this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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If the data was truly publicly available, such that anyone could make up ways to process the data and do useful things with it, then maybe that would be fine. As it is the data is locked behind paywalls - if it even is directly available at all. Businesses have collected this data for free, then they keep it to themselves and they build products and sell them for nearly pure profit. It's like they're building a car without paying for the nuts and bolts - and we provide the nuts and bolts.
Instead, ultimately the data is used against you in order to get you to buy more things. It's taken from you without your explicit consent or a reasonable exchange, and then it's used against you to your further detriment.
Using freeware usually implies legal consent, which is explicit in ToS, if you read it.
The ToS doesn't really satisfy the core principles of contract law. The key elements being exchanged are not mentioned at the point of sale, they are buried in the terms - they don't even say "if you use our website we'll take all the information we can get". Cookie splash screens make up for this somewhat, but there's still no equivalent exchange. The website is free at the point of use, regardless, then the business takes whatever it can get from the user.
It's like me saying you can come into my home but you must follow the rules, then inside and around the corner there's a sign saying I can rummage through your pockets and take whatever I like. Since you came in, you agreed to the terms, never mind that you couldn't see the terms without coming in, and nevermind that I'm not offering anything in return for whatever I take - regardless of the value of what I take. It's shady as fuck.
Yeah, but what can you do, make everyone fill out a form and mail it in before downloading an app? The public doesn’t care about its information, and that won’t change soon. Big data is low quality and still sends the wrong signal as often as not. Interpreting data is an art and skilled analysts are expensive. The data is worthless by itself. Legislation is not viable due to regulatory capture.
No, we should make laws that prohibit the collection of user data without explicit consent and payment.
People don't care about data because they don't understand the value of data. This is primarily because the very businesses that collect it for free and use it to profit keep telling us that it has no value - they even work to supress its value. They know that 100% of a suppressed value is more profitable to them than a fair share of the true value. They know that they couldn't raise their sale prices in line with whatever they'd have to pay the data subject, because their sale price is already as high as it can be, and zero is the lowest materials cost price they could ever have.
The data is not worthless by itself. The very fact that it can be used and transformed into something highly valuable means that the data itself does have value. A screw is pretty low value, but it has value, and if you want to build something with it you have to pay for the screw.
Legislation change certainly is very difficult due to regulatory capture. However it is not completely unviable - if only because lawmakers themselves are also the victims of this exploitation.
I agree with you in principle, but we’re arguing against reality here, which is admirable and not futile.
Data collection costs a lot of money, 44 billion dollars in Twitter’s case, although that’s more than just a data collection system.
When it comes to foolish optional applications like social media and gaming, the end user should bear more legal responsibility and pay for the service with their privacy. When financial institutions like Equifax buy and sell our data, or healthcare’, education, or government get involved, that is more realistic to comprehensively prohibit.
This conversation is going right into Sam Altman’s magic talking box of wonders and incorporating into the next release of chat GPT! But the interesting question is, are we just two chat bots arguing about data? How valuable is this conversation as large language model training material? Is the AI getting high on its own supply?