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Comment by sqdbps | Hacker News Reader

Idiocy. The motive is to hamstring some of our most innovative companies which by itself is baffling and of course the collateral damage is the extra overhead and lawyers inflicted on all businesses big and small.

The desire to imitate the euros in their efforts in making it as hard as possible for our companies to operate there is beyond stupid.

California ballot initiatives like all referendums must be eradicated and the fact that a california real estate developer (the source of all that is wrong in the state) straight after killing recent zoning reform is using a ballot initiative to blackmail the assembly into passing this law makes it worse.

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> most innovative companies

If that innovation is about stalking people online & offline to serve them ads then no thanks.

Sure hope you don't use Google in your life.

DuckDuckGo is now good enough that I only use Google services a few times a day as a fallback.

Not saying I’m happy with that (I wish I could just pay Google a fair price and trust them not to stalk me) but I don’t have much choice I’m afraid.

The abuse goes much further than merely serving people ads.

Harassment, intimidation, stalking, identity theft, profiling, targeting based on political opinions or interests, blackmail, evisceration of privacy, and subversion of democracy are all enabled by such "innovation".

As more people become victims of these, and such abuses are publicized, the opposition to such surveillance will grow.

I hear this sentiment expressed a lot, but I rarely see anyone actually articulate their rationale. What do you think the downsides of that are?

I find in myself a very human desire to not have every private action subject to registration & scrutiny by unknown entities. No further justification is needed.

I think quite a bit further justification is needed. That's why I asked the question. You're proposing companies have their rights circumscribed. You need to justify that.

All justifications must ultimately rest on some axiom or set of axioms. You want to recurse down some more levels, that's fine. I don't feel the need. My answer satisfies in itself. It is an answer which recognizes human dignity.

You believe it's axiomatic that you are entitled to the services of Google and Facebook and they are not entitled to save the information that you willingly send them during the use of their services?

Even if we assume that everyone involved in processing your data is trustworthy (and that’s a very big if), there’s always the risk of an accidental data breach.

If you think Equifax was bad enough, think for a second what would be the consequences of a breach at Google or Facebook who literally have your entire online history, private messages (Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, etc) and a good overview of your offline life (Google Calendar, emails, Android device location history, etc).

Because I'm not naive. The purpose of business is to manipulate and monetize me. Wring every cent from me that they can. I don't mind, this is called capitalism. But I don't want to be a powerless victim. I have my own interests after all.

You're a 'powerless victim' here? It seems to me that you could just not use these services. You could use alternative services. But you don't want to, and apparently not wanting to is worth more to you than your privacy.

The problem with not using the services is that stalking becomes ubiquitous.

You can choose to not use Facebook, but when every single company starts stalking you (like your mobile carrier) you no longer have a way out. This is why we need regulations to make sure this doesn’t spread even more.

That would be true. Except that if people cared enough about it, it would be a competitive advantage to not do this. In some contexts, people do care, for instance. Companies like DuckDuckGo and Apple make privacy a selling point.

Telecoms are a bit of a special case, since they're a regulated monopoly. I'm all in favor of them being forced to respect privacy, since consumers don't have choice there. But in the case of internet giants like Google/FB, i'm much less on board.

You clearly haven't read the bill. Guess how I can tell?

tip: company has to either

(1) make more than $25m/year, or

(2) buy or sell personal information of 50k+ consumers/devices;

(3) make 50% of rev from selling personal data

to be subject.

ps -- passing laws popular with constituents is not exactly a reasonable definition of "blackmail."

How do they define what "selling personal data" means? Does that mean the the law affects equifax and not facebook for example? and what if a company which collects data is sold to another company or its assets were sold during bankruptcy does that count as selling personal data?

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

This sounds reasonable. Will you post a link to the legislation?

see 1798.140

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

Thanks!

I don't know why this dissenting opinion is being downvoted into oblivion.

I have no reason to trust the government or its judgement. So I don't know why people think this is necessarily great news. Now we'll have to get more green lights from .gov. And that is costly. And that is why business are tempted to leave CA.

Anyone have a link to the actual legislature?

You can still opt in... If businesses die because people would’ve never opted-in in the first place, what was the innovation?

"California ballot initiatives like all referendums must be eradicated"

Both medicinal and recreational marijuana were passed via ballot initiative.

That adds to the argument for "eradication"

Depending on who you ask, that could be a bad thing.

Literally what a ballot initiative or referendum is.

Yeah, because the "War on drugs" had been such an astounding success. eye roll

"The motive is to hamstring some of our most innovative companies"

What's innovative about sucking up user data and selling it to advertisers?

Wouldn't it be far more innovative to come up with something new, something that respects user privacy?

Have you read the actual legislation? Or is that what you think it is?

I have. Much like the GDPR, it's some great ideas that are being slandered by a bunch of people who are deeply invested in selling user data.

Interesting. Could you elaborate? Is the slander in the press?

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