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Comment by baranul | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. Exchanging private and personal user data without consent and without users being aware of it, for their profits.

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It’s important to understand that in the USA, data is owned by the collector (eg. The app or SaaS who generated it), not the person who is described by it.

Until this legal regime changes, we will constantly be playing whack-a-mole with laws like this.

That sounds like something Europeans would do, so it's anti american.

In Europe, who owns the copyright of a photograph? The subject or the photographer?

If a company writes down my personal information do they now own it?

I believe that the Bern convention stipulates that they now own that particular expression (e.g. formatting) of your personal information.

Check before relying on that.

The economy is not 0 sum. Someone else profiting doesn't hurt you.

Seems you missed that part that DOES hurt us:

> Exchanging private and personal user data without consent and without users being aware of it

This information allows other companies to make more informed decisions. Other companies making better decisions doesn't "hurt us".

We collect your data, sell it to the highest bidder and sun ourselves on a yacht we bought with the proceeds ... "to help you".

And when those "informed decisions" are denying healthcare/insurance/loans/what have you?

I personally see it as similar to fraud if you are deliberately hiding a piece of information that makes you riskier to insure or loan money to. In order to accurately assess risk you need personalized data. So I see this as being a more fair deal.

It's like when the internet made it possible to look up the price of good easily how it made it less likely for buyers to be able to lowball people. These price guides may be bad for these buyers, but it provides a more fair deal for these seller.

I agree. If someone is found to be employed by a data broker, for example, they should be uninsurable and should not receive loans.

Companies’ executives and top investors should let us see their location data then. And open up every part of their internal comms that don’t directly disclose trade secrets. At least the metadata!

It doesn’t hurt them, just lets us make better decisions, after all. There does not exist a good reason they’d object!

You can buy it from a data broker. They aren't obligated to give you this data for free.

More informed decision to raise revenue. Is that necessarily helping us? When you say its not affecting us, us as who? Just sounds like a karma farmer.

You’re right and wrong: today’s economy is often negative sum from total utility perspective. It hurts society and the person but it helps Mark Suckerberg and Scam Altman and the private equity firms.

It’s positive sum from a wealth-weighted utility calculation though. And that’s why it happens.

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