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Comment by baochan | Hacker News Reader

How exactly does a headphone app have access to your alcohol use and menstruation history? Where is it pulling this data from?

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They don't. The app may ask for it, and there may be some benefit to the user if they provide it, but it's not like the headphones magically acquire any of the data the author is complaining about.

If people want to give their personal information out, that's up to them. I personally limit what information I share, and I get annoyed when devices or apps try to sneakily get more information than I'm willing to intentionally provide, but this article is silly.

The younger generation has grown up without a sense of personal privacy, and they're largely ok with it. They will happily give away personal details in exchange for a "free" app or product, and they bend over backwards to expose their entire lives via images and videos on social media. There's always mock outrage when someone "discovers" that the reason the Internet is free is because someone is selling personal data to drive advertising, but everyone knows that. Most people just don't care.

They care. It exudes as a cynicism about the world and continual jokes about talking to the FBI agent assigned to watch them. They (as are we) are just powerless to prevent it as every single service and every single platform and apparently every single product is collecting data on us. And since the value of services and platforms and, sadly, even products goes up as more people are using them, the arguments of "don't use these products and vote with your dollars" that people constantly push are nonsensical: you can value your privacy but also value having a romantic partner, and most people these days use dating apps to date; you can value your privacy but also value getting invited to the birthday party, and most people these days invite everyone to their party on a social network; you can value your privacy but also value being able to travel, and so unless you want to be the one insane person in your friend group who doesn't use Lyft/Uber and never knows when the public transportation is running late and takes forever to book hotels (and always ends up spending a lot more when you do)... well, you are going to use a bunch of apps that do a bunch of data collection.

People care. They have no choice.

That sounds like you do have a choice: spend more money. In a world where this wasn't allowed, presumably you'd be forced to spend more money. So you can inhabit that world right now if you want.

> spend more money

We're talking about a companion app for one of the most expensive consumer headphones you can get ( $350 ).

I don't think this is about money, this is about using dark patterns and morally questionable behavior to get user data.

Yes, if you're older and wiser you can work around these, disable the app location data, etc. But a lot of people are oblivious to this, not because they don't care but because they are being purposefully deceived.

>That sounds like you do have a choice: spend more money.

This is not an option for everyone. Don't poor people deserve privacy too?

Sure, but they deserve to be able to make the choice too. So if you move to a world where selling your data for services isn't available, then you're forcing them to pay and since we've determined they can't pay, all you're doing is removing the choice from them and forcing them in to the no-service option.

And I know how it is because I was once affected by this. All these "but the poor people" folks disappear when the poor actually ask for help. It's like this:

Poor people: Hey, can we get the right to work for a living in a dignified way and use the same services as everyone else?

The Privileged Protectors: Okay, how about I make it so you can't work for more than 20 hrs and umm... I'll throw in some privacy

Poor people:...

You can't eat privacy.

>So if you move to a world where selling your data for services isn't available, then you're forcing them to pay and since we've determined they can't pay, all you're doing is removing the choice from them and forcing them in to the no-service option.

Like this is the only option... We already see a lot of services that sell multiple tiers of their products, with power users or larger companies paying significantly more.

Oh and now they don't deserve this better service and you've made the choice for them. No thanks.

So eager to remove choices from someone else.

>So eager to remove choices from someone else.

Oh people can't afford a car if it has seatbelts? Poor people should be able to buy unsafe cars! It's their choice!

Well, yes, obviously.

Bose and Sony, 2 of the most expensive tech product companies, are the example here. The option is buy your sub $10 wired skull candy earbuds and ignore anything that's more expensive because it isn't an option. It's the same reason recent generations grew p on fast food, it's cheaper and easier and all some people have resources for.

I’ve lived in a world similar to that. It was called the 1990s. It wasn’t particularly expensive, it wasn’t that hard to book hotels and, amazingly, people also got invited to parties and events. Also, your headphones didn’t spy on you.

This is how you know you were wealthy. Everything was so much more expensive then. I remember even trying to get maps or a digital marker for where you were required so much money. Noise canceling headphones? Forget about it.

And if you weren't in America with money, you could barely do anything online.

Hotels, air travel? So expensive. Way cheaper now. TVs? So cheap now. And where I lived you couldn't even book your own flights at the time. You needed a travel agent. Up costs. Nightmare.

I can assure you I'm not wealthy and never have been, other than in the sense of me living in the west (though not the US). My point is that life can be pretty damn decent without digital markers for where you are, constant air travel and a new TV every other year.

Yes, certain things have gotten more affordable. But is affordable noise cancelling headphones and cheap air travel really the result of apps and websites crawling up our backsides with a microscope and shuffling that data to some unknown other?

Air travel in the 1990s was much cheaper than, say, in the 1950s, much like computers, TV:s and headphones. In fact, the price of air travel dropped by roughly 1/3 between 1980 and 1995[0].

Evidence suggests that happened completely without constant digital surveillance.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...

Bullshit. People don't care. You don't even have to go so far as not to use certain applications. In this particular case, if people didn't buy iPhones en masse, we probably wouldn't be dealing with wireless headphones because neither Google nor Android phone manufacturers have cared to be innovators on the hardware end.

I dunno... when it comes to the tiny things this article is talking about I really don’t care. This all seems like outrage in the name of a few clicks. That annoys me way more than my headphones asking to know how long I use them each day.

It's one of the data types apple health can collect. The headphones app probably asked for all possible types of healthkit data.

If that stock takes a tumble, you can bet their marketing is going to drop the privacy branding.

Everyone knows their customers are highly susceptible to marketing, it would be a gold mine.

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