data brokers confuse you.
The problem is that the ads model works for a while, then they realize it doesn't anymore and they change the free tier. This seemed to have happened recently with gmail. Impossible to know what the eventual monetization model will be when signing up. I think this is the justified cause of the mistrust. Also there are the observations 'free as in beer' and 'if you're not the customer you're the product.' Both of which have merit.
First, do you or anyone you know directly or indirectly profit from these types of services? Because I find your emphatic endorsement hard to understand.
To be fair, I do use some of these services, too (carefully). But, that’s only because often I can’t find quality alternatives. For instance, I would pay for a high-quality service like Mint (I don’t use it) that kept my data private, but there is none.
Since gathering / ad-selling services are so lucrative, they essentially subsidize the development of the highest-quality products in the market. The best engineers work for these companies. They have massive teams of people refining their products. And, these companies use IP laws to prevent clones. Essentially, they lock out for-fee competitors.
Because of this, I’m a strong supporter of consumer protection laws and regulations. Capital often flows toward deceptive and unethical practices. And, all companies are eventually forced to follow the leader, otherwise they disappear. Laws are the only ways to prevent this.
Try Tiller. It puts all of your data into a Google Sheet with nice premade templates. Not quite as nice UX as mint but pretty close and allows for better customization.
You start by saying the parent comment is hard to understand, then go on to explain why the statements are true. These two statements are essentially the same
>Since gathering / ad-selling services are so lucrative, they essentially subsidize the development of the highest-quality products in the market. The best engineers work for these companies. They have massive teams of people refining their products. And, these companies use IP laws to prevent clones. Essentially, they lock out for-fee competitors.
> You get those free, truly amazing services for nothing because the companies found ways to generate value from the data being gathered. The cost to maintain that infrastructure and provide those great services is pretty high and has taken some brilliant engineers years of sweat.
The only real difference is your use of the phrase "lock-out", but I don't think that's a reasonable way to look at it. If enough people really want to be part of a fee-based ecosystem, no one is stopping a company from engaging those people. You bring up IP laws, but that's really an independent issue, since fee-based and ad-based businesses can both use IP laws in the same way.
I understand what you mean. But, for me to get the same quality of service (without regulation), I’d have to pay tens of thousands of dollars, at least. But, if there were regulations (like, to force service providers to have both a ‘free’ and a for-fee privacy-protected version), I’d probably only have to pay a few dollars.
Sure people are rational, even though you as an external actor may not agree with their motives. Even a schizophrenic is rational given what they have to work with.
I'm not sure what perfect information has to do with anything. It's impossible that perfect information could ever exist.
I suppose you have your own definition for "perfectly rational" that you're standing by, and that's fine. But I fail to see the point. How is that relevant to this thread?
I originally posted that people wouldn't use these web services if they didn't receive some benefit from it, and you've done nothing more than present red herrings.
> For instance, I would pay for a high-quality service like Mint (I don’t use it) that kept my data private, but there is none.
Have you looked at ynab.com? I find their overall philosophy on budgeting to be more effective, the app is high quality, and it's solely about your budget, not about offering you credit cards.
It's one of the few products I recommend to anyone, and it's relatively expensive ($85 for the year I believe).
I have tried it, but I didn’t think it was as useful for me personally. That is, I don’t need a budget. Instead, I need a high-usability, interactive visualization of all of my accounts (12+) with relatively accurate categorizations and alerts. But, I’d like to pay less than $49 / month.
I would try to start a service like this myself, but I don’t think the market is large enough to make it usable.
...would it? IE, would we still be reading it. We keep crying out for better media but private, public, for profit or not... the popular/successful stuff is hyperbolic, dramatized, and skewed. IF we want it even half as bad as we say we do... where's all the calm & collected media? Genuine question, where is it & why isn't it here?
^Sorry, way off topic
To the topic... this line of argument feels (I don't have much more to go an than feels) unsatisfying. Sweet or not, it's hard to see this as a deal, in any way but the most abstract. First, users' end of the deal is secretive, complicated and has hard to understand implications. Second, most of the benefits (to users and The Googles) and most of the dangers (to users and maybe society) are a product of aggregation, which complicates the concept of a deal even more.
Also, these things tend to be monopolistic and data is more moat.
You have no way to say if it's a fair deal, because we don't have proper metrics to check. Plus this data collection is instrumental to the increasing centralization of power and wealth that has the potential of getting to a dangerous extreme soon. I think we should act, and I'm proud that the EU is doing just that. Lanier's proposal might be a bit too much, but at least revising the tax scheme for companies that profit from everyone's data is a necessary step, in my opinion, in order to properly redistribute value to society.
And how does the idea that Facebook still collects massive amounts of data on me despite the fact that I don't use their service reconcile with all that? What do I get in exchange for all that data FB has?
But the value of my data alone probably is worth less than a dollar to Google and Facebook. Given the choice of getting paid a dollar, or using it for free (in exchange for them using my data), I would choose the latter.
> But the value of my data alone probably is worth less than a dollar
Calculating the value of your data is pretty easy actually. Just take the market cap of the company divided by users to get an average.
Google is at about $700B with may ~2B global users, so global average is more like $350/user. The value of US users is probably 10X less developed parts of world (based on ad rates) so US users are worth more like $3000.
You are undervaluing yourself :) which is how they win.
>Calculating the value of your data is pretty easy actually.
No it's not. You're mixing up the value of the data with the value of your attention. The world has made a killing off of advertising long before personalization came about so saying it's all due to personalization is a bit silly imho.
It's also conflating a bunch of stuff that goes into Google's valuation that isn't directly tied to ownership of your data. Once upon a time, Google just made a search engine, and that search engine quickly took over the world. Google made a lot of money plopping ads on search results long before you could create a Google account or store all your email there. Presumably, the technical ability to build products like that is worth actual money. If Google deleted all personal data, the company would not be worth $0.
> If Google deleted all personal data, the company would not be worth $0
They would be worth less than zero because without the personal data they would have no ad revenue to subsidize their money losing loss-leader ventures that only exist to collect data and/or suck people in to watch advertising.
The search engine is just a targeting mechanism for ads. You tell Google what you are searching for and they serve you a targeted ad. That has always been the business model.
By that logic an ad in a travel magazine is using your personal data.
I personally wouldn't consider search ads with no data being stored or user level history being used as not being personalized or user targeted. They're to me no different from an ad in magazine or a static banner ad on a web page.
This wouldn't be such an issue if they couldn't see the data on which they are computing (and individual data wouldn't be exposed in data breaches either).
But I'm not sure if Google even cares too much about doing that (I know they've experimented with this, but nothing on a scale that matters), and Facebook certainly doesn't. Apple seems to be the only one that does somewhat with its differential privacy approach.
I think they can all do much more, but they're not trying too hard.
I'm not sure you understand what differential privacy is. Apple still has your data. If there's a breach, an attacker gets your data. It's probably encrypted, just as it is with pretty much any modern system where user data is collected, but differential privacy doesn't have anything to do with what data is collected or stored. Differential privacy is just a method for limiting how much information can be reliably inferred about an entire dataset from limited queries on statistical properties of the data.
It's basically this. Imagine I have two data sets that are identical, except one has your specific data and the other doesn't. It's possible in some circumstances to infer information about you by asking for things like averages on the datasets. Differential privacy is a method for defeating attacks that rely on that type of "leakage" of information. It assures that if two datasets are close enough, queries on those datasets will not yield significant information about their differences (i.e., the presence or absence of one particular data point won't be detectable).
It's all about how queries of the data perform, and not at all about the data itself.
There is already mechanical Turk for the cases the author described. There are many paid initiatives to label data that these companies employ. These "AI" companies sample sizes are small compared to the services they provide against them. Once divided up its pointless to think about them "paying" you and is counter to the point. They already are paying in the form of the service they are providing. I.e free storage, service etc.
Democratizing the data so more companies can use it to build products beyond these major concentration of platform players is a much more practical. This is similar to the personal data requests legislation that Europe already has in place. This would be an extension to enable competing services to access this data as their customers opt into the the service. Enabling more companies to build more competitive products (employ people working towards market competitive products) not trying to set "sustainable" sheep that feed from the same troff of the concentrated power of these companies. Certainly universal basic income; but that should be wholly independent of being subordinates to these service providers.
Perhaps if I collected it and stored it, perhaps put it behind an accessible API and supplied Google et al with an API key to access it I might have a case for charging them for it.
Okay, but like operationally, what does that even mean? How do we establish a legal definition of what "your data" even is?
When we talk about "big data" and data collection, the vast majority of what we're talking about basically just boils down to web logs, and derived data that's inferred from those logs. So is an entry in a web log that corresponds to something you did now your property? Is anything someone writes down about me now my property? If I walk in a store and the store owner writes down that I was there, is that my property?
PII, Personal Identifiable Information, is the phrase I know for this.
I'd like to see a requirement for all companies receiving PII to issue an account of how they use it and who it's sold to, those receiving your PII would also have an obligation to notify you, and offer access to the same audit data (how they're using it, who they got it from, who they gave/sold it to).
Legit companies would then leak information, by design, showing companies using/selling your data without notifying you.
Real fines like those anticipated in the GDPR would be needed to encourage companies to adhere to the legislation.
You forgot the all important requirement to be able to force them to delete it. I never once chose to do business with Equifax. But, due to their extreme incompetence, now I'm the one that has to suffer.
IMHO lots of the valuable data that the original article is about isn't necessarily PII. That is, even if they're linked with PII right now, they need not be so and the article's argument would still make sense in that case.
E.g. sensor-mapping data gathered by Tesla from your driving is extremely valuable even if you absolutely dissociate it from anything personally identifiable. Facebook would have immensely valuable aggregate data about how people are likely to react when seeing a particular piece of content even if they would (or would be required to) not link the event to anything personally identifiable and just keep the aggregate. Etc, etc, etc.
I see the problem but this feels like a bad solution. The way I see it there are two real problems here.
(1) Google, Facebook and the like do have a cost, just that it's data instead of money. The fact that we're one step removed from money obscures the true cost associated with the services. And when you combine that with the fact that the services themselves obscure what data they're collecting/have, there's no way for an end consumer to know if they're getting a 'good deal' since they have no idea what they're paying. A fix to this would be radical forced transparency - every consumer should be able to find out what data any company has on them - both collected and bought (and bought from whom for how much.)
(2) Data is too large a competitive advantage in certain industries. It seems similar to me to utilities. Barring local law I could try and start up a new water company and displace the incumbent but it would never work - the huge fixed costs make the industry prone to natural monopolization. Same here except with data. There are absolutely ginormous costs associated with collecting user data that could rival Google's or Facebook's (if it's even possible). You could start a company to try to beat Google but you'll never get the data to make it good enough to compete and since you're not good enough to compete you'll never get the data. The free market here has done it's work - it's generated something new and useful and beneficial to society, now we should nationalize it so that it stays that way.
I'll never understand why I can't pay Google and Facebook $20 to $50 per year to simply respect my privacy and not give me advertisements. I can't imagine they make more than this off my viewing behaviour (especially as I use adblock)
Because it's a boring, safe, traditional business model.
Instead they've bet on harvesting and exploiting information about the behaviour of the many, to ultimately allow them to exert some 'control/influence' over individuals.
And they're winning the business lottery with it.
More shame us for only considering ourselves when deciding whether or not to use a service like google. I can choose not to use google/facebook, but if everyone else uses them, they'll still have incredible power over me through the insights they gleaned about everyone else
I've had this discussion with people before. It both sounds good and not depending on the viewpoint. The good is already spoken about in the article - I generate data that a company is in turn using to make money. The analogy I have used before is imagine if I owned land and ate apples on that land. If the apple seeds I spit out grew, I'd have apple trees. It would be bothersome to me if the state came in and sold all the apples the tree grew and I never saw a dime. Refraining from political discussion, I'm upset someone else is profiting off my work. No different than using my uploaded picture to train image processing systems.
Now the bad, how much am I REALLY worth? Online surveys pay out pennies at most for my "opinion". I'm a middle-class, white, male, computer scientist - the market is literally flooded with data from people like me. My data is only worth something if I was, say, a single Hispanic mother or some other niche demographic, and that's only because of their rarity.
Now, this is where the discussion typically leads to science fiction. I think this would be a great use of blockchain currency and let the market drive the value of your data. If there's a shortage of, say, beach pictures (because why not), then you're Instagram data might be of value. Likewise, the GPS locations of an underrepresented demographic is suddenly worth a more because its hard to get that kind of data.
But I think the major issue still falls back to how much its all worth. The article says $20,000, which nicely would support arguments for a living wage. I generate the data that runs the world, so pay me enough to live it in. However, what if the data isn't worth $20k?
I think your analogy would be more apt if you were spitting seeds onto public property, and the state took the trees. Or even further: you spit seeds (your data) onto Google's property while they gave you a free tram ride to the other side.
Another could be someone lets you use their land for free, so you use the land to grow a unique breed of flowers. Later you find out that person that owns the land is selling honey from bees that visit those flowers (solely or in some combination with other flower patches). This honey revenue depends on your proper upkeep of your flowers.
Okay, fine, its the cost for using their land.
But THEN, you find out that your flowers (or, again, the combination) are so unique, that person begins making millions of dollars in revenue off the honey.
As the primary producer of the income, I'd feel a bit shafted if I didn't get some of type of reciprocation.
Doubly so if that person accidentally let a malicious entity on the land who then stole my unique breed of flower and then started selling/reproducing it.
I find the term "your data" bothersome. Just because there is a piece of data out there that pertains to you it doesn't make it "your data". Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy, but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering.
"So right away, let us cast aside the technological protocols, that are usually referred to as “the internet”, that of which was built upon that make accessing or publishing information public between two or more machines…
Because talking about such things would require most internet users to cast aside social constructs they willingly suspend on a daily basis upon engaging with such technology/services (without any care to understand for oneself, one might add) and then demand collectively in retrospect to have their cries pacified while continuing to use such services (of which, most for free).
Yup, let us look past all that and believe (because that’s all we can do for ourselves) that institutions/organizations/companies/governments, that all consist of our fellow human beings in all of our qualities and flaws, can provide for the individual that which he chooses not to do for himself, to a satisfactory level in which his desires are forever coddled and placated." "The Banality of Privacy As A Service" [0]
"Just because there is a piece of data out there that pertains to you it doesn't make it "your data"."
Yes it does.
"Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy"
That it is.
" but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering."
So I suppose in your mind that whatever a company wants to do is fine, and that's your prerogative. But in the real world, that's simply not true. And in the real world, this data is derived purely from me. It absolutely is MY data, and they have no right to collect it without my consent, and they have no right to sell it to others without my consent. To believe otherwise is to believe that a person does not have personal agency, and that a person is not in charge of themselves.
>So I suppose in your mind that whatever a company wants to do is fine, and that's your prerogative.
Non sequitur and a red herring.
>To believe otherwise is to believe that a person does not have personal agency, and that a person is not in charge of themselves.
Non sequitur. Someone owning data about you has nothing to do with denying someone's "personal agency". Quite the opposite. I would suggest someone recording the actions you make is a testament to the principle of personal agency. You can own yourself and your choices all day long, but you don't control the consequences of those actions. Furthermore, if you're saying someone cannot record things that they observe, you are denying them their personal agency. (As an aside, I find your appeal to "personal agency" curious given your previous assertion that people are irrational, implying the foolishness of such a principle).
>But in the real world, that's simply not true. And in the real world
In the real world there are a myriad of legal jurisdictions, with a myriad of laws whose principles and motives often are contradictory. I am not arguing from the perspective of the status quo. Individuals can also demonstrate cognitive dissonance.
Please answer the following questions:
1) If I observe you walking down the street and I see you wearing a pair of Adidas athletic shoes, and I make a mental note to myself "s73v3r_ wears Adidas athletic shoes", do you own my thought?
1a) If yes to #1 how do you justify owning a stranger's thoughts?
2) If I write down the thought in my notepad, do you own the entry in my notepad?
2a) If yes to #2 how do you justify owning an entry in a stranger's notepad who expended their labor creating?
If you answered no to #1 and yes to #2 then you have a contradiction you need to account for (data is data whether it is in memory or persisted). If you answered no to #1 and no to #2 then you have established the principle that you do not own data about you. If you answered yes to #1 and yes to #2 then it would be good for you to at least be explicit so those who are following the argument understand your premise.
At least the European legal perspective is that yes, there actually is such a concept as "your data" that is inherently yours and you have certain rights pertaining to that data no matter what - allowing your interests and rights to that data override what others can do with that data even if they have it and obtained it legally. Legal possession of private data doesn't imply unrestricted right to use that data for all purposes.
For example, even if it was originally gathered with your permission, that permission can be revoked; EU GDPR will clarify the exact process of how that can be done.
Can't you be paid by virtue of cheaper costs? Ad agencies filtering out value is of dubious value for society. Cheaper cars, more effective roads and transit, wiser food choices, data driven medicine, and plenty of other progress points continue to help most everyone that is at stake in this discussion. My hope is it continues to help even more.
Off course, but the steady stream of money to the rich is unstoppable. The problem is that we are conditioned to accept the extreme wealthy and even look up to them. Most people think everything is OK as long as they have a decent income. So most people only find out first about the horror of this system once they lose their job and hit the streets. But then it's all too late when the reality sinks in. With the sticker POOR on your head your kinda lost till you die in this world.
We live in a world of modern slavery where one needs the skill and luck to find a good job to avoid the streets. A better distribution of wealth would be great of course. Imagine all those billionaires rendering at least half of their fortunes back to the poor. But that is not realistic and will never happen. Things will get worse to the point they lock us up in some sort of "District 9" (Elysium).
This is absolute nonsense and dangerous to boot. Facebook's ARPU is still less than $20/year. If they literally paid all of their profits directly to their user it would still be a pittance. The real value of privacy has to do with freedom, manipulation and surveillance, and that is not represented by economic measures at all. Talking about the value of the data in purely economic terms is exactly the way you would want to frame the issue if you had more nefarious plans down the line.
However, this also means that they can charge users $3/mo (just to be safe) and be at least as successful as they are now, but without all the spying and manipulation.
Unfortunately that will also put a cap on their profits, so it's unlikely they'll do that.
That's assuming their userbase is a lot less elastic than it probably is. They'd have to retain at least half of their current users in order for that to even come close to replacing current revenue. The reason these pay-with-your-privacy businesses are so successful is because charging actual money is a huge barrier that will drive away many customers.
And presuming they don't have a competitor offer the same services "for free". And why wouldn't someone do that, even Google could jump in to the rescue with its moribund G+.
I'm seeing $40.7B in 2017 revenue, 2.1B active monthly users (1.4B daily active users). I'd like to know how the calculation is done because I'm getting very different answers using these numbers.
> I'm seeing $40.7B in 2017 revenue, 2.1B active monthly users (1.4B daily active users). I'd like to know how the calculation is done because I'm getting very different answers using these numbers.
There aren't 1.4B active daily users in the US and Canada, because there aren't even that many people.
He's looking at the one of the richest slices of Facebook's user-base, but it looks like you're looking at the global/worldwide numbers, which include a lot of much poorer people.
If a company has to pay users for their data, that puts financial disincentives on collecting it in the first place, which might be interesting, irrespective of the users' finances.
Yeah, the incentive is to charge the users for the service in order to then use that money to pay for their data; or be very selective about what users are allowed to use the platform so its "worth" to pay for the data of that user.
> The real value of privacy has to do with freedom, manipulation and surveillance, and that is not represented by economic measures at all
Privacy is not the only issue.
Using user data for ad targeting is the past/present. The future is using users to train AI.
Facial recognition in photos is a good example of this. Facebook has the most advanced facial recognition in the world because they got millions (billions?) of hours of free labor from their users classifying photos.
Amazon Echo is doing the same thing with speech recognition.
Cloud based AI platforms capture the data from engineers training AI algorithms and the goal is to use that data to train an AI to replace the engineers.
Not only are people being duped into giving away their labor for free but they are increasingly being used to train the AIs that are going to replace their jobs.
I'm working on a blockchain solution that gives consumers the ability to control and monetize their data:
www.databook.one
@dasil003 I agree that Facebook's ARPU is super low. However, with that statistic is related to ad revenue, not revenue from the sale of data. Facebook doesn't publically sell its consumer data. Thus, we're talking apples and oranges.
To buy raw data, you need to go to data brokers, who are currently earning $250 billion per year from selling consumer data. Raw data is super valuable because you can build predictive models with it. With very small samples of customer data, powerful models can be built that can deliver millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars to a business' bottom line.
I can testify to this because I led the technology team for company that earned millions by leveraging machine learning to predict who would sell their house bellow market prices in the next few months.
The problem with buying data from data brokers is that the quality is awful. For example, the accuracy rate of America's largest data broker, Acxiom is only 50%. This problem is holding back the advancement of machine learning. If consumers linked and verified their own data, we could improve that accuracy rate significantly and deliver much more accurate models to businesses.
Thus, we expect that compensation paid by companies to individuals sharing their complete data profiles could be significant.
I've seen estimates that the value of data will reach $7,500K per American per year by 2022.
Even if we reached 10% of this estimate, I'd want that money in my pocket instead of some data broker.
If you put the control in the hands of the people whose data is being handled, I'm sure a significant percentage will default to "Do not share" given an explicit choice.
People aren't going to directly assist and curate the ability for 3rd parties to spew more spam & spyware on their webpages and in their email inboxes. If they could see what sort of data is being tracked, that can easily trigger their creepiness receptors and wish to distance themselves from it.
The only reason people endure the current situation is because they don't feel they can do anything about it, and really don't know the extent of what's going on. Empowering them will finally allow them to actively break out of that cycle.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadIt would be helpful if, instead of deliberately conflating these two senses of "your," articles on this subject went in the other direction and explicitly discussed the distinction.
We have from time to time redefined what "belong" means, but these redefinitions tend to be very complicated and have all sorts of unforeseen consequences. My guess is that a redefinition on the scale of facts about you = your property would be a disaster.
"Facts about you" falls into at least two categories: "Facts which you want and reasonably expect to remain private", and "facts which you display to the world and have no expectation of privacy about."
You're trying to distinguish between privacy and identity.
If there's a dividing line, it's very, very hard to discern.
I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later" (most skip the latter part anyway, if not confronted with a shitstorm) mentality.
Huh. I actually believe most western societies are incredibly tilted in the "ask permission" direction. You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing.
Personally, I prefer freedom: do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't violate someone's rights (and no, Imaginary Property doesn't count).
The rules are very selectively enforced depending on what class you belong to though.
As a guy with a pair of scissors, I can't start cutting hair without "asking permission" in the form of a license. As a guy with a cart, I can't sell hot dogs on the street corner without getting some sort of vending license.
I can't just start driving around and picking up random fares in my car without applying for a limousine license or taxi medallion.
But then you get Uber, whose business model was based around ignoring these regulations and scaling to such size where they were too big to prosecute (easily).
Just the same, I'll get fined if I catch too many fish from the local pond whether or not I've gone to the trouble of applying for a fishing license, but Acme Megacorp will go ahead and dump toxic waste into the same pond until it's forcibly stopped from doing so (and the taxpayers are forced to clean it up via Superfund).
My ideal is Leary from Demolition Man - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JizGkM6gbvQ - and no, I don't think that leads to living underground.
Since clickbait is against the site guidelines, we replace such titles with neutral ones. Usually we do that by copying a representative phrase from the article itself. But that was surprisingly hard to do this time.
>Obtaining information with reference to the identity, habits, conduct, movements, whereabouts, affiliations, associations, transactions, reputation, or character of any society, person of groups of persons.
Guess what that is? It’s, in part, the statutory (legal) definition of private investigator, which is prohibited by law without a license.
So sure under the law we don’t necessarily own that data about ourselves, but the collection of the data is highly regulated for a reason. Obviously tech companies obtain user consent to collect data (at least some of the time), but if PI’s can be regulated in their activities so can a tech company or digital product, and it’s not to difficult to see regulations that say a tech company can’t collect user data and turn around and sell it to third parties.
I am curious though, how exactly would such a legal framework be a disaster in your opinion?
If you collect data about me in the EU, I have legal control over that data. I can order you to give it to me. I can order you to delete it.
Sounds like ownership to me.
Sure, the EU has essentially asserted in law that you own your data. That doesn't really make it true though.
I don't even think the EU was really addressing the moral/ethical nature of data with that law, politicians just wanted a way to remove defamatory content from the internet so they could regain control of their public image.
Just because something makes it into law doesn't mean it's reasonable/accurate/moral/just. In fact, I would argue most laws are created based on a groups narrow desire to achieve an immediate effect in the current society. Few laws are created with genuine exploration of larger implications on society/morality, and even fewer laws are created in the context of rights/what the government can/cant't control.
Of course, we'll have to see how it turns out in practice, but it's just a couple more months.
USA's credit reporting agencies are a bight on humanity. All the power with none of the accountability, ambiguous rules ruthlessly enforced, profiting from other people's misfortune.
Google and Facebook (and similar companies) have killed innovation with their monopolies and in order to break their monopolies new technologies must be invented that disrupt their business models.
It is interesting to see the NY Times advancing such avant garde ideas but it is good to see rising social consciousness of the limitations of current technology.
Facebook is free. Google search is free. 15gb of gmail/google drive is free. You get those free, truly amazing services for nothing because the companies found ways to generate value from the data being gathered. The cost to maintain that infrastructure and provide those great services is pretty high and has taken some brilliant engineers years of sweat. (I don't work for either so I'm not tooting my own horn, just giving credit where I believe credit is due)
I think as it currently stands (collect data on me and I get free 99.99% uptime, cloud available services for email, cloud drive, and social networking) is a pretty sweet deal.
Your reasoning is extremely fallacious because you're overlooking a lot of nuance.
Yes, it is true that in aggregate part of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. How much exactly depends on macroeconomic factors, industry dynamics, pricing power of distributors and retailers, and hundreds other variables. But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers.
However, advertising is valuable to advertisers because it works to some degree. And it works because people are influenced by it. Now, as an individual I have no control over what other people are doing and so I have no control over how valuable advertising is and how much is being spent on it and how much is being passed on to consumers. Therefore as an individual I look around me and prices are what they are and already have in them advertising costs which will not go up by me using service. Therefore as an individual the marginal cost of me using these services is effectively zero (imagine the ratio between the value of advertising to me and the aggregate value of advertising, that's effectively zero). As an individual those services are free.
So it depends on what your definition of "free" is. A) Would prices be lower if advertising didn't exist? Yes [0]. B) Would prices be lower to me if I didn't use these services? No. The thing is that in definition A) I don't really have a choice, so it's irrelevant. I only have a choice as an individual.
[0] And even here some people will disagree with you. What I call "free market fundamentalists" will argue that No, they wouldn't, because the advertising leads to higher sales and greater operational efficiency, so that advertising costs are exactly offset by lower per-unit costs.
If a company's only source of revenue is customers, then, by definition, customers are paying for all of advertising.
> As an individual those services are free.
Perhaps those are free to you, personally.
Yet, on a global scale the sum is zero. If a company spends $$$ on advertising I'll eventually pay a fraction of it, directly or indirectly.
> If a company's only source of revenue is customers, then, by definition, customers are paying for all of advertising.
> > As an individual those services are free.
> Perhaps those are free to you, personally.
> Yet, on a global scale the sum is zero. If a company spends $$$ on advertising I'll eventually pay a fraction of it, directly or indirectly.
So you just repeated my points, but worse. For example, it is not true that the customers are paying for all of the advertising. The way to determine what customers are paying for is to see how the world with advertiising compares with the world without advertising, and there's many possibilities. A) with advertising the company revenues are higher by the same amount on a per-unit basis (companies pass all cost to consumers), B) with advertising company costs are higher by the same amount on a per-unit basis (meaning the companies pass all cost to shareholders in the form of lower margins and lower return on equity, or related metric), C) something in between. So it's not true that necessarily customers are paying for all of the advertising.
If we are speaking about a service provided at no cost to me and the provider makes money off advertising, then I will end up paying some share of that if and only if my access to said service is charged by a 3rd party, eg a phone company that charges me for traffic, vs my home connection which is a flat rate, regardless if I use it or not.
The idea that corporations = people is foolish and obviously leading to a reality that doesn't fit the model.
"Oh, yes we harvested your data from all the sites you visited and used it to manipulate you in to buying stuff that harms your livelihood (gambling, say), but it's the _company_ that did it and so none of the controlling executives can be blamed!"
I don't believe yours is a valid concern.
This seems to, at best, reside outside of practical application.
>The main target of the corporations-are-not-people crowd is the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling striking down limits on independent corporate spending in elections. After that case, groups sprang up to fight corporate personhood. Others rebranded themselves by newly taking aim at it. But they do not limit themselves to attacking the Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence. Most groups make a broader attack on corporations being able to assert any First Amendment speech rights at all; and some have called for disabusing all corporations or businesses of any constitutional right.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/if-corp...
Which is pretty much the opposite of the insulating effect of both your description and, more to the point, the status quo corporate form.
Define evil please, because I'm of the opinion that the idea that they are people leads to serious unpleasantness all round.
Can you tell me who else will pay my advertising bill, because it can be a complete money pit and getting someone to pay for it without using revenue from customers would be great. Let me know bub.
Not sure if your question is rhetorical or what. When you say "who else will pay "my" advertising bill". Who's "you" in this context? Are you a company, and consumer, what?
> You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Those companies pay advertising which increase prices plus their tech size profits.
I don't think this is falsifiable. It sounds sort of feasible in the abstract, but how can we empirically measure that effect? As it stands, I could just as easily respond that, no, these companies make prices more efficient, because their advertising methodologies are more effective so companies spend less on their platforms than they would for equivalent ad campaigns elsewhere. Then we'd have to figure out how to investigate whether modern companies advertise more due to growth of the market, or because they have to due to catch up with everyone else using the tech advertising platforms. Narrowing down the answer, if there is one, would be nontrivial. Then I could also say that advertising makes tech services cheaper, because Facebook and Google earn more from user data than they would if they forced everyone to pay $20/month.
Which of us is right? We can't really say, it's effectively an opinion because, even if technically falsifiable, these claims are far from being empirically demonstrable.
Companies use advertising to increase their sales, either from 0 to something or from something to something more. Along with R&D, production costs, running costs and profit, the advertising cost is part of the planning from the start.
This is not how the stock market works. Where did you get this idea?
Hyperbolic indeed.
> You get those free, truly amazing services
lol. Services that exist without an honest portrayal about what they do with the data they gather, or anything like clarity on the extent of what is possible.
Not content with that, they bend the service to better manipulate us not to provide a better service. Facebook run fun psychological experiments to see if they can manipulate their users - without calling for volunteers first or anything I recognise as ethics. How many times have FB been pulled up for being, cough, "less than honest"?
Google, especially, have built a reputation for simply gathering maximum possible data, then shuttering the product 18 months later. There is no reason a company Google's size need close Reader or Picasa or any number of others. Buy their in-home device or use G Drive? Hell no, i don't trust them to provide any availability once the data grab is complete. Sure if the company is entering leaner times you can understand canning some of their services, right now it's no more than a rounding error. So no, I'm in no rush to use any new Google offering - they don't exist long enough.
I think as it currently stands (collect data on me, lie to me, track me around the web as far as technically possible, track me off the service as far as technically possible, track me offline as far as possible, sell retargeting and other dubious tactics to ensure my life is 101% a buying consumer experience with no time off. In return I get a service that doesn't even meet the core need any more thanks to engagement algorithms bending it to meet FB and Google need not users') is a pretty terrifying deal.
Terrifying because we still think it's an honest exchange akin to swapping £1 for a bar of chocolate in a shop, just swap data for service. We still feel it's a fair exchange. Yeah, without honesty of even 10% of what is being done.
I'd actually like the sort of exchange you imply. Give me a great service in exchange for some data. Actually, yes, that seems fair so long as you use it reasonably. Hoovering up everything, with the Hoover turned up to 11, whilst implying "it's just a bit of data" is a confidence trick on the non-technical.
I've always wondered: How is that different from A/B testing, or any other marketing experiment?
- They weren't experimenting or measuring ads, clickthroughs, or pageviews views; they were experimenting on and measuring emotions directly
- It was run as a psychological study, and published as a psychological study
Every change to an interface can potentially affect the emotions of users, whether or not you try to measure it.
In my opinion, you're mistaking apathy for ignorance. Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not the exchange is fair. I work in tech, have heard everything you just wrote many times, and my response is continually, "Eh, I'm okay with that." People I've spoken to about this outside of tech often don't know about the data collection to quite the extent you're talking about and don't care about it. When I mention how extensive the data collection is, they're often surprised, but often they still don't care. The most I've personally seen is a vague discomfort that didn't seem to persist, given the person's behavior didn't change at all.
It gets kind of frustrating for people like myself to hear this argument rehashed over and over in the way you've just presented it, as though people who are okay with their data being used simply "don't understand" or haven't been paying attention. Everything you wrote is - while clearly not neutrally presented - in the zeitgeist on HN. There's nothing really new about it, and you're only convincing the people who already agree with you. Yes, we know our data is being used, we get it. We're picking up what you're putting down. Right there with you. We just don't really care.
You can draw a normative conclusion about me based on that statement if you'd like. It probably sounds callous and asinine from your perspective, but like I said: reasonable people can disagree. Anecdotally speaking, most people I "enlighten" about the data hoovering you describe don't meaningfully change their behavior or preferences. Consider that when people are not aware of how their data is being used, it doesn't always mean they're being victimized; it can also mean they are vaguely aware that their data is "out there", and they implicitly don't care enough about it to investigate further. That's a valid position to take.
Quite, but some of those very same people who don't care will call it creepy when they are on the receiving end of a retargeting campaign. Of course some don't care, or just find it funny. That's how I've got dragged in to those occasional conversations - typically a friend is spooked at the fact suddenly, somehow, as if by magic, the whole internet has decided they want to see ads for Gibson guitars, everywhere. Maybe they mentioned them in a FB comment a few weeks previously, or visited a review site with tracking etc.
I put it to you that they don't care because they have understood the transaction as one of £1 for a bar of chocolate. I give you some photos and emails in exchange for chat and service. "Who cares if Google/FB/NSA know when I have pizza" and so forth.
What they haven't (and yes, I realise I'm stretching this analogy far beyond breaking point) realised is buying that bar of chocolate results in the shop photocopying all their mail, weighing them, planting a bug to listen in to later conversations and having an employee follow them everywhere for the next few weeks - just in case they express another interest in chocolate.
> discomfort that didn't seem to persist, given the person's behavior didn't change at all.
I think network effect can cover most of that - continue to use Facebook because everyone they know is there, whilst having a vague perception that Facebook doesn't have their interests at heart.
It's still valid for them not to care, of course, but I think a much more honest explanation from the services of the extent they track, and what they can achieve in aggregate, is called for. I think that because people are still surprised by retargeting and similar techniques, and often describe it as creepy. I'm surprised that they're still surprised, to be honest, given how long it's been going on.
So clearly there is still some significant dissonance out there.
And not only that, but useds aren't expected to try to quell their dissonance by being more adversarial to these mostly free services (some would say its not even an option because it is just impossible™ for them), and companies are expected to try to coddle to useds desires that they won't try to rectify for themselves by being more adversarial.
I don't see this ending well for the useds with cognitive dissonance.
> ...try to coddle to useds desires...
> I don't see this ending well for the useds with cognitive dissonance.
Using Stallman-esque terminology like "useds" to refer to people really doesn't encourage anyone to listen to you who doesn't already agree with the point you're making. It's condescending, puerile and snarky to the detriment of discussion. It makes your point seem like the banner of an ideological crusade, not a well reasoned critique.
Consider that calling people "useds" en masse is an extremely poor way to go about convincing them of your perspective. It implicitly puts you above them intellectually and delegitimizes their opinions. If all you want to do is signal your ingroup to other people then using the term "useds" makes sense. But if you actually want people to listen to you who don't already agree, it comes across as tonedeaf.
You could simply use the common word which is not going to distract anyone and literally nothing of value would be lost.
If one's opinion at the end of the day doesn't involve one changing one's behavior to combat the influences of those who use information about/relating to them, then sure one can call it out that I'm delegitimizing their opinion and implicitly putting myself above them intellectually, regardless of whether or not I think that is completely true based on what I have observed of people who are in a state of cognitive dissonance (self admitted or not) and continue to engage intimately with these platforms/services/devices/applications.
Still, it is ultimately up to everyone to change their own behavior in face of their own cognitive dissonance, instead of the usual discussions on here that are infantilizing and void of the reality of the situation, as if we as people have no sense of self agency.
>…If all you want to do is signal your ingroup to other people then using the term "useds" makes sense.…
This is probably closer to the truth.
In actuality, the reason I have been able to work with some of the data I have is because of useds, so in a sense I'm grateful because I get to research things that builds on what we know now (or more selfishly, I can get better personal insight into the behaviors of others around me). So if those who have cognitive dissonance don't want to listen to me, and continue on doing nothing except delegating their responsibility for their choices to others, that's fine, because the way things are now, it will only get better for those who will be able to leverage such.
Remember, they're showing us ads in addition to collecting volumes of information on us, so we're paying in two ways.
And frankly I don't mind the ads, by principle, but I do mind that a few companies are able to use them to track us nearly everywhere online without allowing me to review what they're collecting and who is collecting it.
Here in the US, we cried tyranny when our security agencies were collecting metadata to monitor threats. And then we gave everything we had to Facebook and Google and didn't bat an eye as they sold us to anyone who pays.
It's because we've structured our society (in Western Democracies) so that people grow rich if they can trick you in to buying stuff. The better they are at tricking you, the more they earn. The higher the price compared to the cost, the more they earn. The lower the longevity of the goods, the more chance to sell to you again.
Many of the incentives are towards fooling people rather than creating useful goods that enrich society with minimal environmental impact and maximum longevity.
It's unsustainable and leads to powerful (ie rich) people who are incentivised to parasitically feed on poorer people.
Which is why I think we need more regulation in this particular area to clearly define the rules we want everyone to play by.
And I'm skeptical about your assessment that this is merely a problem with "Western Capitalism". This is a problem of any system that doesn't have proper regulations to define the rules of the game in a fair way.
I'm not saying that this system wouldn't be more prolific or that regulations would somehow cause it to evolve quicker or something. I'm saying that if we want to to work in a way that we believe is ethical and just, then we need to regulate it otherwise it will carry on in a predatory way.
Humans have preferences about the environment we live in. When there are things we like and want to preserve, it's up to us to do something about it.
"fair" is practically a weasel word. It doesn't have a universal standard. It doesn't mean anything until you explain what you consider to be fair. I once read a book on negotiations that called it "the F-word" - it was warning you to be wary of people using the word against you.
Think of this as a transaction between two parties doing business together. When business A is making a deal with business B, then A is not entitled to know how much money B will make out of it. It's perfectly fine to ask, but B not answering is very much within the rules (and is the norm). It is your job to do your own research to figure out how valuable your information is to them.
I also often see an attitude of "They make $20/year from the information I give them. So I should have the option to pay them $20/year for not tracking me." No business deal works that way. Each party sets their own requirements. If you demand that they offer paid services to stop tracking you, they get to say "No - you're welcome to use someone else's service if they give you that kind of a deal"
Finally, the way negotiations work: The focus will not be on what they make from your money, but how much you are willing to pay for the services you receive. The majority of people I know will not pay $10/mo for their email service. So the fact that Google may make $30/year from your use of Gmail is irrelevant. This is your BATNA.
>Remember, they're showing us ads in addition to collecting volumes of information on us, so we're paying in two ways.
And in how many ways are they paying you in services? Far more, I imagine.
>Here in the US, we cried tyranny when our security agencies were collecting metadata to monitor threats. And then we gave everything we had to Facebook and Google and didn't bat an eye as they sold us to anyone who pays.
We probably hang out in different crowds, but while government monitoring did make the news, the percentage of people I personally know who cared about it was less than those I know who say "I'm using a service other than the one provided by Google because they're already tracking me in so many ways".
BTW, although I use some Google services, by and large I do not. I do not actively use Gmail. It was very difficult for me to get used to the idea of letting them get to me via Android. I don't use my account on Youtube. I don't have a Facebook account. I don't use Twitter. I pay for my own email and web services. I tend to have privacy extensions on my browser. I don't use Whatsapp. My life is not at all miserable.
It's the same thing... If they stop collecting data, they don't still get to keep the same ad revenue.
The ads are only worth the amount there are because of the hyper specific information you can target ads with. If you get rid of that, than the ad model falls apart. They might still be worth...something, but if it was just about anonymous eyeballs, probably every ad would just be for Coke and Coca Cola would pay extremely little for it.
Yes, data can be used to improve the effectiveness of advertisements but that doesn't mean they're the same thing. There are also data brokers who are in the business of buying and selling data not specifically for advertisement.
And before the ability to track everything you click on, search for, talk about with friends online there were industries built around advertisement that still offered targeting to some extent.
Ads can target users by classifying different channels/outlets for different purposes. So a website about gardening can offer ads for gardening supplies, etc. All without having to assemble massive databases about us.
There's a difference, don't let the data brokers confuse you.
To be fair, I do use some of these services, too (carefully). But, that’s only because often I can’t find quality alternatives. For instance, I would pay for a high-quality service like Mint (I don’t use it) that kept my data private, but there is none.
Since gathering / ad-selling services are so lucrative, they essentially subsidize the development of the highest-quality products in the market. The best engineers work for these companies. They have massive teams of people refining their products. And, these companies use IP laws to prevent clones. Essentially, they lock out for-fee competitors.
Because of this, I’m a strong supporter of consumer protection laws and regulations. Capital often flows toward deceptive and unethical practices. And, all companies are eventually forced to follow the leader, otherwise they disappear. Laws are the only ways to prevent this.
>Since gathering / ad-selling services are so lucrative, they essentially subsidize the development of the highest-quality products in the market. The best engineers work for these companies. They have massive teams of people refining their products. And, these companies use IP laws to prevent clones. Essentially, they lock out for-fee competitors.
> You get those free, truly amazing services for nothing because the companies found ways to generate value from the data being gathered. The cost to maintain that infrastructure and provide those great services is pretty high and has taken some brilliant engineers years of sweat.
The only real difference is your use of the phrase "lock-out", but I don't think that's a reasonable way to look at it. If enough people really want to be part of a fee-based ecosystem, no one is stopping a company from engaging those people. You bring up IP laws, but that's really an independent issue, since fee-based and ad-based businesses can both use IP laws in the same way.
Of course. No one would be using them if they weren't better off from using them.
Exploiting addiction is not exactly good
I'm not sure what perfect information has to do with anything. It's impossible that perfect information could ever exist.
I suppose you have your own definition for "perfectly rational" that you're standing by, and that's fine. But I fail to see the point. How is that relevant to this thread?
I originally posted that people wouldn't use these web services if they didn't receive some benefit from it, and you've done nothing more than present red herrings.
Have you looked at ynab.com? I find their overall philosophy on budgeting to be more effective, the app is high quality, and it's solely about your budget, not about offering you credit cards.
It's one of the few products I recommend to anyone, and it's relatively expensive ($85 for the year I believe).
I would try to start a service like this myself, but I don’t think the market is large enough to make it usable.
Also, these things tend to be monopolistic and data is more moat.
Only in aggregate is it worth a lot.
But the notion of getting paid for your data, when its worth so little by itself is not appealing.
Calculating the value of your data is pretty easy actually. Just take the market cap of the company divided by users to get an average.
Google is at about $700B with may ~2B global users, so global average is more like $350/user. The value of US users is probably 10X less developed parts of world (based on ad rates) so US users are worth more like $3000.
You are undervaluing yourself :) which is how they win.
No it's not. You're mixing up the value of the data with the value of your attention. The world has made a killing off of advertising long before personalization came about so saying it's all due to personalization is a bit silly imho.
They would be worth less than zero because without the personal data they would have no ad revenue to subsidize their money losing loss-leader ventures that only exist to collect data and/or suck people in to watch advertising.
The search engine is just a targeting mechanism for ads. You tell Google what you are searching for and they serve you a targeted ad. That has always been the business model.
I personally wouldn't consider search ads with no data being stored or user level history being used as not being personalized or user targeted. They're to me no different from an ad in magazine or a static banner ad on a web page.
But I'm not sure if Google even cares too much about doing that (I know they've experimented with this, but nothing on a scale that matters), and Facebook certainly doesn't. Apple seems to be the only one that does somewhat with its differential privacy approach.
I think they can all do much more, but they're not trying too hard.
It's basically this. Imagine I have two data sets that are identical, except one has your specific data and the other doesn't. It's possible in some circumstances to infer information about you by asking for things like averages on the datasets. Differential privacy is a method for defeating attacks that rely on that type of "leakage" of information. It assures that if two datasets are close enough, queries on those datasets will not yield significant information about their differences (i.e., the presence or absence of one particular data point won't be detectable).
It's all about how queries of the data perform, and not at all about the data itself.
Democratizing the data so more companies can use it to build products beyond these major concentration of platform players is a much more practical. This is similar to the personal data requests legislation that Europe already has in place. This would be an extension to enable competing services to access this data as their customers opt into the the service. Enabling more companies to build more competitive products (employ people working towards market competitive products) not trying to set "sustainable" sheep that feed from the same troff of the concentrated power of these companies. Certainly universal basic income; but that should be wholly independent of being subordinates to these service providers.
Perhaps if I collected it and stored it, perhaps put it behind an accessible API and supplied Google et al with an API key to access it I might have a case for charging them for it.
The remedy, of course, is to establish intrinsic properties rights over our own data. No different than copyrights.
Maybe we need a new catchphrase.
I propose bodyrights. It captures the notions of self, privacy, identity, and sovereignty all in one.
When we talk about "big data" and data collection, the vast majority of what we're talking about basically just boils down to web logs, and derived data that's inferred from those logs. So is an entry in a web log that corresponds to something you did now your property? Is anything someone writes down about me now my property? If I walk in a store and the store owner writes down that I was there, is that my property?
https://gdpr-info.eu/chapter-1/
PS: GDPR says that "Yes, entries in web logs that can personally identify a data subject is personal data"
I'd like to see a requirement for all companies receiving PII to issue an account of how they use it and who it's sold to, those receiving your PII would also have an obligation to notify you, and offer access to the same audit data (how they're using it, who they got it from, who they gave/sold it to).
Legit companies would then leak information, by design, showing companies using/selling your data without notifying you.
Real fines like those anticipated in the GDPR would be needed to encourage companies to adhere to the legislation.
/ifiwereemperoroftheworld
I insist that all demographic data at rest is encrypted.
I currently believe our objectives are complimentary.
E.g. sensor-mapping data gathered by Tesla from your driving is extremely valuable even if you absolutely dissociate it from anything personally identifiable. Facebook would have immensely valuable aggregate data about how people are likely to react when seeing a particular piece of content even if they would (or would be required to) not link the event to anything personally identifiable and just keep the aggregate. Etc, etc, etc.
(1) Google, Facebook and the like do have a cost, just that it's data instead of money. The fact that we're one step removed from money obscures the true cost associated with the services. And when you combine that with the fact that the services themselves obscure what data they're collecting/have, there's no way for an end consumer to know if they're getting a 'good deal' since they have no idea what they're paying. A fix to this would be radical forced transparency - every consumer should be able to find out what data any company has on them - both collected and bought (and bought from whom for how much.)
(2) Data is too large a competitive advantage in certain industries. It seems similar to me to utilities. Barring local law I could try and start up a new water company and displace the incumbent but it would never work - the huge fixed costs make the industry prone to natural monopolization. Same here except with data. There are absolutely ginormous costs associated with collecting user data that could rival Google's or Facebook's (if it's even possible). You could start a company to try to beat Google but you'll never get the data to make it good enough to compete and since you're not good enough to compete you'll never get the data. The free market here has done it's work - it's generated something new and useful and beneficial to society, now we should nationalize it so that it stays that way.
https://basicattentiontoken.org/
Count me in. I subscribe to YT Red as well.
Instead they've bet on harvesting and exploiting information about the behaviour of the many, to ultimately allow them to exert some 'control/influence' over individuals.
And they're winning the business lottery with it.
More shame us for only considering ourselves when deciding whether or not to use a service like google. I can choose not to use google/facebook, but if everyone else uses them, they'll still have incredible power over me through the insights they gleaned about everyone else
Now the bad, how much am I REALLY worth? Online surveys pay out pennies at most for my "opinion". I'm a middle-class, white, male, computer scientist - the market is literally flooded with data from people like me. My data is only worth something if I was, say, a single Hispanic mother or some other niche demographic, and that's only because of their rarity.
Now, this is where the discussion typically leads to science fiction. I think this would be a great use of blockchain currency and let the market drive the value of your data. If there's a shortage of, say, beach pictures (because why not), then you're Instagram data might be of value. Likewise, the GPS locations of an underrepresented demographic is suddenly worth a more because its hard to get that kind of data.
But I think the major issue still falls back to how much its all worth. The article says $20,000, which nicely would support arguments for a living wage. I generate the data that runs the world, so pay me enough to live it in. However, what if the data isn't worth $20k?
Okay, fine, its the cost for using their land.
But THEN, you find out that your flowers (or, again, the combination) are so unique, that person begins making millions of dollars in revenue off the honey.
As the primary producer of the income, I'd feel a bit shafted if I didn't get some of type of reciprocation.
Doubly so if that person accidentally let a malicious entity on the land who then stole my unique breed of flower and then started selling/reproducing it.
"So right away, let us cast aside the technological protocols, that are usually referred to as “the internet”, that of which was built upon that make accessing or publishing information public between two or more machines…
Because talking about such things would require most internet users to cast aside social constructs they willingly suspend on a daily basis upon engaging with such technology/services (without any care to understand for oneself, one might add) and then demand collectively in retrospect to have their cries pacified while continuing to use such services (of which, most for free).
Yup, let us look past all that and believe (because that’s all we can do for ourselves) that institutions/organizations/companies/governments, that all consist of our fellow human beings in all of our qualities and flaws, can provide for the individual that which he chooses not to do for himself, to a satisfactory level in which his desires are forever coddled and placated." "The Banality of Privacy As A Service" [0]
[0] http://pictobar.tumblr.com/post/63785124046/the-banality-of-...
Yes it does.
"Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy"
That it is.
" but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering."
And when did I agree to Equifax's terms?
While you've presented a compelling counter-argument, I'm still not convinced.
>And when did I agree to Equifax's terms?
You didn't need to because they never stored "your data".
It was far more compelling that your argument.
"You didn't need to because they never stored "your data"."
Yes, they did. My social security number, my address history, my employment history, all my data.
I can write down in my notepad right now:
and whether it's true or false, real or imaginary, relevant or irrelevant to you personally, it doesn't make it yours.Non sequitur and a red herring.
>To believe otherwise is to believe that a person does not have personal agency, and that a person is not in charge of themselves.
Non sequitur. Someone owning data about you has nothing to do with denying someone's "personal agency". Quite the opposite. I would suggest someone recording the actions you make is a testament to the principle of personal agency. You can own yourself and your choices all day long, but you don't control the consequences of those actions. Furthermore, if you're saying someone cannot record things that they observe, you are denying them their personal agency. (As an aside, I find your appeal to "personal agency" curious given your previous assertion that people are irrational, implying the foolishness of such a principle).
>But in the real world, that's simply not true. And in the real world
In the real world there are a myriad of legal jurisdictions, with a myriad of laws whose principles and motives often are contradictory. I am not arguing from the perspective of the status quo. Individuals can also demonstrate cognitive dissonance.
Please answer the following questions:
1) If I observe you walking down the street and I see you wearing a pair of Adidas athletic shoes, and I make a mental note to myself "s73v3r_ wears Adidas athletic shoes", do you own my thought?
1a) If yes to #1 how do you justify owning a stranger's thoughts?
2) If I write down the thought in my notepad, do you own the entry in my notepad?
2a) If yes to #2 how do you justify owning an entry in a stranger's notepad who expended their labor creating?
If you answered no to #1 and yes to #2 then you have a contradiction you need to account for (data is data whether it is in memory or persisted). If you answered no to #1 and no to #2 then you have established the principle that you do not own data about you. If you answered yes to #1 and yes to #2 then it would be good for you to at least be explicit so those who are following the argument understand your premise.
For example, even if it was originally gathered with your permission, that permission can be revoked; EU GDPR will clarify the exact process of how that can be done.
Any time a question has a "shouldn't", the answer is usually no.
Want more compensation? You’re free to negotiate or take your data elsewhere to a higher bidder.
We live in a world of modern slavery where one needs the skill and luck to find a good job to avoid the streets. A better distribution of wealth would be great of course. Imagine all those billionaires rendering at least half of their fortunes back to the poor. But that is not realistic and will never happen. Things will get worse to the point they lock us up in some sort of "District 9" (Elysium).
Unfortunately that will also put a cap on their profits, so it's unlikely they'll do that.
It was $27.76 in Q4, and $21.20 in Q3 (for the US + Canada).
It's not implausible that it'll eventually hit $200 per year in the US + Canada.
For fun, here's their quarterly ARPU over the last few years in the US+CA, starting from 1Q15, excluding all Q4 results (Q4 skews because it spikes):
$8.32, $9.30, $10.49, $12.43, $14.34, $15.65, $17.07, $19.38, $21.20
Quite the increase machine. US+CA ARPU for 4Q17 ($27.76) was triple that of 4Q14 ($9).
https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
There aren't 1.4B active daily users in the US and Canada, because there aren't even that many people.
He's looking at the one of the richest slices of Facebook's user-base, but it looks like you're looking at the global/worldwide numbers, which include a lot of much poorer people.
Privacy is not the only issue.
Using user data for ad targeting is the past/present. The future is using users to train AI.
Facial recognition in photos is a good example of this. Facebook has the most advanced facial recognition in the world because they got millions (billions?) of hours of free labor from their users classifying photos.
Amazon Echo is doing the same thing with speech recognition.
Cloud based AI platforms capture the data from engineers training AI algorithms and the goal is to use that data to train an AI to replace the engineers.
Not only are people being duped into giving away their labor for free but they are increasingly being used to train the AIs that are going to replace their jobs.
www.databook.one
@dasil003 I agree that Facebook's ARPU is super low. However, with that statistic is related to ad revenue, not revenue from the sale of data. Facebook doesn't publically sell its consumer data. Thus, we're talking apples and oranges.
To buy raw data, you need to go to data brokers, who are currently earning $250 billion per year from selling consumer data. Raw data is super valuable because you can build predictive models with it. With very small samples of customer data, powerful models can be built that can deliver millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars to a business' bottom line.
I can testify to this because I led the technology team for company that earned millions by leveraging machine learning to predict who would sell their house bellow market prices in the next few months.
The problem with buying data from data brokers is that the quality is awful. For example, the accuracy rate of America's largest data broker, Acxiom is only 50%. This problem is holding back the advancement of machine learning. If consumers linked and verified their own data, we could improve that accuracy rate significantly and deliver much more accurate models to businesses.
Thus, we expect that compensation paid by companies to individuals sharing their complete data profiles could be significant.
I've seen estimates that the value of data will reach $7,500K per American per year by 2022.
Even if we reached 10% of this estimate, I'd want that money in my pocket instead of some data broker.
What are your thoughts?
People aren't going to directly assist and curate the ability for 3rd parties to spew more spam & spyware on their webpages and in their email inboxes. If they could see what sort of data is being tracked, that can easily trigger their creepiness receptors and wish to distance themselves from it.
The only reason people endure the current situation is because they don't feel they can do anything about it, and really don't know the extent of what's going on. Empowering them will finally allow them to actively break out of that cycle.