Klout shutting down

Re:Klout shutting down by geofft on Friday May 11, 2018 @06:13PM (#17051113)

Another GDPR victory. Previous partial victories (because they shut down European service only) include Unroll.me, a service that would read your inbox, click some unsubscribe links, and market to you based on the rest of what they found, as well as targeted-advertising companies Verve and Drawbridge.

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Re:Klout shutting down by vosper on Friday May 11, 2018 @06:26PM (#17051173)

Is it a GDPR victory? I was under the impression that Klout had become irrelevant some time ago. I think most media analytics companies have their own secret-sauce influencer algorithms these days, as part of their value proposition.

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Re:Klout shutting down by Operyl on Friday May 11, 2018 @06:51PM (#17051287)

Worse than that. Unroll would just send those emails to the spam folder utterly ruining email reputation for otherwise legitimate marketing campaigns. Not sure if it's different now, but I had a loooot of cleaning up after that service started becoming "mainstream."

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Re:Klout shutting down by ghysl on Saturday May 12, 2018 @01:58PM (#17055198)

Uh, that sounds awesome. Harming marketing is basically always good.

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Re:Klout shutting down by Operyl on Saturday May 12, 2018 @02:01PM (#17055206)

Uh .. no it isn't. These were campaigns the users explicitly opted into (with a checkbox during signup, unchecked by default) and a very very visible unsubscribe link at the bottom of _each_ email.

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Re:Klout shutting down by briandear on Friday May 11, 2018 @06:48PM (#17051272)

So it’s a “victory” that people in the EU are unable to decide for themselves if they want to use Unroll Me?

Who made you the arbiter of what’s good for people?

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Re:Klout shutting down by madeofpalk on Friday May 11, 2018 @06:51PM (#17051289)

So it’s a “victory” that people in the US are unable to decide for themselves if they want to eat at Salmonella Kitchen Co?

Who made you the arbiter of what’s good for people?

Regulation "deciding" which businesses or services exist or not has existed for eons. It’s why we require doctors to be accredited, or restaurants to pass food and safety checks. Sometimes the balance of power is way out of the hands of consumers and the "free market" needs a bit of a nudge to act in the public’s best interest.

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Re:Klout shutting down by jjeaff on Friday May 11, 2018 @07:23PM (#17051421)

Salmonella Kitchen is a ridiculous example. Take something that is actually controversial, like raw milk.

If people want to drink raw milk, let them.

Allowing a company to offer a service for free in exchange for a user's data is very far away from allowing unaccredited doctors practice medicine.

GDPR is more like blocking people from braiding hair without a cosmotology license.

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Re:Klout shutting down by madeofpalk on Friday May 11, 2018 @07:27PM (#17051437)

Companies can still do that - they just need to be honest and transparent with their users.

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Re:Klout shutting down by geofft on Saturday May 12, 2018 @12:05AM (#17052425)

I didn't write the GDPR. The people of the EU democratically elected a government that did. They made that government arbiter over what's good for them.

However, am I not permitted to agree with them?

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Re:Klout shutting down by Gaelan on Saturday May 12, 2018 @01:51AM (#17052660)

If Unroll was willing to explain their business model to users and let the users make an informed decision, then yes, the users could decide for themselves. Unroll decided that not enough people would willingly sign up knowing the consequences and that it wasn't worth it.

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Re:Klout shutting down by vertex-four on Saturday May 12, 2018 @04:21AM (#17053046)

Unroll.Me decided that if it explicitly told people what it was doing, it would be out of business anyway. I think that shows that people in the EU did decide for themselves once the information asymmetry was resolved, and decided no.

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