Hacker News Reader

Comment by s3r3nity | Hacker News Reader

> would making it a bit more expensive lead to nobody bothering to collect all my information?

In all respect, this is a really naive view of the ad tech marketplace.

The only thing that would do what you're saying is legislation. Making it more expensive just pushes out smaller players in the marketplace, leading to consolidation towards the Google's / Facebooks of the world.

View on HN

All due respect but "law cannot fix what technology has broken" is quite true. I was going through this fairly balanced view [1] on why you shouldn't sell your data, and the power imbalance strikes me real hard. Once you legalize this circus and put a price on it, this will go exactly as thousands of other businesses go. (Hint: not in customer's favor)

[1]: https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/sell-your-own-data-bad-...

Users must unionize for their data access, otherwise the price goes to zero

a legislation with a flat tax would not be that bad. i guesstimate that close to 70% maybe more of new ads are done online. and google and facebook are disruptive to old players who pay a lot more in taxes. this tax would definitely affect new players to the digital add buisness , but i dont see anyone even trying.

I'd love to see a 1cent/impression tax, personally. It would consolidate the market, sure, but it would very nearly destroy it, too. The resulting Google and Facebook left behind wouldn't be left with so many resources to be anti-social with. Internalize the externalities.

Only tax the biggest players?

Personally, I have no reason or desire to add that clause, but there is ample precedent for progressive taxation so it's not an impossible idea. If I were given that as a deal-or-no-deal sort of thing, I'd take the deal to get the tax.

Tax applies to all companies with $1B + revenues?

But that the same argument works for imposing regulation on any kind of pollution activity. We can't introduce food safety regulation, it would kill mom and pop operations and only big companies can afford to pay for the inspections and certification!

Yes, and getting the tracking/data collection to stop is more valuable than the amounts of money being floated around in this thread.

Money doesn't solve every issue, especially when your adversaries have so much more money (and power) than you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com