Comment by mmooss 3 months ago
I don't understand the FTC. Why and how did they start protecting consumer privacy? Could they have done it before? Do they have an overall systematic plan for protecting it comprehensively? Do they have a guiding principle?
I'm glad they are moving forward on it, at least until Monday.
Please allow me to be cynical and see here no embarrassment whatsoever. They cashed on this for years and will surely find other ways (and have some already) to further cash on people. It's only one of the schemes which got foiled, and only for a while. Yes, I have zero trust and the presumption is of guilt.
Why respond in such a clown tone? Of course they did not do it for the fun of it but your narrative is highly suggestive that it was a huge cash cow. It was not, from what was reported on regarding GM is sounded like the effort was more hassle than its worth. Not sure if that will continue to be true but perhaps its too much bad PR for not really any gain.
Lmao. They were too cartoonish in their villainous behavior.
It's surprising since usually nowadays that gets you a cabinet position or a seat in the House.
> They don’t give a shit about privacy directly
But then this submission is explicitly about them giving a shit, and your own example shows that they do give a shit. Since GM didn't allow people a choice regarding their privacy, FTC looked into it?
I really don't understand how someone can see this story about FTC giving a shit, and then proclaim "They don't give a shit". If they didn't give a shit, why do something?
If they gave a shit they would ban it from all cars and not let the automakers hide it with dark patterns.
They would ban illegal data collection? Seems it's already banned, and this case proves they don't let automakers hide it with dark patterns, then you get banned from dealing with data at all.
Or you're arguing against data collection as a whole? I'm not sure FTC is the right tree to bark up to if that's the case, wouldn't you need to involve lawmakers for that? It seems to me FTC would only be able to legislate against "unfair or deceptive practices", so that's why they can address people collecting data in the wrong way, but not address data collection as a whole, would be my guess.
This is largely the work of Lina Khan and the people reporting to her. She's fairly new to the FTC still (Biden appointee) and has been intentionally pushing on all of this.
Protecting it is difficult since the house/senate and scotus are all determined to roll back pro-consumer laws but that's not really something the FTC can fix, only voters can fix that.
Voters don't seem to see these things as important though based on how they voted most recently. They have other priorities I suppose.
I'll be generous and say that voters are distracted by other things. easy unsubscribe is great, but it's never going to win an election.
I'll also be cynical and say that voters were also lacking critical thinking in terms of how the president elect simply said he'd do things with no action plan behind it. He already went back on several "promises" even before properly stepping in as President. This is just shame on us at this point.
> Voters don't seem to see these things as important though based on how they voted most recently. They have other priorities I suppose.
This is why saying "but you can elect new officials" is a canard. You only have two choices, each with thousands of consequences.
Harris wouldn't even commit to keeping Lina Khan on.
Lina Khan deserves all the praise and then some.
Banning non-competes, preventing Microsoft-Blizzard merger (amongst many others), enforcing the right-to-repair, filing lawsuits to lower drug prices, making cancelling subscriptions easier...
Your friendly reminder that both Amazon and Meta were openly against her taking the position, that the upcoming administration will scrap the antitrust lawsuits against both of them (the one against Meta was supposed to start in spring, the one against Amazon in 2026) and that this is why Bezos and Zuckerberg are cozying up to Trump.
She did not prevent the Microsoft-Blizzard merger. The FTC lost that case.
They don’t give a shit about privacy directly but GM was egregious in collecting this data
- confusing consumers
- sneakily signing up consumers to “smart driver” as part of onstar
- data brokers subsequently building profiles on users and selling this data to _insurance companies_
- consumers later finding out their insurance doesn’t get renewed because of this secret driver profile that was built without their explicit consent
If GM followed the rules by disclosing this directly, allowing consumers to opt out. They probably wouldn’t be in this embarrassing position.
It’s in the FTC release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/...