Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

Are we, as a society, ok with people being desperate enough to need $20 more than privacy?

Or maybe privacy isn't something we should care about or at least value as much as we do as a society. Maybe I'm wrong. I think I see the dangers down the road but maybe it's just a mirage and privacy will die and it won't be used against use by people in power or with money.

View on HN

> Are we, as a society, ok with people being desperate enough to need $20 more than privacy?

This is not the question that's being asked here. The fact is, there are people like that, and for them, these things are great.

They're not solutions, they're band-aids. But if you're not ok with the situation existing, removing band-aids isn't particularly productive.

That's kind of what I was trying to get at, probably unsuccessfully. That maybe the anger shouldn't lie with FB or the fact this program exists but with the fact we are in place that people will accept that little for so much.

This is like saying child labor is a band-aid, not a solution, but that we shouldn't ban it because it helps children. The whole point is that it's an inherently exploitative thing that is a net negative for society even with people who need money getting paid.

Right, because installing spyware is the same thing as forcing young kids to work. What?

No questions, this is creepy. But nobody was talking about a ban. The post I replied to asked whether we should be okay with people who need $20 that badly.

The answer is no, we shouldn't be ok with it. But you're not solving the situation by banning this, you're making it worse if anything.

"We shouldn't be ok with people being homeless." "Okay, let's make 'being homeless' illegal. Problem solved!" "???"

And yes, this logic has been used before. It hasn't solved homelessness, btw.

We shouldn't be ok with people needing money that badly, and we also shouldn't be ok with creating an economic dependency on those people selling their privacy, the same way we've banned economic dependency on child labor. That is not at all equivalent to banning homelessness. It's more like banning hiring homeless people to fight lions with their bare hands for entertainment.

This is probably something you should ask the person who's desperate enough to need that $20, than to decide for them from your point of reference.

nobody is judging the desperate person, we are judging the net effect of the rest of sociiety on them.

it's provably affordable to give everyone the average rent of the world which covers housing (rent of buildings), food (rent of farmland), energy (rent of space used for solar panels, windmills, ...), natural resources (rent of mines).

I'm not attacking them for taking it, I harbor no ill will toward either group #1 or #2 of my original comment. I'm asking if we are ok with this being necessary in the first place. I'm not ok with it.

I have the app installed on my phone. I have it installed because I want the $20 amazon. I don't know if I really "need" the $20 amazon but it is 100% passive once it is installed. You literally need to do nothing. Every month they send you $20. I would not uninstall it even given the privacy concerns.

If you guys are so concerned about it then create something that puts cash in my pocket. I'll gladly run whatever app you want on my phone if you pay me.

Now you actually do make me have ill will toward #2. Enjoy your $20. A free lunch/month, right?

Edit: and now they shut it down. You can thank us privacy advocates later.

Perhaps. I notice in most societies we say there are all sorts of things that you can’t do for money with your own time and body, however desperate you may be. Selling your organs and selling sex being examples.

Selling your organs and selling sex being examples.

Resulting in thousands of deaths due to organ shortages, and sex workers being abused by pimps and corrupt cops.

Read “never let me go” by Kazuo Ishiguro, or actually even watch the movie that was made of it (same title)

That illustrates fairly well why having an underclass who provides healthy organs to the rich is a utterly barbaric idea.

> and sex workers being abused by pimps and corrupt cops

I don't have a strong opinion either way, but my understanding is that it's very very far from proven that legalizing prostitution improves the lot of sex workers -- I am led to believe that trafficking becomes _more_ of a problem in localities where sex work is legal.

Further, and again no strong personal opinion on the matter, but I suspect you'd see a huge rise in coerced organ selling if it became legalized.

These are questions societies need to answer for themselves, and my central point was that there's already precedent for societies deciding that they don't benefit when some things are available for sale, even if an individual in the moment says they want to sell it.

how is it any different than not being willing to pay $3/month for private email, and instead getting it free from google/microsoft?

I don't have a good answer for you. My bad answer is I trust Google/Microsoft a little more when they say they aren't looking at your emails than I trust FB with Everything you do on your phone and no guarantee of what they are doing with it.

I probably misunderstood you. From the very beginning of Gmail, Google has been very upfront that they do look at your emails, each and every one of them. They use automation for that, is that what you meant? No fleshy humans physically reading with their own eyeballs?

I mean, do you think we should outlaw strippers? They sure give up more privacy than this for money. What about other things people sacrifice for money? Coal miners? Crab fisherman?

Please demonstrate how a naked person is giving up more privacy than what is being discussed in the linked article.

When a person is paid to strip you, nor the house, get to read everything they do on their smartphones.

I agreed with TheSpiceIsLife, I don't see how those compare. Seeing someone naked is so completely different than having full access to what they do on their smart phone. In fact, on their smart phone there are probably naked pictures.

Teenage strippers are frowned upon in most jurisdictions.

You have made the assumption that the sellers are desperate. Do you have evidence for that?

I was replying to the parent of my comment

> For some people this money could be incredibly important.

So I took this to mean "desperate enough" as in there are scales/levels of "desperate"-ness. Maybe desperate is the wrong word and the "enough" modifier wasn't obvious in my meaning.

Maybe a better way to put it:

Are we, as a society, ok with people needing $20 more than their privacy?

I was trying to convey that I imagine I would have to be pretty desperate to give up my privacy for $20/mo.

First of all I doubt that most people who go into this have a feeling of desperation, especially not the teenagers that are targeted. (I do sort of have an issue with the targeting, though when I think about it, I bet that teenagers actually understand what they are giving up better than 50 year olds). So I would rephrase that as "are we, as a society, ok with people _wanting_ $20 more than privacy", to which my answer is yes. I guess I would have a problem if it were desperation, but then I don't think that in this sense being "desperate" for $20 off a smart phone plan is correct usage of the term.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com