Ask HN: Would You Pay for Privacy?

I would never pay someone to not be a privacy invader.

The reasoning is very simple --- it's impossible to verify that something is not being done.

Privacy invasion is ethically suspect. Most of the major companies who engage it are guilty of exceeding the boundaries they established themselves and have been legally penalized for their practices in many cases. They exceed the boundaries in search of more profit.

It's hard to play both sides of the fence. You're either trustworthy or you're not. I wouldn't place blind trust in those I judge to be ethically suspect.

1. No, but I wouldn't subscribe to a service that took more data than I deemed necessary or was happy to volunteer 2. No, because they couldn't offer any guarantee it would be removed 3. Because you'd need my data to achieve that, so I've potentially made my problem worse. Are you more trustworthy than the other services? 4. I can't imagine how that would work so struggle to give an answer 5. Wouldn't subscribe 6. Wouldn't subscribe

> Would You Pay for Privacy?

The answer is simply: I shouldn't have to. It's well past time for legislation and regulatory bodies to rein in consumer data collection.

1. No.

2. Yes, given the assumption that it's something I'd use. One caveat to that is I would hard pass on a subscription model.

3. It's possible that I would not want to use it but that would depend on the problem it's intended to solve. (This is getting close to, "I would not find it useful," as forbidden by the assumption.)

4. I would consider paying if I had good reason to believe they wouldn't share my data. Their products are genuinely useful because of how they process the data they gather, even if that processing happens on their machines. Privacy concerns only really come into play when 1) they share large swaths of that data with business partners and 2) they have a large-scale data breach.

5. Given the way Meta explicitly tries to track people who have never even had an account for one of their services, this question reads like extortion. (I expect you're more well-intentioned but still, that's a hell of a consideration.) In short: hell no.

6. Same as 5.

The problem is that those of use who care about privacy, are aware that the data is being collected in many ways, not all of them obvious. If you could prove that you aren't collecting any data, I might consider. However, there is no way for you to prove it - especially since you need to identify me in order to "protect my privacy" ....

E.g. when one pays for YouTube to avoid ads, one gets tracked just as well (or better, since you can't even use it "logged out" if you don't want ads). The only winning move is not to play.

To clarify, your app isn't designed to fix the issue of privacy (which would be a wild project), but you're effectively offering an app for free so long as you can collect data on users, while giving them the option to pay while you pinky promise to not collect data on your paying users and their behavior?

At first glance, this seems like a very difficult business model to scale, as if it works as described you would be denying yourself insight into what makes a user pay and their behaviors.

》If you could pay ______ not to collect your data, would you?

90% of users aren't aware or don't care. In my case I'd be careful what data I share with them and how it affects me, and look for a "free" service.

The worst data I can give you is my credit card, then you will know I can pay for stuff, and even if you protect my data, you can still spam offers.

No application is so important to me that privacy is optional.

The application is optional. This is true whether it's free or paid.

I can sort of think of an exception: domain registrars, I only use ones that have private registration info which tends to cost more than bargain registrars. They are also more competent and have no nonsense admin panels.

No I wouldn’t pay for privacy. I consider the arrangement in ads for free services to be fine in my case. Others may feel differently.

I certainly would not pay Facebook / Instagram not to collect my data, because I think they would anyway.

No as I don't do much.