That way it feels more transparent to the end-user, and they have to make the conscious choice of either giving a bit of their data in exchance of a free service or be prepared to pay to keep their data private.
What's the practical difference between these two scenarios?
1) I offer a free service if you let me collect your data, but charge you $3/mo if you refuse to let me collect it.
2) I offer a $3/mo service, but give you $3/mo back if you let me collect your data.
Option #1 is explicitly illegal under the new California law. If option #2 is legal, then what is the law supposed to ban?
What's meant by saying you can offer incentives is that you must present all information at the same time and that users are considered as opt-out by default.
Basically, the user must go through a sign up page that has a box that says "You may sell my data in exchange for a $3 discount" and it cannot be selected by default. You also cannot have a sign up page that has a box that must be selected to opt-out whether the box is selected by default or not.
The no-relatiation clause also has addition requirements that are not related to money. For example, you cannot refuse to allow a user to access your site because they didn't allow their data to be sold. You also couldn't impose access limitations like slowing the rate of page response or increasing the number of advertisements on the page or send spam only to users that opt-out.
The difference isn't really about charging a fee to users that won't let you sell their data. It's more about not allowing websites to harass users with increased advertising on behalf of whoever they wanted to sell your data to. It's only illegal for them to sell the data, internal use is still legal, so they're preventing a loopholes.
Either way though, I’d be happy if it were just required that there BE an opt out even with a price tag. Google can then finally tell me how much money they want for their services.
It might inadvertently assign a price to the data collected.
It also shows a direct discrimination against poor and/or young people who might not afford the service.
As opposed to what, treating everybody badly? McDonalds discriminates between people who can afford a Big Mac and people who can't, and that's not a problem.
If you don't have the money to buy a big mac, you either eat a cheeseburger on the dollar menu or go home and cook a burger yourself.
If you don't have the money for the software library, you either choose a lesser library, or go write your own.
A larger problem however is many are considering the internet a fundamental human right, which it isn't. Might be nice to have, but a fundamental right it is not.
Average revenue per user is around $25 for global users.
This brings up a related issue that not all users are equal. Even in non-data mining business models, you still have some segment of the users subsidizing another.
The problem is that then you cannot effectively offer a service level that is ad based. Say I want to offer some web services. I provide a free tier with ads (information gathering and selling) and a payed tier with no ads. This law says that I cannot charge more for the non-ads version. OK, so then I make both cost the same, either free or some fixed cost. If they are both free, what stops everyone from just using the non-ads version, it's free too. If both aren't free and cost money, what is the point of even providing the ad version, since people can pay the same and get the no-ads version. Not to mention, everyone that is fine giving their information in order to receive the service for "free" is now not able to do that.
It's not the end of the world, it's the end of some business models.
We impose these restrictions for the good of the public. If we decide that exchanging personal data for goods and services should be illegal under certain conditions, I don't see why that's any different than the precedents I mentioned.
Of course, it's all up for debate. I used it as an example because it's the status quo, so it's a good refutation of the statement that this new law is "crazy" in the sense of it being radical and unprecedented.
> - Businesses can, however, offer “financial incentives” for being allowed to collect data.
This just means your service always costs money, but you can refund the full amount for allowing you to collect data.
Not if the thing I value is my personal data. Because I, as a typical short sighted consumer, will consistently underestimate the value of my data, as well as how my data affects those around me (extreme case: my data is my social graph, which you can use to reconstruct the social graph of my acquaintances).
If I don't know the actual value of what I am giving up, I am naturally going to get swindled.
Do you, for example, not use Google because you are concerned they are getting too good a deal from you? Duck Duck Go exists.
If Friendo doesn’t have the same relationship I have with Tech.co, how is Friendo benefitting? Where is the exchange there?
Any concern regarding whether consent is likely to be withheld really just points out how stupid a company's business model is. Incumbent vs. Startup is also a false premise because Facebook is an incumbent that relies on selling user data. They do make some money from purely internal advertising, but in total Facebook only makes less than $5 per user when selling data, and that's lifetime, not per year. So the only way to make real profits from selling data is if you sell millions of people's data. Their internal data use however, is just for add targeting which they make more money from each year. This internal use makes more per user and is therefore a more viable strategy for a small company than selling data.
There are already regulations that make it impossible to sell user data that would be valuable that apply to more than just internet collected information. So, any data selling strategy a startup or incumbent company might have will either not earn significant profits or is very likely already illegal.
In any case, advertising revenue rarely ever covers a company's expenses. If a company is only staying afloat because of selling data, then that company is achieving a very poor return on investment and is wasting the time of everyone involved. Either they need better business processes, strategies or they're not offering something of sufficient value to be worth the time put into the business.
In this view, a company offering a discount in exchange for sharing is inherently deceptive.
The service isn't free. The exchange just isn't money. When money is involved a price is put forth. It's an agreed to and published exchange mechanism. When it's data on someone the price isn't shared. It's kept secret. There's always a price. It's just not always money or public. This will make more information public.
I wonder if this will start to change how business operate. Right now they are skewed against consumers towards businesses. I wonder if consumer protections, like this, will cause businesses to re-evaluate business models.
Giovanni Buttarelli, European Data Protection Supervisor “There might well be a market for personal data, just like there is, tragically, a market for live human organs, but that does not mean that we can or should give that market the blessing of legislation.”
Privacy is fundamental human right that you cant trade for. Same as you cant sign a lawfull contract that you want to be someones slave, even if you want to.
However, customers aren't well informed, and if they were, they wouldn't use these services. Currently customers are getting scammed for their data. This is why we need regulation.
The problem is that these companies advertise their products as "free," which means something very different. And they usually don't mention at all that they're collecting shit tons of personal data. It's taking advantage of people's ignorance, and it's practically fraud, IMO.
Every other business tells the customer up front what the price is, and maybe it's time tech companies started doing the same.
Without telling users what data they collect, how much they collect, how they use it, and who they give it to, there's no way for users to make an informed decision.
I never explicitly stated that I'd serve these companies by giving my data. Services cannot be assumed, why do you think there are such long Terms of Service. We as users should also have Terms of Service then.
EDIT: Several comments below point out the innumerable businesses operating in such a way as to make mine an impossible claim.
Enumerating the established methods to avoid meeting the legal parameters of price discrimination is not the same as price discrimination being legal.
My bar for following just laws is higher than the minimum required to avoid being prosecuted. I’m sure experts can help work around any future privacy laws too, so why even worry?
Surveillance already creates a different product one can charge more for, though your lawyer might advise you call it “personalization” in memos.
Demonstrably untrue.
It is illegal to charge a different price based on a protected class like race or gender. But travel sites, for example, are notorious for charging different people different prices based on their GeoIP, whether they're on mobile or desktop, or Windows vs Macintosh.
Robinson-Patman Act says "Please read me, and understand me and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act which I amend."
From refurb's link below:
"Price discriminations are generally lawful"
See https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
They have no clue about the Robinson-Patman Act amendments to the Clayton Act.
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Maybe you can show me generic ads based on your content instead of targeting them based on where I've been on vacation last month, etc.
Or simply stop building businesses based on people data. Sell something people want to pay for. Humankind has been able to do that for thousands of years, did we forget how to do it?
Couldn't a financial incentive be charging more?
> including by charging the consumer who opts out a different price or providing the consumer a different quality of goods or services, except if the difference is reasonably related to value provided by the consumer’s dat
Doesnt that second part cancel the first part? Businesses can also pay money for data ... so facebook can switch to subsciption only, but pay its users with virtual coins for viewing ads
I think it means that if you opt out of data collection, then things like personalized recommendations will no longer work, which makes the services worse. That is a part of the service directly related to the data.
sure, if it wanted to fall out of the fortune 500.
(Tangentially, they would have to cut costs to remain profitable, but I figure it should be possible for 6k employees to maintain a set of services that people are willing to pay $2.5/year for.)
If people don't find your product valuable enough to pay for, then your company should go out of business.
Companies have been exploiting people's privacy behind their back, and now that they've been called on it they're throwing a tantrum.
"Something" doesn't mean "anything". You can't offer your services in exchange for e.g. my body parts. Why are we willing to ban that but not our data?
> The only reason those services are being provided at all is to get that data. That's effectively a requirement that people provide services for free.
Well, no — they could charge money for them. But even this is a false dilemma; surely we can come up with at least one business model other than "charge directly for our service" and "surveil our users".
Because if you were to run a survey over the general population the large majority is fine not having to pay for gmail, google search, maps and other "free" services while some data may be collected doing so while a much smaller percentage thinks it's OK to sell their organs for that?
If someone went back in time to tell people that this new internet thing was going to lead to the US having more surveillance than East Germany or the Soviet Union, there would have been laws passed and systems designed from the start to prevent it from happening. The fact that it didn't happen this way, and our culture's privacy norms have been destroyed as a consequence, is more reason to act to prevent further damage, not a reason to just give up.
Sure, but if you had phrased the question more fairly and said "Should it be ok for a company to give you free services in exchange for tracking everywhere you go?" I think almost everyone would have said yes.
> If someone went back in time to tell people that this new internet thing was going to lead to the US having more surveillance than East Germany or the Soviet Union, there would have been laws passed and systems designed from the start to prevent it from happening. The fact that it didn't happen this way, and our culture's privacy norms have been destroyed as a consequence, is more reason to act to prevent further damage, not a reason to just give up.
My intuition here is the same as yours. That this is a bad thing. That privacy matters in an intrinsic sense, not an operational sense. But i'm not so sure that's really true anymore. The privacy ship has sailed off into the sunset for a while now, and at least to me, the harms don't seem that substantial. All that data is mostly used to give me ads that are more targeted to what I might want to see anyway. There certainly could be lurking latent risks about, but it's a little hard to see exactly what they are.
Then you should add shadow profiling, data banks linking together data of dozens of different companies, politically targeted advertisement that pretends to be from human users.
Yes the free market is nice and all, still the internet is a hell of a creepy place. It is undeniable that the reason this was allowed (comparing to direct mail advertisement for example) is that it was always believed to be impossible.
Most people don't understand the risks and how badly mass surveillance done by Google / Facebook / etc can be abused. So akin to situation with tobacco industry someone have to educate them about this.
This is totally dodging the issue.
Would they pay instead of allowing that collection?
Given the choice of "pay for this service", "stop using this service", "give up your data", even with a full understanding of the risks and the extent of this data, the general public has shown time and time again they will take the last option.
People do not like to pay for things.
I see way too many arguments about privacy that doesn't seem to grasp that the core of today's tech industry is built around this fact.
People will pay 5$ for 50 cents of coffee beans and enough sugar to drown a fly a day, but they will never pay 5$ a month to access nearly the entirety of mankind's collective knowledge at their fingertips in milliseconds in the form of a search index spending millions of dollars a year to index it all.
I pay a lot more than $5/month for Internet service.
I recall people were talking about turning back to piracy in response to the fragmentation of streaming services.
Disney plus will cost around 7 dollars a month, Netflix costs 13, HBO costs 15. This is about 23, 45, and 50 cents per day respectively.
Yet this change was enough to cause some people to angrily proclaim that they'll go back to illegally downloading movies and tv shows.
Look at music, this seems solved there.
edit: typos
That's nonsense.
Nobody can make an informed decision because nobody knows exactly what data Google collects or exactly how it's used.
And unless you've actually run a survey you can't even speculate about whether people are okay with it or not. If your claim was true, why would this law even exist? You're okay with it, but privacy is a highly personal issue.
How is this an argument against the law? It doesn't make it illegal to share data but requires that users can opt out. If said large majority is fine with surveillance, I guess Silicon Valley can relax.
"Hey, I want to use your free service but I want to go ahead and opt out of the part that enables it to be free" You don't see a problem with that?
It would be like if there were a restaurant that gave free food in exchange for filling out surveys (data collection). So you eat the free meal and then "opt out" of doing the survey.
in this case, NOPE
This is simply not true. When informed about it, a clear majority of people would prefer not to be surveilled, and are uncomfortable with unknown third parties having profiles on them, ads following them around the internet, etc.
The fact that these people continue to use these services anyway (even after being informed) is not a sign that they are 'fine' with it. It is because they have no choice. Even as an engineer, I've found it unfeasibly difficult to avoid being surveilled while continuing to live a normal life. For most people it's a non-starter. They have no choice.
Freedom to choose is essential to a free market. Regulation, done well, can increase market freedom.
At least I know where my data is. Have you ever read a GDPR popup partner list? Do the people you mention understand how gmail business model works?
No need to come up with something new, we had content based ads long before Google and Facebook took over.
Lots of us feel that the data thing should be allowed. That's all.
Okay, cool, don't opt out then. I on the other hand would prefer to see ads based on the content I'm viewing for which no other data from me needs to be passed around.
In fact, ideally, the User Agent would advertise our privileges. Like a DNT option and websites would respond with a paywall or something instead and be expected (by law) to respect the DNT. Then, on first load, browsers could say, "Do you wish to allow tracking?" and warn about the added paywall cost vs. the tracking cost.
Well, I quite like that part. It pushes content providers to look for surveillance free business models, such as content based ads that aren't personalized. Why should selling your data vs. paywall be the only options? To protect Google's ad cartel?
That seems like a weird spin. Businesses are being regulated here, not individuals. I don't see how the law would control me.
It doesn't. That's merely one way how businesses could comply with the law, the other option would be to look for better business models as I said in the comment you replied to.
I don't think they do, given that most people don't read them, and a large percentage of them are written so it's very hard to tell what they are really saying unless you're a lawyer.
It's possible people genuinely don't care. It's also possible they don't understand the implications, and/or that they trust these companies more than they ought to.
First, having to read a long block of legalese on every visit to a website (which would be necessary because those privacy polices can change without notice at any time) is unsupportable. If people actually did that, it would render the web completely unusable. The average normal person can't be blamed for saying "screw that", nor can their attitude about privacy really be inferred from it.
Second, even for those of us who are more concerned than the average person about these issues, reading privacy policies is a pointless waste of time. Once you have a lawyer interpret them for you, it turns out that the vast majority of them say the same thing -- they are reserving the right to do anything they want with my data. That means that I can safely predict what privacy policies say, so there's no need to read them.
Just because people use a service doesn’t mean they have read the terms and conditions. Therefore, your anecdote is just that.
A similar analogy is that I may not want to read my credit card bill, that doesn't eliminate the responsibility I have to pay it. Or, I may not want to read my visa card notice they send informing of a change in the APR or other conditions for service. however, my continued use of the card is the standard way one accepts new or changed TOS.
Maintaining ignorance doesn't excuse the actions.
Not really relevant to a change in the law.
Then again GDPR requires opt-in, but most sites ignore that and many make the opt out extremely time consuming.
> This is not evidence of numbers, but I have an existence proof in that I also personally know a lot of people who know and insist on not opting out.
Most people I know would interpret that as "I know I'm not the only one because". After all, I specifically say "not evidence of numbers" and I also specifically say "existence proof". I find your response baffling.
We could definitely have a system where eg all CC processing must be done through a firewalled system such that the business only ever learns that the payment was successful (unless there is a dispute).
Edit: Europe tries to approximate this with the GDPR system of “you can only use information for the purposes for which it was collected” but that doesn’t stop them from seeing your identity like I described.
Is this a real question?
For many, many people, that is _fine_.
The real issue I see here is how this law is written and how we're interpreting it. If the law makes it so that people who want to opt out of free internet services because of privacy concerns are free to do so, then we're all good. If the law is written such that people who want to avail themselves of free services in exchange for their data are no longer able to do so because that business model is broken, then I see a lot of problems.
I would argue this isn't the case. For many people it is out of sight and out of mind. They don't realize what's happening.
I came to this conclusion after talking with people about it. Numerous people didn't believe it. I had to show people documents and articles for them to believe me. Most of the people I've spoken with do not like this behavior and would rather not use a service or pay for it if they had known.
The average person is unaware. That does not make it ok.
This is where the line is drawn for most - if people from Facebook, Amazon or Google look at information other than machines. Totally fine if it's just a computer with a strong law like GDPR safeguarding it.
From my conversations with Googlers at least, it does seem they're extremely careful about insider threats.
You can easily find articles about sufficiently low-level drones getting fired from Facebook for snooping if this is an authentic query.
If you have trusted friends in tech, you can ask them even better.
Any actual data other than anecdotes?
If your business can't survive by charging a fair price for the service it provides without stealing data, then it shouldn't exist.
Please note that these are deliberately constructed as strawmen; I am not advocating for them or saying you do.
1/ Would you approve of a law which forbade companies (perhaps outside of eg healthcare or finance) from collecting or storing PII?
2/ Would you approve of a law which forbade a company which bought or sold PII (perhaps with the above exemptions) from doing any other kind of business?
3/ Would you approve of a law which required companies to explicitly price and purchase PII from consumers?
4/ Would you approve of a law holding employees or executives criminally responsible for data breaches?
5/ Would you approve of a law standardizing the requirements for anonymizing data?
6/ Would you approve of a law banning online advertising?
7/ Would you approve of a law which placed the same requirements on any company which stored PII as are currently imposed on credit agencies?
Would you approve of a law which forbade advertising of any sort?
Would you approve of a law which required service providers to offer their service for free?
Would you approve of a law which forbade service providers from offering their service for free?
Would you approve of a law banning the sale of digital goods or rights to digital goods?
Would you approve of a law banning subscriptions or recurring payments?
Would you approve of a law forbidding the use of cameras in public places?
Would you approve of a law forbidding companies from having more than $X in revenue, for some X?
No. People are entitled to speech.
> Would you approve of a law which required service providers to offer their service for free?
No. Making money is Virtuous and Good. Acquiring money by theft, deceit, etc is not.
> Would you approve of a law which forbade service providers from offering their service for free?
No. Charity is fine. In the cases people are actually paying with their data and the "free" is just legal trickery then yes. You already can't pay people in blood. Data is just as important.
> Would you approve of a law banning the sale of digital goods or rights to digital goods?
No. However, DRM should be illegal.
> Would you approve of a law banning subscriptions or recurring payments?
No. The only issue here is predatory sign-ons.
> Would you approve of a law forbidding the use of cameras in public places?
This one is difficult. At any earlier time, no.
> Would you approve of a law forbidding companies from having more than $X in revenue, for some X?
No, I wouldn't bother.
> This one is difficult. At any earlier time, no.
I suspect the best solution here is laws around how the data from public cameras is stored and processed. Cameras that store a temporary loop of data, delete it after a day or two, and don't upload that data to the cloud are one thing. Cameras that upload every image to the cloud for permanent storage where face recognition software is used to track you movement around the city or your emotional state throughout the day are a different beast.
I'm not sure what you mean by "at any earlier time". Can you clarify?
You mention predatory sign-ons. In this context it seems you view the data-for-service trade as predatory. Do you think it would remain predatory if it were explicitly priced-- eg, if Google offered you a $5 credit on a $5 service for use of your data?
Would you approve of a law explicitly allowing blood-for-service or similar?
This is something I object to. It's just fundamentally stupid and doesn't make sense. The entire premise of free exchange is that I give you my services in exchange for something of value of yours. Making it illegal to withhold services if you don't give up your data is crazy. The only reason those services are being provided at all is to get that data. That's effectively a requirement that people provide services for free.
EDIT: I'll also add that it strongly favors incumbent tech companies, by explicitly carving out "selling to third parties" as a disfavored tactic. Google can monetize your data internally. Your average startup may not be able to. Specifically carving out "selling to third parties" favors large, incumbent players over small startups. But then, regulation always does.