<story><title>How Privacy Became a Commodity for the Rich and Powerful</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/magazine/how-privacy-became-a-commodity-for-the-rich-and-powerful.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>apetresc</author><text>Okay, I&amp;#x27;ll bite - what kinds of things do I not &amp;quot;understand is actually happening&amp;quot; in terms of what companies like Google and Facebook do with my data? I&amp;#x27;m a reasonably technical person and I honestly believe the &amp;quot;tradeoffs&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;m making with companies like that are firmly in my favor.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not the first time I&amp;#x27;ve asked people who seemed convinced that I was in some sort of abusive Stockholm-syndrome relationship with Google&amp;#x2F;FB&amp;#x2F;etc to explain what exactly is so bad about the metadata packages they&amp;#x27;re selling. The only convincing arguments I&amp;#x27;ve ever heard have centered around insurance companies denying me coverage based on risk factors I&amp;#x27;m revealing, but I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure nobody is actually doing that. Everything else basically just boils down to &amp;quot;they get to show you better ads&amp;quot; which honestly seems like a win-win to me.</text></item><item><author>_jal</author><text>As Bruce Schneier used to say, give people the option between security and .gifs of dancing pigs, they will take the pigs every time.&lt;p&gt;As abused as they are, internet users need to build up some healthy &amp;quot;buyer beware&amp;quot; instincts around the tradeoffs. They&amp;#x27;ll tell Facebook things they&amp;#x27;d never physically say in front of strangers due to the bait-and-switch feeling of talking to friends, forgetting the panopticon around them.&lt;p&gt;I think part of this is the mystery surrounding data practices - people fall for come-ons they wouldn&amp;#x27;t accept if they understood what was actually happening. So more and louder talk about things like unroll.me is good - if people hear more about others feeling burned by the bait-and-switch, they&amp;#x27;ll hopefully be more careful, because they see the results of accepting that anodyne &amp;quot;may share with trusted partners&amp;quot; language.</text></item><item><author>danieldk</author><text>I think the article touches upon a key problem: even if some people are in principle willing to sacrifice some privacy in order to get a product for free, it should be required to state what data is shared with whom in clear human language (and not in a 20 page wall of legalese).&lt;p&gt;The relation between the user and a service is now completely asymmetrical: it is hard to know what your data is used for. It does not help that the legalese often boils down to &amp;#x27;you will sell your soul&amp;#x27;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alasdair_</author><text>Imagine ten years from now you decide to run for some kind of important political office.&lt;p&gt;Imagine your opponent had access to every single search query, email and message you had ever sent.&lt;p&gt;Imagine they had access to all of the GPS data from your smartphone so that they could tell exactly where you went each day, how long you spent there and (importantly) which other people were nearby.&lt;p&gt;Correlate all that with all of the things you&amp;#x27;ve ever bought because your credit card company sold that info years ago.&lt;p&gt;Add in all the data from your spouse, your children and your closes family and friends.&lt;p&gt;Now hand it to the people that are trying to smear your reputation in the worst possible way.&lt;p&gt;You can see how easy it would be to sway elections this way. Even if right now it wasn&amp;#x27;t something you cared much about - this data is collected &lt;i&gt;forever&lt;/i&gt; and I doubt you know exactly how your life is likely to be ten, twenty, thirty or more years from now.</text></comment>
<story><title>How Privacy Became a Commodity for the Rich and Powerful</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/magazine/how-privacy-became-a-commodity-for-the-rich-and-powerful.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>apetresc</author><text>Okay, I&amp;#x27;ll bite - what kinds of things do I not &amp;quot;understand is actually happening&amp;quot; in terms of what companies like Google and Facebook do with my data? I&amp;#x27;m a reasonably technical person and I honestly believe the &amp;quot;tradeoffs&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;m making with companies like that are firmly in my favor.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not the first time I&amp;#x27;ve asked people who seemed convinced that I was in some sort of abusive Stockholm-syndrome relationship with Google&amp;#x2F;FB&amp;#x2F;etc to explain what exactly is so bad about the metadata packages they&amp;#x27;re selling. The only convincing arguments I&amp;#x27;ve ever heard have centered around insurance companies denying me coverage based on risk factors I&amp;#x27;m revealing, but I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure nobody is actually doing that. Everything else basically just boils down to &amp;quot;they get to show you better ads&amp;quot; which honestly seems like a win-win to me.</text></item><item><author>_jal</author><text>As Bruce Schneier used to say, give people the option between security and .gifs of dancing pigs, they will take the pigs every time.&lt;p&gt;As abused as they are, internet users need to build up some healthy &amp;quot;buyer beware&amp;quot; instincts around the tradeoffs. They&amp;#x27;ll tell Facebook things they&amp;#x27;d never physically say in front of strangers due to the bait-and-switch feeling of talking to friends, forgetting the panopticon around them.&lt;p&gt;I think part of this is the mystery surrounding data practices - people fall for come-ons they wouldn&amp;#x27;t accept if they understood what was actually happening. So more and louder talk about things like unroll.me is good - if people hear more about others feeling burned by the bait-and-switch, they&amp;#x27;ll hopefully be more careful, because they see the results of accepting that anodyne &amp;quot;may share with trusted partners&amp;quot; language.</text></item><item><author>danieldk</author><text>I think the article touches upon a key problem: even if some people are in principle willing to sacrifice some privacy in order to get a product for free, it should be required to state what data is shared with whom in clear human language (and not in a 20 page wall of legalese).&lt;p&gt;The relation between the user and a service is now completely asymmetrical: it is hard to know what your data is used for. It does not help that the legalese often boils down to &amp;#x27;you will sell your soul&amp;#x27;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aqsalose</author><text>&amp;gt;Everything else basically just boils down to &amp;quot;they get to show you better ads&amp;quot; which honestly seems like a win-win to me.&lt;p&gt;I am not really sure if targeted ads, targeted news, targeted posts, targeted &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt; in social media is a good thing for a society in the long run. The physical reality is still the same for us; it would be great if we all lived in the same mental reality, too.&lt;p&gt;On a personal level, while some of the advertising is good (it&amp;#x27;s useful knowledge to know which online bookstores ship to my country and what are their prices), I&amp;#x27;ve always found the idea of advertising bit scary. A certain kind of optimized stimuli will make me some percentage point more like likely to want to buy a some kind thing I did not want before? Brr. I want more control of what I want.&lt;p&gt;And some tradeoffs are not about the data. I&amp;#x27;ve also noticed that an infinitely long feed that you can scroll and scroll ... is slightly addictive. I&amp;#x27;ve read that it is so on purpose: all social media platforms popular today make money by advertising, or in other words, by having their users spend their time procrastinating on Twitter&amp;#x2F;FB&amp;#x2F;etc (so that they see the ads). I don&amp;#x27;t think this is a net benefit to individual users or the society as a whole, either.</text></comment>