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Comment by WorkLifeBalance | Hacker News Reader

There's a better solution: Stop collecting and keeping personal data.

I can't even read this article without using firefox reader mode to skip the cookie warning / prompt (this works for a lot of sites!).

That's a choice that techdirt make. By framing it as an unavoidable consequence of the cookie legislation or GDPR moves the focus to the wrong place.

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Dude, Spotify is a song streaming service. Holding on to song history is one of the features they offer. Lyft and Uber are taxi services. Holding on to history is a feature. Go start your own privacy car if you want. I’m not in favour of this world where you privacy first people want all these features removed from applications I use.

Or, better yet, why don't those companies ask before keeping all this data?

They keep quite a bit more than what you see on the surface, or what would be needed for the simplest definition of play history https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1025024813889478656

If they could tell me where I listened to what I’d love that. I wish there were Services for Feature-lovers. I’d love for my player to be able to handle mood (road trips vs work) and hold all these things without me thinking about it. I don’t want checkbox hell.

You're like the NSA's wet dream.

Just track everything and I don't want to think about it!!

Collecting data subsidizes the cost of the service.

Would facebook have 1 billion users if it cost $5.99 a month?

Data collection is not going anywhere, so long as people are willing (even unknowingly) to give up info for a perceived discount.

Now here - fill out my form with your address, email, phone, photo id, and passport number for a chance to win a brand new 2019 Honda!

>Data collection is not going anywhere, so long as people are willing (even unknowingly) to give up info for a perceived discount.

People are willing in large part because they have no clue what their data is actually worth and/or what pieces of their data are actually out there. Data collection survives because people don't realize they're already paying $5.99 a month (or whatever the real breakeven number is.)

I think it's a pretty good rule of markets that people should know what it is they're exchanging. To that end I should be able to see what these companies gather on me when I use their service.

Well Facebook makes about $1.50 per year per user. So they could charge a lot less than almost $6 per month, but it would be harder to capture that money.

There have been many free ad-supported services that don't collect your data for many years: newspapers, TV channels, radio, etc.

"Accept data collection or pay for it" is a false dichotomy. Ad-supported websites don't need data collection to be profitable, just as NBC doesn't.

Furthermore, there are many paid services that collect data as well. Last time I flew with KLM the online check-in didn't work because some JS errored out as its data collection script was blocked. Turned out it was sending data to 17 domains on the on-line checkin page:

4232724.fls.doubleclick.net ad.atdmt.com apps.static-afkl.com c.webtrends.com cdn.tagcommander.com connect.facebook.com dynamic.dimml.io googleads.g.doubleclick.net lm.commander1.com platform.twitter.com sjs.bizographics.com statse.webtrendslive.com t.svtrd.com tdn.r42tag.com w.usabilla.com www.google-analytics.com www.googleadservices.com

And KLM isn't even a budget airline like RyanAir. I paid good money for my flight.

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