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.
"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".