Comment by medhir

Comment by medhir 3 months ago

23 replies

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In a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk.

Have witnessed first-hand the threats by foreign state actors penetrating US-based cloud infrastructure. And it’s not like any of our domestic corporations are practicing the type of security hygiene necessary to prevent those intrusions.

So idk, the whole thing feels like a farce that will mainly benefit Zuck and co while doing very little to ultimately protect our interests.

We would be much better off actually addressing data privacy and passing legislation that regulates every company in a consistent manner.

0xbadcafebee 3 months ago

It's questionable what a more functional democracy would actually do, since there hasn't really been one in history. There's been other forms of democracy, but they've all had their flaws, and none of them so far have acted in the interests of all the people in that country.

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  • sobellian 3 months ago

    I am not an "America bad" type of fellow, but US democracy is clearly reaching a local minimum. I suspect "never more functional" is an idea with which even your representative would disagree. There are multiple major issues that Congress should have addressed decades ago and instead they've only become more intractable. The country is more than its government, but the core democratic component, Congress, simply gets very little done. I do not think it can go much longer before some series of events forces broad compromises and realignment.

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  • medhir 3 months ago

    I mean, however flawed the EU may be, I think they are earnestly trying to protect the average person from the current paradigm of abusive data collection. Perfect can’t be the enemy of good.

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    • rdm_blackhole 3 months ago

      That is blatantly wrong.

      The EU has been trying to ban encryption for the last 3 years so that it can read all your text messages, listen to your conversations and monitor the images you send to your loved ones/friends without requiring a warrant from the authorities, therefore granting them an unlimited access to everyone's private life without offering any possible recourse.

      The EU's pro-privacy stance is a just a facade, they want as much data as the US government, they just don't want to admit it publicly.

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      • medhir 3 months ago

        ok, that’s fair, I totally blanked on the anti-encryption stance.

        I still think having something on the books for general data protection is a net good, as it forced all the biggest US-based companies to at least start implementing data privacy controls.

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    • Always42 3 months ago

      Isn’t the EU trying to ban encryption? Do you really think they give a crap about average person

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      • wafflemaker 3 months ago

        Aren't you using USB C for all devices? Don't companies have to disclose selling your data online? Right to repair? EU is made of many forces. The cryptography ban is stupid, but EU doesn't homogenously support it.

        It's an ocean away from dark patterns on every step and people thinking that having to spend 3 hours on phone to cancel a subscription is "normal".

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      • [removed] 3 months ago
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rayiner 3 months ago

> In a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk.

You obviously don't mean "democracy," but some other word. We don't see mass data collection as a problem because most Americans don't care about privacy. The only reason this Tik Tok thing is even registering is because of the treat of China, which Americans do care about.

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  • 34679 3 months ago

    There's nothing preventing China from buying mass data from Facebook or one of the many data brokers. This is about censorship and the ability to control public narratives.

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    • bl4kers 3 months ago

      You're falsely equating mass data. If anyone can buy the data from brokers then it's effectively public and could be weaponized by anyone. If TikTok collects their own data and doesn't sell it, then it's not public and can be weaponized exclusively by the Chinese government. And that's separate even from algorithm manipulation, which is another liability that's difficult to catch & prove definitively.

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    • loeg 3 months ago

      Facebook does not sell data. They sell ad targeting. Selling the data would kill the ad revenue stream and kill the business.

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DoneWithAllThat 3 months ago

Claiming that “mass data collection” by our own government is inherently a natural security risk is not an assertion based on rational evidence.

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  • cush 3 months ago

    It's absolutely a risk because these databases are unregulated honey pots. They're a total liability

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