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What crosses my personal threshold is not that it is done on a computer, but the scale of it. I would be fine with a small website that does not have a significant presence doing it. Once this website became as large as Facebook or Google, it stops being acceptable (the exact threshold naturally being fuzzy).

I would be similarly bothered if this was somehow done manually by a bunch of government spies dispersed all over cities, using pencils and paper. Of course this is impossible, but it shows that neither computers, nor cyberspace, nor the entity doing it are essential components for it to be bothersome. Computers only play a role in this insofar that they make it possible to scale this.

Yeah, the idea of companies becoming capable of widespread surveillance because of the size of their data set is also bothersome to me. But because it is so hard to define what that fuzzy line is (between an acceptable amount of data and too much data), it's too arbitrary for me to draw a line in the sand at all.

Which might seem wild, but it's actually pretty consistent with the amount of trust we put in companies right now. Facebook could arguably do some nebulous bad thing with their facial recognition data. AT&T can definitely know who you are calling on any call that goes through their POTS system. But we don't have a ban on diagnostic tools for large telephone providers out of fear that they'd abuse their position - I see no reason to ban a technology of large social network providers for the same fear. [0]

It comes down to trust - as soon as one of these companies did abuse their position to do something widely evil, the market consequences would be dire (to say nothing of the reactionary legislation).

[0] Possibly a poor example, considering anti-trust w/r/t Bell growing too large - but that kind of regulatory intervention I would hope could be applied equally to either class of company should they be determined a monopoly.

> Facebook could arguably do some nebulous bad thing with their facial recognition data.

Theo already did a bad thing with their picture data by applying facial recognition to it! I never consented to this use of my pictures and am explicitly against it. Yet they did it anyway. Hence the lawsuit.

> It comes down to trust - as soon as one of these companies did abuse their position to do something widely evil, the market consequences would be dire...

HAHAHAHAHA.

No.

Look at Nestle/Coca Cola/Pepsi sucking the earth dry of precious driking water. Or the fallout for bankers over the 2008 recession. Or VW. Or Equifax making merry with your social security number. Or Deepwater horizon. Or Cambridge Analytica. Or... you get the point.

I'd argue the market has precious few fucks to give about outright evil deeds. There are countless examples of corporations pillaging and raping the earth for short term gains, and the market thanks them for it.

Free market efficiency is true for only a very narrow range of operating parameters, and regulations are very much needed for tackling th ebig picture.

The bottomline being, given a fuzzy outline of the line in the sand, I'd still rather the government shoot for it. If they fall short by too much, we'll know soon enough because symptoms will persist. If they go too FAR, well, that's perhaps even better because I'd rather the default stance on new things be conservative skepticism and caution, and then we slowly allow more things once we deem them acceptable.

I would argue trust is a big part of it. My counter example: Apple. Apple is a massive company that could collect massive sums of valuable data. Althoguh they do act like a monopoly in many respects (cough cough T2) they do not abuse data that they could collect. I think the reason for that is they want some level of trust from consumers. They do abuse their position of power but they do not do very much 'creepy' things like google, MS, Amazon, or Facebook

I sort of get what you're saying. A lot of formerly-anti-Apple people have started looking at them with new eyes because of their welcome stance on privacy.

But even with the Apple example, aren't they the most valuable company on Earth? Despite having anti-consumer policies like removing the 3.5mm jack or making their laptops nigh-on irrepairable. Clearly the market shrugs at those 'tradeoffs' in exchange for Apple shifting more product more quickly. This is what I mean by the market not being the perfect device to self-regulate. Perhaps on a VERY long term scale, but not on human time scales.

  Taking notes about people who visit your physical store vs. taking notes about people who browse to your website

That's just ludicrous.

We're not talking about a shopkeeper in a physical store taking notes (or even using sinister tech like tracking your cell phone, or facial recognition to track you) while you're in his store.

If you really want to draw an analogy we're taking about said shopkeeper, who puts a very sophisticated GPS tracking device on you, which does not only provides information, which shops you visit and what you buy, but also looks over your shoulder to track what you read in the library.

  But the inconsistency really disturbs me

It's not inconsistent to demand from said shopkeeper to stay the fuck away and mind his own business as soon as I leave his shop.

It's more like if you keep choosing to go to stores where the shopkeepers all use the same system of tracking while you're in their stores. Every time you enter a store they hand you a tracking device and you turn it on and run it.

Just don't turn it on. Turn off javascript by default. Don't go to those stores. Take personal responsibility. But especially don't call in a cop who's going to brandish a gun and threaten the store owner's with violence unless they stop handing you the device to turn on.

All these new technologies (facial recognition, automated photo editing, etc) are good things when they become widely available to everyone instead of just being the domain of instituations, corporations, and governments. All legal decisions like this do is prevent the spread of abilities to individuals and make the growing power imbalance worse.

"Trading card game booster packs vs. video game loot boxes"

it's not even close to equivalency. The contents of booster packs is predetermined before the moment of purchase. Whether you buy them, or your buddy buys them, you'll get the same cards. With vidoe game loot boxes, you can modify the contents of the lootbox at the moment of purchase depending on who's the buyer. Perhaps it's a popular streamer, so you'll boost his winrate so that people watching the stream can go "wow, that was so worth it, I'll buy some boxes too". Perhaps you'll boost the winrate for a whale, only to get him hooked and put him on a dry period with no good loot at all. The online nature of such transactions offers much capabilities for abuse.

As the judge said "[it] would be almost impossible without such technology". So it doesn't have to do with "on a computer", but companies like Facebook violating privacy in ways that would have been impractical without computers, so it hasn't been an issue before.

Imagine entering an electronics store in a mall and looking at a fridge. You leave the store, but an employee of the store had spotted you and what you looked at. They follow you out the door and into another store. There they whisper to an employee of that store "psst, give me $5 and I'll tell you what this guy's after". The other store's employee then proceeds to offer you a discount on a fridge.

If some store had been doing that in meatspace people would have been up in arms, but for some reason because it's a "re-targeting ad" on a computer people have mostly been blind to what's going on.

Facial recognition is the same. If you were doing it on the scale Facebook is doing it but in meatspace it would be illegal.

> The argument to me centers around the same terrible "but do it on a computer" sentiment that's been brandished to outlaw things that would otherwise be perfectly legal in meatspace.

There's no "to me"; the argument is there in the clear and you can respond to it in terms of its content instead of the unknowns that go on in your head.

> I don't agree with a ban on facial recognition: who is to tell someone what they can and can't do with a bucket of bits?

Classic reductionist argument. They're a "bucket of bits" insofar that your physical body is a "bucket of atoms".

Let‘s make a short thought experiment... imagine Superman just came to earth and has perfect memory and the possibility trace your (and everyone else‘s) every footstep with his superhuman hearing and vision. Would that require new laws to deal with him or would you simply carry on as is because „it‘s Superman! He won‘t do evil...“?

It‘s not „but do it on a computer“ rather it‘s „but when it becomes unprecedented“...

We are facing a completely new type of society where these types of entities are very likely to exist, we need to figure out how to deal with this.

You're correct that the technology is unprecedented.

But, there's a lot of unprecedented technology invented every day. And for the most part we do just carry on as usual. That's part of what made the original internet such a beautiful place - we didn't try to waterlog it with proactive legislation because of potential bad things that could happen. Instead, that freedom created the wonderful ecosystem we have today.

The (US) law eventually reacted, but for the most part did so in a measured and reasonable fashion to form things like DMCA and CFAA.

Conversely, it's my opinion that proactive lawmaking leads to disastrous and overly broad, unenforceable, and burdensome laws like SOPA and CALEA. And I see this kind of ban on facial recognition to be firmly in the proactive category.

I guess the main difference between now and then is that we are starting to have an idea of what is going to be possible and already see “dark uses” of technology happening (e.g., surveillance in china) whereas beforehand we were clueless about those things.

I think that rejecting proactive legislation per se is a dangerous attitude. For example, see climate change. Proactive legislation could have made us avoid all of the discussions we are now working through during crunch time...

If we have reasonable evidence that there is a high likelihood of us creating worlds that we don’t want to live in, we should take reasonable action proactively to avoid those scenarios.

Thus, I agree with you that not all unprecedented technologies need to be proactively legislated but as soon as there is reasonable evidence for possible negative consequences we should start reasonable processes to avoid those consequences. There is no black or white situation here, we need to have evidence based discussions and work our way through this collectively.

The technology is not what is being regulated here. What's being regulated is the use of said technology to do things that were hitherto untractable, and therefore not explicitly forbidden.

In other words, for violating the spirit of the law, but on a computer.

No. Databases are special.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II

And what if Superman's evil brother came to Earth?

> We are facing a completely new type of society where these types of entities are very likely to exist, we need to figure out how to deal with this.

We are dealing with them through laws and regulations.

That was my point

They are my bits, not yours. If you were upfront about doing questionable things with them, I’d not given them in the first place.

Depends what the ever-changing requirements for "upfront" are - it's fairly clearly(?)[0] called out in Facebook's data policy that they use facial recognition and how to change your settings.

What about a picture I took myself of a public place in Chicago with people's faces in it? Those are certainly my bits.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update

Exceptions don't prove the rule. I support lawsuits over facial recognition. Obvious that many are overstepping their authority.

Every example you provide allows for much more minute, precise, and invisible manipulation of the affected individual than the meatspace equivalent, for starters.

Because it's incredibly faster to process, use, replicate, distribute and earn using that data. That is what makes it scary.

Also loot boxes - imagine if Wizards of the Coast walked and gave away MTG booster packs on the street for free but told you "pay 10 cents to open it and you could get this cool stuff". Sets a completely different mental model in your head.

> Also loot boxes - imagine if Wizards of the Coast walked and gave away MTG booster packs on the street for free but told you "pay 10 cents to open it and you could get this cool stuff". Sets a completely different mental model in your head.

Would that be illegal though? I think my point stands - you could do that in real life and no one is really disturbed by it to campaign for it to be outlawed. You can even see it happen if you ever ride the metro, panhandlers will give you a book/trinkets/snacks and ask for a "donation" for you to keep it (most people refuse and give back the token).

Pretty different things - in the panhandler case, you don't want it, it's not tied to anything you do, their target group is everyone.

This is more like standing in front of a kindergarden with an icecream truck before lunch and giving away free ice creams on a hot summer day but you can't open them just look at them unless you pay. It's abusing human psychology without you asking for it - you just want to play the game and they are pushing your brain's buttons to get you to buy stuff. Maybe it won't work on you, but imagine how it's "brainwashing" the younger generations.

It seems there's a lot of parallels between this and advertising in general. I understand the sentiment and feel the same way about advertising's negative effects, and how predatory a lot of marketing is - especially marketing targeted toward children.

But it's kind of "exit through the gift shop," right? All you wanted to do was ride the roller coaster, but now you've got all of these trinkets and refreshing beverages that you can touch and pick up, but you just can't have without paying. And to me that just seems part and parcel of modern capitalism, so I'm not really in favor of outlawing a particular flavor of it.

> And to me that just seems part and parcel of modern capitalism, so I'm not really in favor of outlawing a particular flavor of it.

Net neutrality is also threatened by capitalism. Do you also want that gone?

I thought where loot boxes are banned, it's because they're considered gambling.

That has nothing to do with the illegalization of loot boxes though. They ban it because of the gambling aspect, not because of the crate/key scheme.