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Comment by thoraway1010 | Hacker News Reader

It's not moot at all.

Uber employees (and some cities) can get access to aggregated data showing where uber is driving.

The same employees should not be able to have access to where YOU are driving (rider specific).

This is particularly key for sellers with a unique product. Chairs are selling well? No problem. But detailed transaction detail for a specific seller and product and their decisions there - a problem.

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If I'm not misinterpreting, the post you're replying to wasn't claiming that a general aggregation in principle was the same as individualized statistics, but rather saying that Amazon's definition of "aggregation" effectively mooted the normal argument for it. In particular that last bit, where Amazon would count it as "aggregated" even if the only "other seller" were Amazon themselves in the form of reselling returned/damaged/refurbed goods. In practice that would probably be pretty close to having individualized analysis generally available, if not identical (because employees could separately get Amazon Warehouse Deals alone, since that's "in house", and then simply delete it from the "aggregated" sales and have both).

But if your city only has one Uber driver, the fact that the data is aggregate is meaningless since it still tells you the exact location data of that one Uber driver. I think that's the point that's being made.

If you can find a way to make data "aggregate", you can abuse it. How about aggregate data on all Uber drivers named Bill who drive a 2014 beige Camry with a license plate ending in "DEF". Yes technically this could return multiple results, but in practice it's irrelevant.

You read a lot from aggregated seller and product data. And if it is really a unique product, just aggregate data for similar, or equal products. And you are 95% there. More than enough to make decisions. And in most cases, you have more than one seller per product, even more so for suitable private brand products.

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