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Comment by rfrank | Hacker News Reader

Why not Google or Facebook founders, executives, and employees whose salaries are paid with the profits of selling other peoples' information? Why not the C-suite of the ISPs who will happily sell user data? Why not the entire adtech industry? Ajit Pai is one actor in a very corrupt system, and a lot of that system is based in San Francisco.

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Do Google and Facebook really sell data? From my understanding, they keep the data for ad targeting, feature/content recommendations. Like if I place an ad on Facebook I could put 18 to 35, who likes travel, etc to promote a hotel booking site as an example. Even if you do retarget with Facebook advertising, they don't even show you the names of the people. You have like a retargeting list, it tells you how many people but not much information on them.

Even third party developers get an ID number per user associated to that app only(think of it as a proxy to your real id number). It seems like Facebook and Google cares a lot more about privacy than people think. If they just sold me the data, I could run off with it but by keeping the data to themselves and letting marketers pay them to make use of it they make recurring revenue.

From my understanding, LexisNexis and other data brokers were the ones that are selling the data. Here's a 60 minutes clip on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAT_ina93NY

I don't have any relationship with LexisNexis, I never agreed to anything yet they have information on me. Another example is I was looking at my credit report, and it even lists addresses from childhood. I never had a credit card back then, why do they have information on me? At least with Google and Facebook, I gave consent and I see a benefit. You can even buy lists of people and their medications(sounds like a HIPPA violation but the data brokers know this stuff)

Yes. Giving the NSA direct access to their databases doesn't seem like caring about user privacy to me. I don't perceive the 'consent' issue the same way; sending an email or uploading a picture to the internet shouldn't require 100 different data points on my device and location. YMMV, but I find working for companies who's business model is to exploit other people's personal information for profit is an enormously distasteful thing to do.

The whole discussion is a farce at this point. Tech workers who literally created the incentive to make clickbait content, filter bubbles, and data silos are now upset with "fake news", social polarization, and a "closed" net, while flatly refusing to acknowledge their role in getting us here over the last 20 years. Ajit Pai is the last person to blame when wondering who broke the net.

I haven't been following the whole NSA/CIA stuff as much lately, but from my understanding Google, Facebook never directly sold people's information. Yes, they monetize it I knew that but It was from my understanding companies mostly "rent" the data without getting a copy of the data(just using it).

> YMMV, but I find working for companies who's business model is to exploit other people's personal information for profit is an enormously distasteful thing to do.

For the record, I don't work for any company's that abuse people's personal information. I do have a bit of knowledge on how Facebook ads work because I've used them before.

I don't even view Google or Facebook as doing bad compared to the large data brokers.

I work in marketing. Not selling data direct to people like you or I does not mean they don't sell data. Depending on how hard you try, you can get enormously specific with just the data you are supplied by them. I perceive their business model as fundamentally bad (I would use the word wrong or repugnant), and their willingness to comply with us intelligence agencies is worse. I realize this is an increasingly uncommon sentiment in the bay, that sort of idealism died here a long time ago.

https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking...

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