Comment by 9dev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 9dev | Hacker News Reader

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> All your data is being sold to the lowest bidder

There aren't that many possibilities on how geolocation data vendors get access to high-precision location data of millions of people. A publicly traded company that generates revenue from targeted ads can never be fully trusted to behave. A social network that optimizes for time spent looking at ads will never really care about its users well-being. Algorithmic feeds are responsible for a widening social divide and loneliness. Highly detailed behavioral analysis can hurt people even when aggregated, for example when they get less favorable insurance terms based on their spending habits. Data that can be used to increase revenue will not be left untouched just to keep moral higher ground. Sensitive information shared with an LLM that end up in training data today might have dangerous consequences tomorrow, there is no way to know yet.

This isn't even about proper handling of individual pieces of data, but the higher-order effects of handing control over both the world's information and the attention of its inhabitations to shareholder-backed mega-corporations. There are perverse incentives at play here, and anyone engaging in this game carries responsibility for the outcome.

> There aren't that many possibilities on how geolocation data vendors get access to high-precision location data of millions of people.

In a world where cellphones have all sorts of radio antennas on at all times, there are more ways than you'd think.

> A publicly traded company that generates revenue from targeted ads can never be fully trusted to behave. A social network that optimizes for time spent looking at ads will never really care about its users well-being. Algorithmic feeds are responsible for a widening social divide and loneliness.

I'm really not interested in debating dogmatic philosophy about how cynical one should be in the world. The entire point of my comment was that cynicism induces FUD that's not necessarily backed by direct evidence. One can come up with all sorts of different theories to explain what's happening in the world. Just because they sound somewhat consistent on the surface, doesn't mean they're true. That's just inverted inference.

I do agree with you that there are bad incentives in play here, but if we don't want them to be exploited and actually care about privacy, we should convince our effing legislators to plug the loopholes and enshrine online privacy in actual law. Instead of companies being able to write whatever they want in their Terms of Service. And then create mechanisms to enforce said legislation. Instead of moralizing actions of a company as some sort of monolithic (un)-ethical entity.

I think humanizing and moralizing the actions of large companies is a gigantic waste of time. Not only it accomplishes nothing, it gives us (the affected party) a distraction from focusing our efforts on the representatives that we elected who aren't doing their job. Maybe it's representative of where we feel we can make change

> In a world where cellphones have all sorts of radio antennas on at all times, there are more ways than you'd think.

That doesn't explain why soldiers can be identified by their location traces at known military sites; the data must be sent from the device.

> The entire point of my comment was that cynicism induces FUD that's not necessarily backed by direct evidence.

That is exactly the kind of deflective attitude common in big tech I was referring to: There is concrete evidence for these effects (e.g. [0][1][2][3]). Google, Netflix, Amazon et al. would falter if it weren't for the violation of their user's privacy. Even if we leave dogma out of this, lots of negative effects would simply not be possible without their data collection practices.

You cannot participate in—and profit off of—something bad and then distance yourself by claiming your specific part in it was not inherently evil.

  [0]: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.ade7138
  [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.16941
  [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01032
  [3]: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751

I think you're confusing cyncism with reality and logic.

It's not cynical to say ad-driven social networks are adversarial to their users, it's logical and unavoidable. Because they're optimizing for different things.

Networks want the best, most targeted ads, so they need the most data. They want the highest watch times and retention, so they MUST develop addictive algorithms.

It's like selling a cigarette. Is there any non-adversarial way to sell a cig? No. You're optimizing for the most smoking. Okay great, let's concentrate the Tobacco then so we have more nicotine. Let's use butane rings so the cig burns faster.

I do agree 100% with your points about legislation - this is the only path forward. And, about not humanizing corporations. Corporations are more akin to machines or algorithms.

But, because they're more akin to machines or algorithms, we can prove when, and why, they are working against our interests, and it's not cynicism.

The cynicism I'm referring to is not simply about recognizing the conflicting objectives at play. Those are abundantly evident. The cynic takes that to an extreme of "Since this entity is adversarial to me, it, and everyone participating in it makes the worst, most evil choices possible with blatant disregard to any consequences to others or themselves."

There's an illogical extension of conflict that's sometimes applied in this context, with heavily implicative language that's often misleading. No Google isn't interested in reading your personal email (as if Google as an entity could have any interest in the first place), they will definitely serve you targeted ads and sell product integrations based on it though.

I would agree, but I will say the waters get murky when we factor in data breaches and things like this subpoena. Keeping data, even if it's just used for predictable usecases, isn't free. There's a liability there, a risk, that most users do not understand.

Absolutely. I'm not arguing there aren't many exposure vectors to having your data out of your direct influence. It's the quickness to jump to malice (on part of the companies) regarding it instead of a combination of many factors (incompetence, murky/weak legislation, myopic greed and sometimes actual malice), without using concrete evidence to make those judgments that bugs me.

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