California Eyes Data Privacy Measure

EDIT: looks like this is because I'm logged into my own Wordpress blog. Weird that that should have any bearing on my ability to load this blog.

Another example, you don't have to buy an Amazon Echo or Google Assistant. If you find cloud connected microphones in your home creepy, don't do it. Why is that not sufficient? Or do the people who are creeped out want to make the choice for other people and remove products from the market they'd like to use?

An example is Facebook's reaction to racial profiling in the real estate and renters market. In my opinion, they handled that as well as could be reasonably expected.

People don't even read the ToS (term of service). I'm pessimistic that they would even do this.

Past that, it's also surprising that a lot of this is about selling data, but what about using it internally? It seems like Facebook and Google don't want to sell your data as they consider it their proprietary asset.

Philosophically, some of these regulations run afoul negative rights. When you interact with other people, or any entity, they will retain a memory of it. A lot of this data collection used to exist, but was informal, on pen and paper, or simply retained by the mind of the local establishments as their customers were locals. Saying that you own information that is by nature joint information like an entangled particle, and that another party must erase it, may be a pragmatic and utilitarian policy to deal with the increasing probability of bad actors (State or otherwise) misusing information, but the philosophy behind it rubs me the wrong way.

Let's say a run a video arcade, and I keep track of which games everyone plays when they come in through the door. Though I hold no PII on the people, through some mechanism I can assign them a unique ID and recognize them on return (e.g. token card). Why should this joint information: what entities playing my arcade cabinets, be exclusively owned by you, especially if I'm not even providing the games for free?

I'm asking this as a philosophical question, what's the moral justification that one side of a two sided exchange retains exclusivity to information? (and by exclusivity, I mean your right to ask me to delete it)

Is there something that indicates that?

Do you write code by chance? Ever introduce a bug or unintended consequence? I bet 10-1 it was logic problem, not a compiler problem.

The hard part of writing laws is in exactly and completely defining your terms. It has nothing to do with the legal system, and more to do with the nature of language itself.

Gödel's 'incompleteness theorems' comes to mind.

Before GDPR there was virtually no downside for gathering private information. There was no downside for using that information to profile customers for any purpose you want. Now there is a downside: you have to tell the customer what you are doing with the data and you have to get permission to do so if the use is not related to the service that you are providing to the customer.

IMHO this strikes a good balance. You can still use the data, but there is a cost. Even within the organisation where I work, it has completely changed the way they look at this data. Previously the attitude was, "Let's collect the data and use it, because why not?" Now we're being told, "These are the only things we want to collect data on because we don't want to piss off our customers".

This is exactly what I want. I have in the past used Facebook's services. I currently use Google's services. I don't mind if their business model is destroyed because IMHO, on balance this way is better. I don't mind if people will have to pay for services like theirs. I'm old enough to remember a time where it was already like that -- it's really not so bad. Having thought about it (by way of being required to implement GDPR), I'm going to move to move away from the Google's et al. Having seen the transition in the company I work for, it's clear to me how much better it is.

Apart from that, I've found no way of getting text-only links to articles that don't happen to be linked from the frontpage.

I have some experience running online subscriptions, and my policy has always been that you can unsubscribe straightforwardly. Typically it takes a couple of clicks clicks, one to start and one to confirm, and the whole process is immediate and fully automated. In some cases, maybe there's also a brief and optional exit survey, but never anything deceptive or that significantly obstructs someone who wants to cancel. Like not using some conversion optimisation techniques that cross a line into invading privacy, I just see this as treating our customers how we'd like to be treated ourselves.

Many people have used these facilities with no trouble and those services have generally received few complaints, but you do still get the special people who instead of taking ten seconds to do that would rather send a page-long email about how they demand that we cancel their subscription right now and if we charge them again they'll dispute it, and they'll literally send that email 5 minutes before their next renewal fee goes through.

When you're dealing with that kind of person, you want it to be stated very clearly and in writing that their subscription continues until cancelled in the proper way, that merely emailing is not sufficient to cancel and may not take effect immediately even if we do honour the request, etc. Of course, that doesn't stop us from being friendly and helpful if someone sends a polite cancellation request by email, even though it's an irritating waste of time to deal with those requests manually, but you can't be too casual about cancellations or, sadly, some people will exploit that.

A link to a static page "we don't collect user data" is now "functionality"?