Comment by jlarocco

Comment by jlarocco 10 months ago

24 replies

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The cognitive dissonance is in the voters and users.

Even right here on HN, where most people understand the issue, you'll see conversations and arguments in favor of letting companies vacuum up as much data and user info as they want (without consent or opt-in), while also saying it should be illegal for the government to collect the same data without a warrant.

In practice, the corporations and government have found the best of both worlds: https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-purchase-location-data-wray-... Profit for the corporation, legal user data for the government.

spacemadness 10 months ago

HN is filled with folks that wrote the code in question, or want to create similar products. And they hate to have it pointed out that these tools may cause harm so they thrash around and make excuses and point fingers. A tale as old as this site.

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  • mrmetanoia 10 months ago

    I often have to remind myself who hosts this board and that I am hanging out on a site for successful and aspiring techno-robber-barons.

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    • singleshot_ 10 months ago

      Explaining that modern technology is user-hostile and destructive to the society is nowhere else more on-topic than Paul Graham’s ego blog. While it might be true to say the site is “for” robber barons, There are a lot more users here than the ones you described.

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    • sabbaticaldev 10 months ago

      > I am hanging out on a site for successful and aspiring techno-robber-barons.

      that’s how we first arrive here (all of us). Time pass tho and most around fail then we become proper people capable of reasoning

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    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 10 months ago

      Complete with egotistical and ironic appropriation of the word hacker.

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neuralRiot 10 months ago

>The cognitive dissonance is in the voters and users.

People really need to learn to say “NO” even if that means an inconvenience “Your personal information might be shared with our business partners for metrics and a customer tailored experience” no thanks, “what is your phone number? so I can give you 10% discount” no thanks, “cash or credit?” Cash, thanks, “login with google/ apple/ blood sample” no thanks

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BeetleB 10 months ago

Anti-disclaimer: I'm not one of those folks.

However, that's not at all a cognitive dissonance. Fundamentally, there's a difference between governments and private companies, and it is fairly basic to have different rules for them. The government cannot impinge on free speech, but almost all companies do. The government cannot restrict religion, but to some extent, companies can. Etc.

Of course, in this case, it's understandable to argue that neither side should have that much data without consent. But it's also totally understandable to allow only the private company to do so.

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  • jlarocco 10 months ago

    There is fundamentally a difference between corporations and the government, but it's still a cognitive dissonance. These aren't the laws of physics - we chose to have different rules for the government and corporations in this case.

    There are plenty of cases where the same rules apply to both the government and corporations.

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doctorpangloss 10 months ago

There isn’t a single intellectually honest harm associated with the majority of app telemetry and for almost all ad data collection. Like go ahead and name one.

Once you say some vague demographic and bodily autonomy stuff: you know, if you’re going to invoke “voters,” I’ve got bad news for you. Some kinds of hate are popular. So you can’t pick and choose what popular stuff is good or what popular stuff is bad. It has to be by some objective criteria.

Anyway, I disagree with your assessment of the popular position anyway. I don’t think there is really that much cognitive dissonance among voters at all. People are sort of right to not care. The FTC’s position is really unpopular, when framed in the intellectually honest way as it is in the EU, “here is the price of the web service if you opt out of ads and targeting.”

You also have to decide if ad prices should go up or down, and think deeply: do you want a world where ad inventory is expensive? It is an escape valve for very powerful networks. Your favorite political causes like reducing fossil fuel use and bodily autonomy benefit from paid traffic all the same as selling junk. The young beloved members of Congress innovate in paid Meta campaign traffic. And maybe you run a startup or work for one, and you want to compete against the vast portfolio of products the network owners now sell. There’s a little bit of a chance with paid traffic but none if you expect to play by organic content creation rules: it’s the same thing, but you are transferring money via meaningless labor of making viral content instead of focusing on your cause or business. And anyway, TikTok could always choose to not show your video for any reason.

The intellectual framework against ad telemetry is really, really weak. The FTC saying it doesn’t change that.

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  • photonthug 10 months ago

    > There isn’t a single intellectually honest harm associated with the majority of app telemetry and for almost all ad data collection. Like go ahead and name one.

    You’ve already signaled that you’re ready and willing to dismiss any of the many obvious reasons why this is bad. But let’s flip it. What intellectually honest reason do you have for why it would be wrong if I’m watching you while you sleep? If I inventory your house while you’re away, and sell this information to the highest bidder? No bad intentions of course on my part, these things are just my harmless hobby and how I put bread on the table.

    In my experience literally everyone who argues that we don’t really have a need for privacy, or that concerns about it are paranoid or that there’s no “real” threat.. well those people still want their own privacy, they just don’t respect anyone else’s.

    More to the point though, no one needs to give you an “intellectually honest” reason that they don’t want to be spied on, and they don’t need to demonstrate bad intentions or realistic capabilities of the adversary, etc. If someone threatens to shoot you, charges won’t be dropped because the person doesn’t have a gun. The threat is extremely problematic and damaging in itself, regardless of how we rank that persons ability to follow through with their stated intent.

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    • doctorpangloss 10 months ago

      > What intellectually honest reason do you have for why it would be wrong if I’m watching you while you sleep? If I inventory your house while you’re away, and sell this information to the highest bidder?

      This is an interesting idea, but it's a pretty far analogy from app telemetry or ad data collection. If you're really saying, "would it be wrong for me as a camera app developer to collect the videos end users record?" I suppose the answer would really be, "It depends." Like that's what Instagram does, it collects videos end users record. But without their permission? I guess not, no, but that's pretty obvious. The same would be true if you made firmware for security cameras, which happened to be pointed at my bedroom. I suppose if you asked for permission, and I granted it, go ahead - if you didn't ask for permission, I would be surprised why you would need to collect the videos as a firmware developer. The house inventory thing is the same tack - are you talking about, does it make sense for Amazon to sell my purchase history, or something? I guess they asked for permission, go ahead... Nobody forces me to use Amazon or whatever.

      Instagram, Amazon, etc. do the things they do with permission. And I don't think anyone who is fully educated is surprised what the idea is for the transactional attribution data it collects. There's lying by omission, which is bad, but that is an issue of leadership and education. Everyone in the EU still chooses telemetry and free over no telemetry and paid service, when it is spelled out to them. It's too bad that leadership has to be taken in that form, but there's no alternative in the regime they built there.

      If this is just a competition over the leadership and education of laypeople, so be it, but this real life experiment keeps happening, and the people who try to inject drama into ad telemetry keep losing, so I really don't think it's just about lying. There is a real lack of harm.

      > reason that they don’t want to be spied on

      Nobody forces you to use Instagram. If you think ad data attribution is a form of spying, go for it. Delete the free social media apps. I don't use them. I don't have Instagram, TikTok, etc. I spend less than 10m a week watching something on YouTube. I don't even have a TV in my house. Do you see? They are not enriching your life.

      > In my experience literally everyone who argues... well those people still want their own privacy, they just don’t respect anyone else’s.

      In my experience this is pure projection. I respect when people don't want to give permission to Instagram to collect ad telemetry when they choose to not install the app. Of course, you say these things on the Internet, but you, you personally, are not going to migrate off of Gmail, which does all the same things. This is all really about vibes, about vibes being vibesy against social media, but not vibes being vibesy against Gmail, which would be a major inconvenience to say no to, and it would suck to have to pay $35/mo for e-mail - at the very least!

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      • photonthug 10 months ago

        So basically your argument is everything is fine because consumers can opt out. Another tired old argument where even the people saying it don’t really believe it.

        You can’t even rent a hotel room without giving them an email and a phone number they don’t need, and are looking to sell. If this works for you.. the person at the counter probably faked it rather than arguing with you. Some people will be happy when menus disappear and you need to install an app. What happens when you can’t check out of the grocery store without the requisite likes-and-subscribes? What happens when your flashlight app has 37 page ToS that says they reserve the right to steal your contact list for the purposes of selling flashlight apps? All is well because you can see in the dark, and no one makes you choose anything? Well I hope there’s healthy competition amongst the manufacturers of your pacemaker, and they don’t inform your insurance company that your health is deteriorating..

        If you’ve got no sense of right or wrong beyond what is legally permissible, just exercise your imagination a bit to look at the likely future, and ask yourself if that’s how you really want to live.

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  • jlarocco 10 months ago

    > There isn’t a single intellectually honest harm associated with the majority of app telemetry and for almost all ad data collection. Like go ahead and name one.

    The harm is the privacy violation. App telemetry needs to be "opt-in", and people should know who can see the data and how it's being used.

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  • timeon 10 months ago

    Are you in ad telemetry industry?

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  • arminiusreturns 10 months ago

    The intelligence agencies literally use ad data to do "targeted killing" what are you even talking about?

    Ex-NSA Chief: 'We Kill People Based on Metadata'...

    Reply View 5 replies
    • walrushunter 10 months ago

      So terrorists? You're concerned data logging may harm terrorists?

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      • arminiusreturns 10 months ago

        I got my start in the military in anti-terrorism and I find your comment foolishly naive, provacative, and short-sighted beyond measure.

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    • doctorpangloss 10 months ago

      Can you define a harm suffered by the people that the FTC represents? What about the EU beneficiaries of the GDPR? This is sincere, it is meant to advance to a real and interesting conversation.

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      • arminiusreturns 10 months ago

        I think privacy violations are a harm in themselves, but you seem to have already dismissed this issue, so I'll move on. How about behavioral manipulation via microtargeting, economic harm via price discrimination, reselling of the data via monetization to unscrupulous aggregators or third parties, general security reduction (data and metadata sets could be used for APT, etc), or the chilling effect of being tracked all the time in this way?

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        • doctorpangloss 10 months ago

          > How about behavioral manipulation via microtargeting...

          I don't know. Ads are meant to convince you to buy something. Are they "behavioral manipulation?" Are all ads harmful?

          > ...economic harm via price discrimination...

          Should all price discrimination be "illegal?" This is interesting because it makes sense for the FTC and for anti-trust regulators to worry about consumer prices. Price discrimination in software services - the thing I know about - helps the average consumer, because it gets richer people to pay more and subsidize the poor.

          > reselling of the data via monetization to unscrupulous aggregators or third parties

          "Unscrupulous" is doing a lot of work here.

          > ...general security reduction...

          Gmail and Chrome being free ad subsidized has done a lot more for end user security than anything else. Do you want security to be only for the rich? It really depends how you imagine software works. I don't know what APT stands for.

          > chilling effect of being tracked all the time in this way?

          Who is chilled?

          I guess talk about some specific examples. They would be really interesting.

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itronitron 10 months ago

And in Europe, everyone and their dog uses WhatsApp

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  • ale42 10 months ago

    Not everyone but almost... and it's the same in other places (was already the case in Buenos Aires when I went there a few years ago). And of course when you tell people that there are better alternatives, many of them don't want "another app"... (but then they install one full of trackers to hope get some kind of prize at the local supermarket).

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