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parasense

> Collecting and selling digital data is not a legitimate business enterprise.

According to who, you?

> It’s spyware.

How is it spying when the people are freely giving away their data?

> If no one wants to pay for your product, the market has spoken. Too bad.

Very true, however it's not clear how a truism about something else relates to the topic? Was this supposed to be persuasive about collecting digital data?

> We must correct the insanity and digital economic imbalance that spyware businesses have created.

Fair enough, but that entails not creating or fostering an imbalance by constantly providing the internet with your personal information.

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>According to who, you?

Spyware is illegal. So it’s just a matter of defining the data collection practices of internet companies as spyware.

>How is it spying when the people are freely giving away their data?

It’s not “freely given away” when you need a team of attorneys to understand what you’ve agreed to and you have no audit rights. Point me to the public FB page where they clearly and easily define all points of data they collect.

> Fair enough, but that entails not creating or fostering an imbalance by constantly providing the internet with your personal information.

Quite absurd to take this position after big tech companies ruined the internet economy with their spyware model. Is it your position that these companies were just responding to consumer demand to unknowingly give up their data in exchange for free services?

>Very true, however it's not clear how a truism about something else relates to the topic?

The only reason we have this spyware economy is because tech companies thought it easier to grow their enterprise off spyware than selling a legitimate product at a price.

> Spyware is illegal. So it’s just a matter of defining the data collection practices of internet companies as spyware.

I’ve seen this phenomenon before but never so explicitly. When you can’t convince someone that something is bad, you re-define it as something they do consider bad.

Some examples I’ve seen:

- Some speech is so hateful and racist that its opponents wish to define it as “violence”.

- Facebook offers advertisers the ability to target the demographics their ads reach. Some have tried to term this as “selling your data”.

In this case, it’s clear the average person doesn’t hold data collection in such low esteem as yourself, so you must redefine it as “spyware” in order to convince them.

This subtle shift is in interesting to me, but it leaves me unconvinced. Words are not violence. Facebook does not sell data. Data collection is not the same as spyware.

"Free speech" is not a good example in my opinion when we already have so many exceptions to it:

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

I'll reconsider not defending free speech from getting a "hate speech" exception when so called "free speech" proponents start talking about getting rid of the copyright exception instead of just wanting to say racist stuff.

It makes complete sense to want to expand the scope of terms that are associated with laws if you don't believe the law is accurate enough. Language evolves through social changes, and so do laws.

I made no mention of free speech. I'm Canadian and support the significant mechanisms we have in place to combat hate speech!

My point is only that speech is not violence. One does not need to change the meaning of the word violence in order to place sensible restrictions on speech. It is a cheap rhetorical trick.

It's intrinsically linked to "free speech" exemptions through being violent, because violence doesn't have to be physical, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia's opening paragraph on violence[1]:

> Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened[4] or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation."[5]

There's no doubt that hate speech _does_ commit psychological harm, for example, but the article contains way more nuance than I have time for in this post so I implore you to read the article -- "violence" is just not as simple and limited as physical harm.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence

Violence huh?

That's what this conversation is devolving into, a fluidic interpretation of violence? Seems like a strawman argument; change the topic to violence, then argue a truism that violence is bad... all the while maintaining a pretend causal link between privacy and violence?

Sorry. Not. Persuasive.

That said, for the sake of civility and moving past this distractio... I will concede the point you seem so adamant to make, violence is not so simple. But again, not on-topic here, and it adds nothing to the conversation.

Don't act like the term "spyware" is nebulous and undefined. Spyware is collection of information without consent of users. It's well defined, well understood, and illegal.

The only thing people are hiding behind here is that users agree to it in some novel length TOS that they don't read and don't understand.

> How is it spying when the people are freely giving away their data?

The ruling has proved that no, people are not freely giving away their data. One of the infringing issues is that the system "Fails to properly request consent."

When consent is enforced by a system that can't be bypassed via dark patterns such as Apple's App Tracking Transparency, the actual opt-in rate is around 4%, suggesting that when given a proper choice users don't actually want to give away their data.

> around 4%

Which, coincidentally, happens to be Lizardman’s Constant.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

> Very true, however it's not clear how a truism about something else relates to the topic? Was this supposed to be persuasive about collecting digital data?

If a business model depends on spying on users, it's not sustainable, and moreover, it's illegal in the EU. People are not giving their data away freely if they have a) no way of understanding the consequences of clicking a single button, b) get tricked into consenting using dark patterns, and c) their refusal to consent isn't even obeyed (TCF loads tracking scripts before users can consent).

In general, one of the requirements of the GDPR is that all information on usage of provided data has to be written in simple, comprehensible terms. Please tell me how you knew the implications of giving consent on a IAB site, namely your data being shared and sold across thousands of companies. If even techies fail to understand that, how can anyone expect that of ordinary people, our parents, kids?

It should be clear that with a law like the GDPR in effect, the IAB is acting unlawfully.

"freely giving away their data" is a misrepresentation. People are either putting up with their data being collected, or unaware that it is happening, because that is the only way many services can be accessed nowadays. I bet you couldn't find a single person off the street who would answer "yes" if asked whether they go on the internet specifically to give personal information to ad companies.

Or, to put it more briefly: "How is it spying when the White House employees freely hung up our gift painting with the bug in it on their wall?"

How does anyone have a choice in this?

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