How Calls for Privacy May Upend Business for Facebook and Google

Ads themselves are not so problematic. But the idea that companies have to collect amounts of data that make the Stasi look like a bunch of privacy activists is very much problematic.

“Move fast and fix things”

I typed up a response with a few of my experiences, but it's probably wiser to not share those anecdotes at this time.

Suffice to say I've had the exact opposite experience, where the only people who cared about security and stability in any capacity were the youngins, and the veterans dismissed any and all suggestions for improvement regardless of how diplomatically (or not) they were worded.

The one anecdote I do feel comfortable sharing is in regards to stability, not security, but it's fairly similar to what I've encountered security-wise.

Once, I inherited a legacy codebase very tightly coupled to a legacy platform. I managed to shove an abstraction layer in there, which was then used to port the same codebase between three very different platforms.

The biggest problem that I had was in maintaining the very specific, somewhat unintuitive, completely undocumented behavior of the original codebase. Which was of course very tightly coupled to by downstream processes. But after getting the API in there, I was able to run the code on its own and that meant that I could start writing automated tests.

I listed off the biggest pain points whenever changes were made and the most critical behaviors that actually generated revenue, and put them all under test. Everything that commonly went wrong (and there was a lot thanks to some unreliable domain-specific tooling) was now automatically validated whenever changes were made.

When I showed one of my bosses (the owner of the company and someone in a former technical role) he was less than impressed. I was told off for avoiding my job, and instructed to test it manually like a real programmer.

I've worked in startup/mid size companies outside U.S and from what i've seen its totally inaccurate to say that startups outside U.S move slowly because they take privacy/security more seriously.

One way to make customers start caring about security? Regulation. In a very small startup with a serious shortage of resources, we're currently planning our GDPR compliance. And we're not doing it because we think privacy is important (though we do), we're doing it because customers are telling us that we need it before they can sign up. If customers aren't going to think security is important on their own (and they aren't), passing laws that force them to think it's important is the only way to change the situation.

In short: starting startups will become more difficult. One of the things most taxing and scary for people in our society, starting your own business, but also one of the things most needed and useful (who else creates jobs and Big Cos later?!) will become harder to do.

But what did startups ever did for us, no?!

I think there's an enormous difference between advertising in print, advertising on the internet, and what is currently the status quo, which is active surveillance of all information consumed and every movement that individuals make across the internet and in the real world by data linked through GPS/ cell phone location, credit card purchases, etc.

I'm aware that this is the new reality, but comparing it to print advertising (or even pop up ads of the early internet) is disingenuous at best.

The kgb would have dreamed about having this much intelligence on the American public and thanks to Facebook, the fsb could get it through a stupid personality quiz.

The problem is not allowing a company access to your data. The problem is how it's used.

Just because you allowed another company to handle your data should not give them carte blanche to do whatever with it they want.

This is exactly why Europe created the GDPR.. to prevent your personal data from being processed by companies in unintended ways, or sharing your information with 3rd parties without your consent, and heavy fines for breaking these rules.

Just allowing a company access to your data and giving up at that point is the attitude that people are trying to change, because that's not the way the world should work.