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Comment by aninhumer | Hacker News Reader

A market solution to privacy issues involves consumers making informed choices about how much information they share, which is currently relatively difficult. Companies are able to track a wide variety of information with only minimal effort to inform people or acquire consent.

Regulation could make their use of data far more visible, or even require explicit consent for different instances of tracking. This isn't holding the market back, it's enabling individuals to make more efficient decisions about which transactions they think are actually beneficial to them.

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I'd actually say it's relative easy to find privacy information about a product or company. Independent researchers and organizations (like EFF) are exposing privacy violations all the time. It's oftentimes just a search away.

Case in point: Pokémon Go. It didn't take long at all before they were exposed (http://adamreeve.tumblr.com/post/147120922009/pokemon-go-is-...) for requesting full access to your Google account. The subsequent outrage caused them to take a more privacy-minded stance.

My point being, this information is and can be made available to consumers without requiring government or regulation. A whole new non-profit organization could be established that does just that: researches and publishes privacy-related data on products/companies. It could even have a program that rates and awards gold stars to those that pass their requirements, like EFF's Secure Messaging Scorecard (https://www.eff.org/node/82654).

> This isn't holding the market back...

Regulation always makes it harder for new entrants to the market, while simultaneously keeping incumbents in power (because they're often large enough to handle the time and money required to comply). And with less competition comes less choice, poorer service, and higher prices.

It sounds backwards, but not regulating privacy actually makes it easier for privacy-minded companies to enter the market and find success.

>I'd actually say it's relative easy to find privacy information about a product or company. ... It's oftentimes just a search away.

And I think that's still far too much effort to expect from people for every single company they interact with. People should not be able to give up their privacy without actively choosing to do so.

>Regulation always makes it harder for new entrants to the market, while simultaneously keeping incumbents in power ... not regulating privacy actually makes it easier for privacy-minded companies to enter the market and find success.

In order to have a competitive market for privacy, it needs to be a visible choice.

If companies can hide data gathering in the small print, it makes it hard to convince people that your product is meaningfully different. Whereas if the other company has a big notice saying "We sell your data to advertisers" and yours doesn't, it's a lot easier to sell.

Yes, the cost of compliance will marginally reduce competition overall, but competition in terms of privacy will be greatly increased because people will actually factor it into their decisions.

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