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
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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.
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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.
There are a few fundamental flaws I see with this argument.
As others have pointed out it’s a false dichotomy.
There were hundreds of years of profitable content creation and distribution prior to invasive data collection or targeted advertisement. People were fine paying for every movie they saw and every periodical they read. The idea that it’s financially untenable unless I tell Mark Zuckerberg my financial situation, medical conditions, and kinks is silly.
It’s an uneven transaction. I read an article for one minute the platform gets to bombard me with ads for one minute… that’s fair and equal. No notes. I read an article for one minute and Mark Zuckerberg gets to stalk me like a prey animal accross websites, circumventing protections against tracking, even if I don’t have a FB account, then he can keep my data in perpetuity and sell it as many times as possible, to any party, anywhere in the world without my knowledge or explicit consent… that’s less of a balanced transaction.
Big cuck energy have an upvote!
I can guarantee that all these people complaining about “muh privacy” would not like having a paywall restricted internet.
As one of the privacy zealots on the internet, I’d gladly pay for services if it avoids advertisements. But I should get a choice in who gets my information.
As things are now, I’m not in control of any of it unless I fight tooth and nail to retain it, and even then I can only limit what they have access to. Facebook tracks my browsing habits and builds an advertisement profile based on it even though I explicitly deleted my accounts almost 10 years ago.
And this information isn’t just kept by Facebook. They have the right to sell it to anyone, including the government. Who needs a warrant when your local PD can just pay a data broker and get access to your GPS logs? After all, you consented to that website’s EULA that said they can sell that data to any other entity.
People who don’t care about data privacy don’t understand how much you can learn about someone just from ‘anonymized metadata’.
If it was a person wanting to know that much about you, you’d call the cops for stalking. But because it’s a multimillion dollar company with a profit motive, it’s suddenly okay?
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.
That choice is called not using their service.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile
Turns out, that isn’t enough.
EDIT
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.
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.
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.
The cost to run a server is between $0.50 to $2.00 per month depending on how complex it is. So Imagine you had to pay $2.50-$3.00 per website in a patchwork of subscription based sites.
Every .com or .net site that wasn’t selling a product would now require that fee, .gov .edu and .org would likely still be free.
I don’t care about my data because I get to use a free internet with at least ads that are relevant to me and adblocker works relatively well
You don’t care about your data because you don’t realize how valuable it is, and how bad the deal is that in exchange for not being able to control your data, you get to see some cute cat memes.
We’re headed to a world where your health insurance company can pay a data broker to get access to data Kroger collects about what you buy when shopping. Imagine your health insurance going up because you buy real butter vs margarine. Or not enough vegetables.
But hey, at least you get to see your friends vacation pictures for free on Facebook. Totally worth it.
Most people don’t understand that we are headed for discriminatory pricing where everyone pays the maximum they can bare up to ensure everyone stays in poverty in an endless consumption loop. Shit we kinda are already there.
Think RealPage and rental markets in REIT owned corporate ghettos.
And the normie still got nothing to hide clearly.
States will ban the practice quickly if companies start price discriminating, the only reason insurance companies have gotten away with it is because they have justified reasons if they started using precision with our data it would be quickly outlawed.
The internet has only been allowed to be a free market because we agreed to be the product. Imagine a world where Google isn’t free, where you are charged per usage like the old phone plans that cost money per amount of letters typed.
You have a lot of faith in the US government’s willingness to solve problems for people vs for companies.
We have a gun violence epidemic because gun manufacturer profits matter more than children’s lives. Forgive me if I’m skeptical that congress would do anything other than protect big business. Health insurance lobbyists will make sure of it.
I have faith in the states/city I live in lol. Maryland/DC will ban the practice, probably the while North east VA upwards, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, West coast, Colorado, and New Mexico would stop this, the feds MIGHT but probably not.
The health insurance lobbyists won’t hesitate to inject money into a local election for a candidate that agrees to keep things as they are.
But hey, I remember being naive and idealistic once, too.
Have you seen our government lately? That’s not fucking happening. Maybe in the furthest left states. But even that is a huge maybe.
I wholeheartedly disagree.
Have an upvote.
That looks very much like a false dichotomy to me. You left out:
- advertising (which does not require selling data, this is just an invasive additive)
- donation and volunteer based (Wikipedia does this quite successfully)
- funded from tax income (as are online government services, crown corporations etc.)
- companies that sell something thru the internet l, and website is an advertising or pm selling platform. This accounts for most sites, tbh, from brands to retailers, to marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, and Craigslist.
These are just off the top of my head. But the point being is that your major premise of obviously false.
Most companies that are harvesting our data are also requiring or pushing for subscriptions now, so the dichotomy is also false in that respect.
Finally, it is clear that millions of people are quite happy to pay reasonable fees for valuable services, which is why so many fee based companies are doing fine.
When is the last time ads on a website were completely random and not at least relevant to you?
donation and volunteer based (Wikipedia does this quite successfully) funded from tax income (as are online government services, crown corporations etc.)
Fair point, Wiki is an outlier in that regaurd and also .org not a .com/.net
I’d count taxes as subscription albeit you don’t get a choice
companies that sell something thru the internet l, and website is an advertising or pm selling platform. This accounts for most sites, tbh, from brands to retailers, to marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, and Craigslist.
I should have specified non commercial sites.
When is the last time ads on a website were completely random and not at least relevant to you?
Earlier today, because I block cookies, ads, tracking, etc.
I should have specified non commercial sites.
So you know you’re cherry-picking to justify your weirdo pro-corporate opinion, then.
Good on you.
I’m not pro coporate I’m pro free internet, if I can connect to it I can use it free.
Don’t you think it’s hypocritical to say that you think people should freely give their data to companies so that they can finance their websites while also saying that me avoiding tracking and ads is a good thing?
If you want to be consistent, you can’t also support bypassing the method by which you’re contending that the internet sustains itself.
No because if you are willing to go through the hassle to get around it then thats fine, until it becomes a big enough issue, I use adblocker, I am simply saying, use my Data so I don’t pay with money that I and the majority of people can’t afford
Can you articulate why it’s fine “until it becomes a big enough issue”?
When does it become a big enough issue? Why is it okay for companies and web administrators to lose out on an unquantified portion of the revenue that you say that they are owed in exchange for their services?
Do you mean free in the monetary sense or the liberty sense?
free in the monetary sense.
Model number 3:
- Subscription based AND make even more money by selling your data
That’s definitely an unpopular opinion!
It’s also one that is poorly reasoned. The whole “there’s only two models” part is bunkum
And which of those 2 models for the Internet does Lemmy, the website before your eyes that you’re currently using, fit into? 🙃
People are using their own money to run these servers its a net loss for them.
My question still stands
there are only 2 possible models for the Internet
Seems like you’re proven wrong by the very website you’re posting the theory to
I understood sustainable implied in there.
Someone’s paying and the rest are freeloading: good luck sustaining that.
Good luck? You think the nerds who run servers don’t have money for it? There is an infinite supply of nerds with both expertise AND money.
You aren’t even right, either. Linux package manager repositories?? Torrenting clients and the act of torrenting? Just to name some classics.
You aren’t even right, either. Linux package manager repositories??
Open source gets income through sponsors, profit-earning partners, foundations of profitable interests whose success depends on it. Their continued earnings & livelihoods incentivize funding it.
No one’s success depends on services like lemmy, so there’s no compelling incentive for it.
If you can somehow arrange such a dependence for social media (of mostly garbage memes & idiotic opinions) to economically sustain itself, then you’re a genius & humanity will owe you a debt.
Torrenting clients and the act of torrenting?
Mostly piracy under constant legal threat unreliably distributing possibly unsafe content.
Depending on the charity of others for a service that doesn’t yield some obvious incentive to keep that going seems unsustainable. It wouldn’t surprise me for the system to strain with load & eventually fail. It already strains in my experience.
So why are you here? Freeloading while you can before the fediverse implodes?
Freeloading while you can before the fediverse implodes?
Yup.
You mean before they start showing ads? That’s going to happen eventually.
So, seems like you admit that you’re wrong and there AREN’T only 2 possible models for the Internet.
Little free libraries would like a word with your reasoning.
Nope: after the one-time costs (eg, shelf space) are paid, does it cost much to sustain?
Sustaining a web service has recurrent costs: at least power, network, maintenance or a data center subscription.
But they are sustained through time-labour and costs. Someone is still paying and devoting their time while the rest benefit, you didn’t state a lower limit.
I’ve run a free library and managed an online service for an old job.
After initial costs of ~ $300, the library took about an hour a week to maintain. I kept it clean and actively procured good items for it, and offered to pick up donations to keep the library stocked. If I billed for my time at my then-wage, transportation, cleaning supplies and repair costs(screws, stain, replacing wood) over the course of a year, it would have averaged around $100/month.
Alternatively, the web-hosted service required three domains at about $40/yr and a webserver that cost $25/month. Once it was going, it didn’t require much maintenance outside of answering user questions. I had to call up the dev around once a month to actually fix something, billed at $35/hr for no more than an hour or two. The company didn’t charge as the service promoted the larger business.
I never considered the users of either service to be “freeloading.”
Indeed. If you don’t pay for something (be it your money/attention/data/time) someone else is. There’s nothing really “free”.
Wow. This really is a shit opinion. As someone else has stated, this corporate cuck energy is radiating off this post.
Wanted to upvote because, damn, definitely unpopular. But it’s also really badly thought out and supported.
If you truly think it’s just about selling shit to consumers have an upvote
You could argue that users agree to exchange their data for convenience and free services when they accept the terms of service and create an account with a company that collects and sells user data. So it’s true that there is a degree of personal accountability there.
However, sometimes you’re required to have an account with one of these services for something like work or school. And sometimes you can even be tracked when you visit websites without creating an account based on your device ID, settings, IP address, browser specifications, maybe even facial recognition used on a photo of you someone else uploaded. Technically you can avoid this by not accepting those jobs or attending those schools, or not visiting any websites at all, but how practical is that in modern life?
I think your average user isn’t well-informed about the extent of data collection and how easy it is to de-anonymize data by cross referencing it, and businesses both take advantage of that ignorance/apathy towards privacy and downplay the extent of how they use it. I support more *transparency* around data collection and sharing policies.
Apart from identity theft safeguards, the fuss over data privacy of metadata that was never private and voluntary information (especially information that could be found in a phonebook or gathered from public observation) always seemed overblown & misguided. I know
- the internet wasn’t designed for privacy
- they have my internet address whenever I connect
- they can track my usage of their free service
- they have the information I provided
- they can coordinate with partners
- I’m consenting by using their free service
so why should I act surprised when they do what should be expected to offer that free service? People who do that strike me as a special kind of stupid: do they think the world just runs on magic?
Free shit in exchange for mostly worthless information & ads I ignore seems like an obvious bargain, but what do I know? Let’s stir everyone into a frenzy to bitch & moan about the ravages of targeted advertising.
It is not a bargain, because not only can it be used against you in the future (e.g., an oppressive regime, EVEN if you’re in another country), or someone you know. Furthermore, many of these companies track your usage of other services, regardless of whether you use that company’s services or not.
I don’t know, man. I assume they have information they may find in a phonebook; data I voluntarily gave social media & networking such as my school or employment, demographics, relations, peers, & whatever they can glean from peers; my shopping preferences; rough geolocation from my IP address; my ISP, OS, web browser, content I’ve browsed. None of this information is particularly valuable to me. It would take incredible effort for me to code & host a search engine or social media site or the various other free web applications I use. I value those way more than my junk data that is worthless to me, so the trade-off is obvious.
The government has access to much more sensitive information about me: social security; government issued licenses & registrations; birth, education, tax, property, police, medical, telecommunication, financial records. Only the law & procedure prevents it from abusing that access.
Without online data brokers, anyone could gather much of the same, less sensitive information about me though plain observation, public surveillance, or interviews: only time & effort discourages them. Seems like a lack of perspective.
Im sure most people will like the irony of posting this on lemmy. I’m sure everyone is scraping our data. Hell there is a convenient api on every server to scrape.
But its equal for everyone to scrape its the free market of ideas and u don’t own ideas.
