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Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by shadowgovt on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:05PM (#25520871)
It's a little sus that CEPR titles this doc as a factual declaration when the first sentence is "The European Commission (alongside other regulators) is conducting an in-depth investigation of the Google/Fitbit deal." It calls into question the objectivity of the investigation when the announcement of the investigation is a statement of a conclusion they the EC is, one assumes, actively investigating.
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by germanier on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:36PM (#25521238)
Which is why the actual announcement of the investigation is titled "Commission opens in-depth investigation into the proposed acquisition of Fitbit by Google" [0] written a month before.

The title you are commenting about is written by the CEPR, an institution independent of the EU, which supports that opinion with their own arguments. This should not be confused with the Commission's investigation.

[0]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by r00fus on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @04:45PM (#25522595)
You're correct, the title would more accurately say: "CEPR says Google/Fitbit will monetize health data and harm consumers".
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by ceejayoz on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:13PM (#25520975)
I don't think "Google/Fitbit will monetise health data" requires the in-depth investigation to conclude.
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by variaga on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:26PM (#25521119)
There needs to be some corollary of the "extrodinary claims require extraordinary evidence" phrase for ordinary claims.

I feel like I can safely assume things like "a for-profit corporation will monetize resources available to it" without any specific evidence about the particular corporation or asset.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by fastball on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:31PM (#25521185)
Doesn't seem like a corollary. The corollary would require ordinary evidence, and you're saying you're happy to not have any.
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by ceejayoz on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:37PM (#25521252)
There's plenty of ordinary evidence that corporations monetize data.
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by fastball on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:55PM (#25521463)
With the extraordinary claims, the extraordinary evidence usually needs to directly pertain to the claims.

It is not "extraordinary claims require other similar extraordinary things to have happened in the past". That is not evidence for your claim.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by ceejayoz on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @03:04PM (#25521568)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, yes.

The point is that "corporations will monetize data" isn't an extraordinary claim.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by fastball on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @03:12PM (#25521646)
No, that is an ordinary claim, and one that has plenty of ordinary evidence to back it up.

This company will monetize this data is also an ordinary claim (from history), but similarly needs evidence. "Companies have monetized similar in the past" is not evidence they'll do it in this case.

If you're a gambler, you should absolutely use that fact to inform your betting, but it's not evidence.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by ceejayoz on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @03:26PM (#25521790)
I'm not a fan of "regulators must allow actual harm before intervening" here.
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by gowld on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:49PM (#25521393)
There's plenty of ordinary evidence that corporations decline to monetize some data.

Example: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/143465

"Advertisers can’t use personal hardship categories to target ads to users or to promote advertisers’ products or services. See below for specific examples of what we don't allow."

"Examples: Treatments for chronic health conditions like diabetes or arthritis, treatments for sexually transmitted diseases, counseling services for mental health issues like depression or anxiety, medical devices for sleep apnea like CPAP machines, over-the-counter medications for yeast infections, information about how to support your autistic child"

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by variaga on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:55PM (#25521464)
No, I have plenty of ordinary evidence in the form of my observations of the behavior of every other for-profit corporation across all of history.

Like if you claimed "pine sap is sticky" I don't feel compelled to challenge you and demand to touch it myself before I believe you. I've encountered plenty of pine sap in my life, and it was all sticky. I _have_ evidence that pine sap is sticky generally, so I don't demand _extra_ evidence that a _specific_ portion of sap is sticky.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by fastball on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @03:01PM (#25521538)
Yes, and water is wet. But water and pine sap are to the best of our knowledge fairly homogenous, while companies are definitely not that.

Complex things are, well, complex, and absolutely not all the same.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by harry8 on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @08:39PM (#25524329)
They're not homogenous. The companies that don't make money go broke and cease to be. No sign of that from Google. They're buying the data to monetize it. If they were doing something unexpected like destroying it for the greater good they'd announce it.

The extraordinary thing here is if they bought the data to /not/ monetize it. That requires the evidence. Not the overwhelmingly expected thing. They are mutually exclusive alternatives after all. Go with the overwhelmingly likely one until you've got a solid reason not to. We don't here.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by ehsankia on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:38PM (#25521270)
Does Apple monetize their health data? I'm not talking selling ads against it, but monetize it in any way? Do we consider that harmful too?
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by explodingman on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @03:38PM (#25521920)
Apple can monetise user data by keeping it private and offering privacy as a feature to drive hardware sales/margins.

I don't know for sure if this is their business model. I think it is, and it makes sense as a strategy.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by ehsankia on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @05:06PM (#25522818)
> I don't know for sure if this is their business model.

That's the point, and you also don't know for sure what Google's business model with the health data will be either.

The GP post I was replying said that it was obvious Google was monetizing the data, and implying that it was therefore bad. My point is that if monetizing health data is inherently bad, then so is what Apple is doing.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by Talanes on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @08:20PM (#25524238)
Was that the implication? I got more of a "Of course they will monetize it, that's how corporations handle assets" vibe.

Because monetize is a meaningless word here. Unless Google suddenly decides to go against their fiduciary responsibility and purposefully lose money, any use of the data is going to be somehow monetizing it.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by _jal on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @04:08PM (#25522245)
Last I looked, Apple Health data doesn't leave the phone - there's no "cloud" aspect.

They could of course change that, or sneakily exfil it. The first hasn't happened yet, and the second would destroy a vast amount of consumer trust well before all the lawsuits started.

So I do rather doubt it.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by username90 on Thursday December 24, 2020 @01:57AM (#25525571)
> Last I looked, Apple Health data doesn't leave the phone - there's no "cloud" aspect.

Apple Health data is stored in the cloud, why would you think otherwise? They don't store all of it but they do store some.

> They could of course change that, or sneakily exfil it. The first hasn't happened yet

It already happened, Apple Health data was always stored in the cloud.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by _jal on Thursday December 24, 2020 @12:09PM (#25529268)
> why would you think otherwise?

Because it wasn't the case in the past and I don't use Apple Health or backup to other people's machines, so I don't care enough to stay up to date on the particulars.

Prior to IOS 9 it did not store health data in the "cloud", except as an encrypted blob in a backup.

https://www.macobserver.com/tips/quick-tip/quick-tip-icloud-...

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by ceejayoz on Thursday December 24, 2020 @08:30AM (#25527258)
Sorta.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209519

> If you're using iOS 12 or later and have turned on two-factor authentication for your Apple ID, health records are encrypted using end-to-end encryption through iCloud. This means only you can access this information, and only on devices where you’re signed in to iCloud. No one else, not even Apple, can access end-to-end encrypted information.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by henearkr on Thursday December 24, 2020 @07:18PM (#25532931)
"Monetize" is an harmfully vague choice of words. Research teams for medical or pharmaceutical ventures "monetize" health data (to develop e.g. drugs or tools) but they do it in an ethical way, through anonymized or aggregated data, following good practice guidelines, etc. And there is no wide polemics on these methods. Why would not Google/Fitbit use the data in the same ethical ways?
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by idclip on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:33PM (#25521206)
Its only needed legally so courts can act
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by escapecharacter on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @03:35PM (#25521892)
> little sus

Sidebar: I love that this expression has entered the majority vernacular, thanks mostly to Among Us. I don't think we had such a terse form of this expression before.

Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by iamacyborg on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @03:42PM (#25521973)
It’s been common parlance in the UK for at least a decade
Re:Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumer... by gowld on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:46PM (#25521362)
CEPR is an activist org. Their claims are their opinions, like any blogger.