Re:Losing the war against surveillance capitalism letting Bi...
by dan-robertson on Sunday June 21, 2020 @08:04PM
(#23596323)
I think this is a fair point. ish.
It is true that google/fb don’t sell your data so much as the ad-tracking derived from it. Though they do buy your data from other sources which incentives other firms to collect and sell your data. While you may (rightfully) trust Google’s security practices, I wonder if you would trust the practices of all the other parties who collect or buy your data.
I think it’s also worth looking at the framing of debates on privacy: large firms like google want it to mean that your data is kept as a secret between you and google and you can control who (else) may access it; the other side of the debate want it to mean that you need not live in a world that seems to know so much about things you have done but not made publicly available.
I think I disagree with you somewhat about the distinction between google collecting data and some state like the USA collecting data. The civil service must follow strict rules about such data collection (which private companies need and indeed do not follow), and it is full of scrupulous public servants who want to act responsibly and morally, and who have laws to protect their abilities to do so. The argument that state data collection is worse because of the potential use it would have in enabling tyranny is reasonable. But I think one must concede that firms such as google are able to inflict a lot of tyranny upon people (indeed they currently do this though only to few people and it seems mostly for arbitrary or overlooked reasons).
It is true that google/fb don’t sell your data so much as the ad-tracking derived from it. Though they do buy your data from other sources which incentives other firms to collect and sell your data. While you may (rightfully) trust Google’s security practices, I wonder if you would trust the practices of all the other parties who collect or buy your data.
I think it’s also worth looking at the framing of debates on privacy: large firms like google want it to mean that your data is kept as a secret between you and google and you can control who (else) may access it; the other side of the debate want it to mean that you need not live in a world that seems to know so much about things you have done but not made publicly available.
I think I disagree with you somewhat about the distinction between google collecting data and some state like the USA collecting data. The civil service must follow strict rules about such data collection (which private companies need and indeed do not follow), and it is full of scrupulous public servants who want to act responsibly and morally, and who have laws to protect their abilities to do so. The argument that state data collection is worse because of the potential use it would have in enabling tyranny is reasonable. But I think one must concede that firms such as google are able to inflict a lot of tyranny upon people (indeed they currently do this though only to few people and it seems mostly for arbitrary or overlooked reasons).