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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> what point will there be a tipping point where the pitchforks come out and the general public's "patience" with regulation catching up to this crap begins to unravel and actual violence or "direct action" begins to occur against these actors?

There is no public consensus on this. American voters are fine with free, ad-supported software. They’re fine with surveillance in exchange for convenience.

They likely don’t understand the cost. Personally or systemically. But a combination of digital-privacy thought leaders (a) overlapping with communities embracing political nihilism, (b) experiencing a filter bubble where popular support is perceived where there is none and (c) having been corrupted (politically speaking) by crypto has stymied policy progress.

There are no pitchforks. There is no angry mob. To the degree there is consensus overseas, it arises from nationalism with respect to security (India) or competitiveness (Europe).

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> There is no public consensus on this. American voters are fine with free, ad-supported software. They’re fine with surveillance in exchange for convenience.

Is that true though? When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy, and if they're actually given a choice, most will probably take it.

The issue about not understanding the cost is real, but that's not unprecedented. There was a time when most people didn't understand the cost of cigarettes and tobacco, but that problem was solved through government intervention.

Edit: to clarify, I said the tracking is “opt-in”, but it’s not a default. iOS explicitly asks you to choose between tracking or no tracking. It does not assume any default.

> When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy

Americans want privacy. There isn't consensus around the acceptable level of tradeoffs [1][2].

> was a time when most people didn't understand the cost of cigarettes and tobacco, but that problem was solved through government intervention

In 1964, the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee marked a turning point for smoking in America [3]. The Tobacco MSA was entered into in 1998 [4], by when most smokers recognized their habit as an addiction. The government intervention followed evidencing harm, public discussion and massive changes in public behavior. We are still in the first phase for ad-funded tech.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/04/how-america...

[2] https://netchoice.org/zogby-memo-to-interested-parties-ameri...

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894634/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...

> Americans want privacy.

They are also completely ignorant about practical aspects of it.

Almost half of the US population is rocking Android phones.

While Apple is in general better at privacy than Google (better can be far away from good), I think an Android user can theoretically be better protected. It just needs a lot of attention. But he would at least be able to do something against the "exceptions for the manufacturer". A locked down environment will always be comparably insecure. Not that Android phones aren't locked down...

> When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy...

Or it could be a clear indicator that people will leave the defaults where they are, which is why there have been figurative wars over getting a particular browser to be the default browser of an operating system.

It actually asks you though when you install apps. No default selected you have to make a choice.

> When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy, and if they're actually given a choice, most will probably take it.

I've seen this or equivalent statements a lot in discussion related to privacy, tracking, and the ios ecosystem. However, I don't think the results show what you're saying they do. All I see is that people accept the default behaviour of their devices. Unfortunately, there's no mobile ecosystem where you can easily opt out of tracking to compare to.

> All I see is that people accept the default behaviour of their devices.

There is no default though. The popup gives you two options like “Ask not to track” and “Allow” with no way to dismiss it.

Yes, I would add though that the option that's perceived as closest to "Do nothing/Add nothing/Skip" will get extra perception points as closer to default.

> Is that true though? When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy, and if they're actually given a choice, most will probably take it.

Is it? Or is it a clear indication that most people will stick with whatever the default option handed to them is?

Of course giving the option to opt out without consequences will entice people to opt out. But what if the software stops working unless you pay for it after you opt out? That changes everything.

Then the question is no longer "Am I okay with tracking if I can shut it off and everything's still the same," but becomes "Am I okay with tracking if it means I don't have to pay for the software or service?"

That’s true. I think that will be the real test for the market.

Appstores/marketplaces will need to clearly show which apps are free without tracking so that consumers are aware that there are privacy-respecting alternatives, and don’t feel like they have no choice.

However, there’s also the issue that the definition of “tracking” and “privacy” is too vague. If Google or Facebook offered a paid service with privacy, I personally still wouldn’t trust them to not collect data on me.

It also doesn't help when companies try things that can produce relevant ads for a user without tracking the users themselves, and they get blocked at every turn.

For example, Twitter allows you to prune a list of ad subjects. You can add and subtract to that list. This could effectively reduce the need for tracking, but people reflexively block the ad accounts, rendering any form of ad campaign ineffective.

I'm not saying that's the answer, btw. It may be, or it may not be. I am saying though, that people are so used to blocking ads and not paying, that finding solutions to keep online companies viable is extraordinarily difficult without tracking.

If Twitter turned around and told everyone who did that, that they have to pay for a subscription, they'd quickly go out of business.

Why should people have to buy extra services for a non free piece of hardware just to remain ad free on that hardware? Apple is double dipping here (probably triple dipping if you also include AppStore fees and charges).

People want to be able to own the things they buy, without further nonsense.

If you don't want to pay for the operating system, just buy some hardware and put Linux on it. Apple isn't double dipping because their OS isn't free, and nor is their hardware. They are different units of the same company, and both units have to pay their staff.

To whit, anywhere the software is provided "free" it is actually just included in the price. It is no coincidence they don't let you upgrade the actual version of that software without paying (or jail breaking as the case may be). Most phones and tablets are kept at whatever version you bought them at, by design.

If you buy a hardware firewall, you still have to pay for its software and maintenance. If you buy a car, you still have to buy winter tires at the appropriate time of year, and pay for the car's regular checkup. For tires, you even may have to pay for yearly rotation, balancing, etc. This business model shows up in many variants all over the place. Different divisions or people work on something, it's a separate pay item.

>Is that true though? When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy, and if they're actually given a choice, most will probably take it.

That option already existed in the settings. People couldn't be bothered to go set it because they don't really care.

> They likely don’t understand the cost. Personally or systemically.

How would you explain the cost to someone? Most of the discourse seems to boil down to some mix of "it's creepy" and "it could be used for a nefarious purpose", which is not super convincing.

There’s the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

It is very concrete, but that would automatically alienate quite a few people...

What was the cost of the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the average user?

There were a lot of people in the data set, certainly, but how many can quantify damages?

If anything the Cambridge Analytica scandal was (disturbing) "win" for privacy loss: a lot of the Cambridge Analytica demographics markers were baked into the Facebook ad platform and became standard ad demographics soon after. The Cambridge Analytica scandal as played out looked like Facebook was stamping out bad privacy practices using its platform, but the real message was Facebook eliminating a competitor to their ad business by eliminating their access to Facebook's data. Lucky for Facebook the PR mostly stuck with the face value of "stamping out bad privacy practices", but even a lot of the people that saw/realized it was simply Facebook eliminating a competitor have mostly shrugged and continued to use Facebook (though Facebook did add some opt-outs at that much more modest uproar, versus all the loud thundering noise Cambridge Analytica got).

It may have influenced the result of the 2016 US presidential election.

IIRC, the Trump used that data set to send targeted ads to ~90M independent and republican voters. Independents got ads attacking Clinton and emphasizing prominent Trump supporters. Republicans got turnout-oriented ads.

Provided he won by less than 100k votes (and lost the popular vote), the cost to the median US citizen was likely quite large.

I didn’t know the same demographic markers had been baked into the platform. This is very concerning.

Cambridge Analytica had no way to buy Facebook ads, which were the primary platform of these micro-targeted ads during the campaign, specific to people in the gathered data they had without Facebook platform support. Facebook ads never had an API that you could just give it user IDs or emails and target them specifically (and one would hope that Facebook would eye any such ad campaign with suspicion even before scandals like Cambridge Analytica). Cambridge Analytica had to encourage Facebook to add most of its same demographic markers into the platform to pull that off. That's definitely one of those "it takes two to Tango" sort of things where if it wasn't in Facebook's platform, how did they target those ads in 2016?

Certainly they cross-compiled that data with other ad systems and phone lists and who knows what else, but given the scandal with respect to that specific campaign was primarily about their micro-targeted Facebook ad buys, Facebook is still left culpable as the platform owner at the end of the day.

But I'm of the belief that micro-targeted ads should be illegal in general, and all of the micro-targeting enabling ad platforms seriously questioned for what they've enabled in the last decade or so. The fact that they are generally acceptable and multi-billion dollar revenue generators is its own reminder of what this thread is about that the average person doesn't seem to care about all of these invasive data privacy issues.

I didn't know FB had been actively involved in the process, I thought they had just been criminally negligent regarding the amount of data third parties were allowed to gather.

> the average person doesn't seem to care about all of these invasive data privacy issues.

I know, anecdotally, I became half a pariah in my family for refusing to register and share pics of my kids on WhatsApp. That was after the FB purchase, but before they changed the terms of service. I didn't trust FB, and was ultimately proven right.

Semi-related to that, when Facebook did finally roll out it's opt out from certain ad demographics tools in I want to say 2018-ish they included a view of your own demographics (if you could find your way through Facebook's maze of Privacy Settings with many corridors all alike), a Slack I was in at the time and I went through all of our personal demographics and one lasting result of that conversation was renaming one of the channels to #friendsofexpats because "Friend of Expats" was the creepiest, almost threatening sounding demographic tag that we all seemed to share (among other creepy, almost threatening demographic tags that don't actually sound useful to non-evil advertising). Because that was memorialized in a channel name that one has stuck with me since.

> how would you explain the cost to someone?

For most commercial surveillance, I can't. Provable harm from the Equifax breach remains unquantified. We're only beginning to discuss those data for e.g. Facebook and teenagers. To give analogy, we're in the 1960s on the smoking-regulation timeline [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894634/

It is very difficult. In most cases people aren't affected. Those that might understand the need for privacy are those that lost their jobs because of posting on social media or being naked in the wrong place. Currently the data that is shared between ad networks is rarely public, but embarrassing information could be found everywhere and what is considered as such might change with time. Is isn't just the access log of your head of state to youporn or something like that, it is also the info about trivial consumption choices that can come back at you.

Legislators made it far worse because they demanded additional data to be saved for "security purposes". So not even here people are informed about the problem. On the contrary, we regularly have old farts making everything much worse.

Frankly, those that believe they can save some bucks when they share their data probably aren't the best to understand the larger picture. The data is valuable for different purposes but it is also difficult to put a price tag on it.

> There are no pitchforks. There is no angry mob.

This is true. Even Snowden's revelations didn't have much effect outside of tech circles. US congress even got away with passing a law to retroactively make some of the revealed illegal spying on Americans legal. The public either does not care or feels impotent.

Governments love corporate surveillance as it allows them a source of data without having to worry about scrutiny they might face by collecting the data directly.

It feels hopeless that surveillance capitalism will ever be able to be reigned in.

> Snowden's revelations didn't have much effect outside of tech circles

This is not true. There were lasting changes in public perceptions around the surveillance of Americans [1]. And bulk collection under the Patriot Act was repealed [2]. That is far from complete, but it's also far from nothing.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/04/how-america...

[2] https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-prais...

Congress retroactively legalized some of the spying:

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/intel/RL34600.pdf [PDF]

The reforms to bulk data collection were immediately after the revelations.

Congress has been continuing/expanding surveillance in the years since. But, perhaps not to the degree they would have without Snowden's revelations? I want to believe that Snowden's great sacrifice made lasting changes, but I don't think the evidence supports it.

E.g.,

> Congress extends patriot act section 702 spying powers (2018)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/congress-demanded-nsa-spying-r...

> Congress extends patriot act section 215 spying powers (2019)

https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/congress-just-te...

> With practically no public notice and no public hearings, the House of Representatives passed the College Transparency Act (CTA) on Feb. 4, 2022, by slipping it into a much larger unrelated bill called the America Competes Act, intended to better position the United States to compete with China. (2022)

> creation of a comprehensive data system that would include the personal information of every student enrolled in college or another higher education institution, and track them after their [sic] graduate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/04/04/congress...

> Congress retroactively legalized some of the spying

Extensions of §§ 702 and 215 didn't roll back the reforms in the USA Freedom Act [1], which was a hodgepodge of intelligence reauthorizations and admittedly minor reforms. (But reforms nonetheless.)

> House of Representatives passed the College Transparency Act (CTA) on Feb. 4, 2022, by slipping it into a much larger unrelated bill called the America Competes Act

Anyone claiming CTA was slipped into the ACA wasn't watching the ball. I first heard about it around 2021 [2], which was itself a re-introduction of an earlier bill. It went through discussions across two administrations. The only opposition was from higher ed, who didn't want the record keeping burden.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act#Title_VI:_FISA...

[2] https://www.cassidy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cassi...

> The only opposition was from higher ed, who didn't want the record keeping burden.

That kinda makes my point.

I appreciate that from your perspective I am being far too pessimistic. But, I do not see reason for optimism.

Still, I hope it turns out that you are right.

"It feels hopeless that surveillance capitalism will ever be able to be reigned in. "

It will likely by some combination of: 1. starts to impact the 1% (e.g. Congresswoman Feinstein didn't care about privacy a whole lot until she found out the NSA may have been bugging HER, etc) 2. an active interest in counter-measures (up to and including not buying or dismantling IoT options; people are already on forums in growing numbers looking for 'dumb' appliances and looking to hoard car parts to keep the ICE cars rolling indefinitely if possible) 3. a second Cambridge Analytical with any measurable, discrete, bad outcomes that follow (e.g. someone uses breach data to stalk a person, a group of shareholders get fleeced [aka see 1])

There is no silver bullet here in my view. A confluence of events will at some point likely hit critical mass and force it. Almost no one thought data sovereignty regulation would take off, but GDPR, CCPA, and a growing list of similars have proven that was a misstep on the part of tech to avoid a balkanized regulatory universe, but they simply could not agree to give up on iota of adtech dollars....so they will lose it by endless smaller cuts. The legal/compliance industry will reap those profits instead.

> There are no pitchforks. There is no angry mob. To the degree there is consensus overseas, they arise from nationalist impulses with respect to security (India) or competitiveness (Europe).

If only the "anti-vax" mob could have been motivated towards upholding Internet privacy... We'd perhaps have a far more relevant and meaningful protest in the U.S.

> if only the "anti-vax" mob could have been motivated towards upholding Internet privacy

They’re a natural demographic! But connecting to them requires showmanship, crossing a partisan line for some, and bridging to the anti-Big Tech crowd. No easy work.

Correct, and this is where full-throated advocacy for government intervention is necessary. At this stage, not even for a change in practice -- simply an across the board disclosure of what the practices are, trade secrets/capitalism/ etc be darned.

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