Data privacy is all the rage and people want to have an internet where companies need permission to sell your data and where you can use the FREE service without letting them tell advertisers what you actually like.

There are only 2 possible models for the internet

  1. A free internet where websites, browsers and search engines make money by selling your data to companies who want to sell their products to users.

  2. A subscription based internet where you companies don’t use your data but charge a fee to use a specific website, browser or search engine.

I can guarantee that all these people complaining about “muh privacy” would not like having a paywall restricted internet.

  • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    15·
    1 day ago

    But I should get a choice in who gets my information.

    That choice is called not using their service.

    After all, you consented to that website’s EULA that said they can sell that data to any other entity.

    Exactly.

    People who don’t care about data privacy don’t understand how much you can learn about someone just from ‘anonymized metadata’.

    Some of us know.

      • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        Indirect information is not a choice we have offline, either.

        So shadow profiles come from either

        • public information (not private by definition)
        • information other users shared
        • information 3rd parties got from each other or the former?

        Seems like the problem here is information voluntarily given to someone & shared, ie, 2nd-hand information. Unless the information is sensitive (government ID, payment information, medical records, etc), can we reasonably expect society not to pick up information about us from our social network?

        We can choose not to directly divulge our information, but even offline we never had serious expectations that others won’t disclose nonsensitive information they know about us or seen us do. Unless the information is legally protected offline, we never had a choice to control that offline, so we’re not owed that online, either.

        • BluescreenOfDeath@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          That raises a fundamental question to me:

          Are companies required to get permission to get data from people?

          Because currently, they sure seem to think they need permission, except when it suits the company’s interests (IE gathering data from people who explicitly reject their services and choose not to use them).

          And while I understand that not everything is private, we have laws against gathering public data about people but only if you’re just one person. Stalking is a crime, unless you’re Facebook apparently.

          • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
            1·
            1 day ago

            And while I understand that not everything is private, we have laws against gathering public data about people but only if you’re just one person.

            That’s not why. The reason is nothing you wrote about fits the legal definition of stalking. A typical legal definition

            A person commits the crime of stalking when the person either:

            • engages in a course of conduct or repeatedly commits acts toward another person, including following the person without proper authority, under circumstances which demonstrate either an intent to place such other person in reasonable fear of bodily injury or to cause substantial emotional distress to such other person; or
            • engages in a course of conduct or repeatedly communicates to another person under circumstances which demonstrate or communicate either an intent to place such other person in reasonable fear of bodily injury or to cause substantial emotional distress to such other person.

            An element of the definition (circumstance) is sorely missing in your claims.

            Stalking has less to do with information & more to do with (legal definition of) harassment. Simply gathering public data about someone isn’t a crime. Expectations of privacy in public are nonexistent. Your premise is dubious.