In theory, this would balance out and lead towards some level of equality. In practice, the high barrier of entrance and smaller numbers on the side of capital made it much easier for them to drive down labor prices and exploit. That led to massive inequality—think robber barons and the like—which in turn eventually led to the organized labor movement.
We are now recapitulating this historic arc in the information revolution. Now the world is divided into those who own data and those who produce it. Large corporations own giant fields of data and the computing technology required to derive actionable information from it. Everyone else gives up their personal data and attention to feed those enormous machines. This has led to the growing inequality that is causing a breakdown in institutional trust and is driving people out of cities that are increasingly affordable only to the elites who run the data factories.
At some point, we will hopefully have an "organized data movement" where people work together to be able to make effective demands about how their data can be harvested and used. We aren't there yet.
Don't be silly. The world was divided long before the Industrial Revolution, and if "labor" was ever on top of things, it was for fleeting moments. What changed with the Industrial Revolution was the collection of economic power in the hands of a mere titan of industry — instead of some baron, or prince, or caesar, or warlord, or chieftan, or other political personage.
This seems to happen in all societies until a revolution happens and the cycle starts anew just with different actors.
This time we did get game design down to an art with fine mechanics and cheap execution. Perhaps someone with a sharp pen can draw the parallels for us. Surely (if the will is there) it is easy to design something better than the stupid formula where we pretend Personal gain = Collective gain.
That’s the sad part. Big change seems to require a big disruptive event like war or revolution.
But i agree that things seem to get better overall. Unfortunately there are plenty of downs in between and these can last many years.
Before, because of the agricultural revolution, it was divided primarily along lines of land ownership and the familiar inheritance of that.
I am sure hunter gatherer societies were also very territorial. If the area you are hunting or gathering does doesn’t have much animals or plants, all the hard work won’t get you nearly as much food as someone who has a lot of plants and animals on their land.
And if you don’t think early humans were territorial just take a look at chimpanzees or even lions. Being tribal and territorial goes back a long ways.
1500 years ago those who could hoard land and power and influence after the fall of the Western Roman Empire went into decline formed the kernel the feudal aristocracy. But those who were able to capitalize on the merchant and industrial revolutions starting 500 years ago, and the rise of global capitalism, became the kernel of the bourgeoisie in the modern era.
We'll see what happens next.
The GDPR comes along, and HN hated it
The thing with privacy is the more wealthy you are, the more valuable it is. For example, if I want to sell something, I will want to target the wealthiest first. Same thing for scammers, and newspapers will follow celebrities. Who care about the poor, there is no money to extract from them.
So let's get back to the private shopper. A rich and famous man will want to hire a private shopper, because he knows that if he is found in a shop, he will be bothered by people who are after his money and fame. His privacy is worth a lot, to him and to others.
The private shopper is likely to be of a more modest status, he can go shopping without being bothered, he may be tracked by robots and end up with personalized ads, be part of some statistics, whatever, but no one will stop him for an autograph or some special favor.
So when the rich man pays the private shopper, with a little extra for his discretion, that's resources that go from the wealthy to the "rest of us".
The same can be said for loyalty cards. The one who can afford not to use loyalty card will earn the shop more profit (because no discount), meaning that it can offer bigger discounts to others.
It is as if a unit of privacy is proportional to your wealth. The amount of privacy a rich man will get by paying $1000, a poor man can get it for $1. In the same way that it is much cheaper to secure a penny than a gold bar, because no one will want to steal your penny.
I don't use loyalty cards, but I don't pay more because of it. There still exist stores that don't have them, and my observation is that the regular prices on those stores are about the same as the "loyalty card discount" price at other stores.
The "discount" you're getting with a loyalty card is a sham. The regular prices were just bumped up to give the illusion of a discount.
More to the point, though, the issue I see with your analysis is that you're assuming that privacy has a single value. My privacy is worth just as much to me as a wealthy person's privacy is to them. That others value them differently is unimportant. The cost of the loss of that privacy is the same regardless of income, but only the wealthy have a way to minimize that loss without going to extreme measures.
No, privacy is not autographs. Thats not how this works.
The rich man is paying a private shopper to use the PS's face in the facial recognition system and card tracking system. the PS gets the ads, but not the rich man. The rich man's habits are still tracked (by proxy, assuming PS doesn't shop personally at same store). At best, the rich man gets his habits co-mingled with PS to get slightly higher anonymity.
> The same can be said for loyalty cards. The one who can afford not to use loyalty card will earn the shop more profit (because no discount), meaning that it can offer bigger discounts to others.
Hmm makes sense at face level, but why would stores offer discounts to their worst customers? My credit card offers discount to those who spend 10k+ on private jets presumably because those people outspend enough to justify the cost
There is plenty, just ask all the MLM companies, dollar stores, and payday lenders
Right, but most still pay with a credit/debit card when checking out which gives the cc/bank the same info. At least with a store club card they only know what you purchase in that store/chain, instead of every store.
Yes, which is why I think cash is crucial until/if we get a digital equivalent.
> At least with a store club card they only know what you purchase in that store/chain, instead of every store
I haven't done research to confirm, but I'm guessing club card data ends up in the hands of data brokers at some point. Of course this probably varies by chain.
I'm sure the phrase "digital cash" will be used in the marketing lingo though
Though I just use 867-5309 anyway. Works in every area code, AFAICT.
I guess retailers are catching on.
I'm not trying to be flippant with this question. I'm just honestly perplexed why this is an important dateset to keep private.
Also, why would I want to avoid discounts? Grocery stores are one of the few places that gives me money for handing them my data. Isn't this good behavior!?
Ultimately your individual data is far less important than the aggregate data for making these decisions- and you are impacted regardless of whether your personal data is available or not.
The question is whether or not we could get people to collectively act in their own self interest and push back against data collection. Based on what we’ve seen over the last 2 years with the pandemic I have absolutely no hope for humanity ever being able to collectively act in its self interest and the road to hell will be paved with people asking “how does it hurt me, personally, right now”.
- Personal care products: gender
- Medications: age/health of you and family members
- Magazines/media: political affiliation, social class
The list goes on.
[Edit: formatting]
Really makes one consider using cash.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....
To be clear, it is before their family knows and not before they know. It is extremely difficult to figure out someone is pregnant before they know. It doesn't take any complex analysis to see someone purchasing prenatal vitamins and conclude they are pregnant.
What bad things have happened to the average person based on grocery store purchase history?
Again, i'm not trying to be flippant with my questions I'm honestly just frustrated after decades of following privacy discussions that there isn't a clear answer to this question.
It's always some scary threat that could happen in the future. The problem is though that the powers that be (government/corporate) already have more private information than ever before and yet: nothing has happened.
At what point do these warnings just become crying wolf?
One other example is the 2016 election and cambridge analytica. Not going to make a political case on the politicians, but the political parties (and foreign govs with interest in the outcome) bought data on electors to try and persuade them to vote for one candidate or the other. Or to make them think issue X is bigger deal than they previously did. People don't like to lose autonomy in politics and data is good for targeting and persuasion.
Of course, the big what-if is also worrisome. Maybe not to you, but to many. Some people are more concerned than others. If your of one minority religion, then you might worry if that religion gets targeted will gov buy data to identify individuals (eg china and Uyghurs or trump and his proposed list of muslums). Maybe your gay in a nation that isn't friendly to that. Its very easy to tell if someone is queer from mass collected data. That could be a concern if the gov starts looking for people.
Another less scary but not great what-if: Many govs (including some us govs) are doing more "pro-active policing" where they try to prevent crimes, often with biased data. Right now its pretty targeted at going to minority neighborhoods, but maybe one day it'll target underage people who buy alcohol paraphernalia to see if they drink underage. Minor crime oft-committed, but probably easy to identify from only grocery store purchase data - especially if you combine that with camera data (walk in/out with someone who buys booze while they buy solo cups). While the under-age drinking is a silly example, it uses pretty easily available data. Think of all the minor crimes people knowingly commit that no one actually cares to enforce. Now imagine what we could do if a computer can just spit out a list of names.
There are so many ways the data can be (ab)used and people come up with more every day.
Which is wholly understandable because to price the risk accurately they need to see the full risk profile.
If insurers couldn't price accurately then insurance as a business couldn't exist.
Or they can totally stop pricing people reasonably at all. Insurance is predicated on sharing the risk. If "risky" people get priced out of driving (especially based on things they can't reasonably control!) then its probably bad for society.
This is even more true for medical insurance (although laws are probably stronger here). That said, i personally think the government (in us) should be handling medical costs on some level so maybe my opinion on controlling capitalism w/r/t medical insurance isn't the market-driven.
You might have friends over every weekend but those 4 crates of beer also put you on the alcoholics list. +1 alcoholics for your contact list. And you purchased helium for that kids party. A pack of smokes for the gardener per week. You look 62% like a person on the crack cocaine list and 59% like a regular weed customer. Those are over 50% are they not? Seems good enough to use.
Eventually you get to the "people who are not racists but are unsure if their clients are - so you are not hired" kind of situation. How many alcoholics who suck helium, do crack and smoke pot can you "seriously" have in your network?
These are most likely stupid examples but that makes them good. We have no idea how the data will be used when combined with other data. Someone will think of something way more stupid.
By making the decision that it's fine today, you're also deciding that it's always going to be fine in the future.
This sort of argument can be deployed to stop you from doing anything. It's also very apocalyptic because you are only assuming downsides. What happens if sharing X actually helps me in the future?
Does being able to deploy this argument in more situations suggest that it's a bad argument?
As for what happens if sharing X actually helps you in the future, you always have that option. Not sharing initially doesn't stop you from sharing later. Sharing initially does stop you from not-sharing later, if that makes sense.
But, ignoring that, there's a very good reason why you might want to keep as much data out of the machine as possible -- even data that, on its own, is of no importance. That reason is databases. The data you provide to any business will be combined with the data you've provided everywhere else. All of those items that on their own are of no importance become incredibly intrusive and privacy-destroying when combined with each other.
But so what, what is the end game here?
Police obviously love this data, and when its being traded in open market it is sold without a warrant. Laws change, if your a minority or in an oppressive country, data is scary.
In real terms for most white americans who don't break laws, the "slippery slope" (or shifting baseline) is already getting bad for end users. ..
I interviewed for a job at an insurance company. They said they offer a car plug in that tracks your car (to know if you're risky driver) to "offer discounts on good driving". They said in interview (not publicly) about 4% of people get discounts and the rest stay the same or go up. They gets tons of data on how people drive to tune their models. They also said that some neighborhoods are now considered more dangerous because they saw other drivers in their data being dangerous. Basically you now pay more because they know you live near other bad drivers, or bad drivers go to the grocery store near you, or whatever.
They also said (in 2018) they are working on an app to show you an id card (and track you in your car if you don't want their dongle). They're very interested in data on where you go and how you use your car, for obvious reasons.
I don't know if they do this, but they could easily buy data on where you shop to determine if the path from your home to the store has dangerous intersections that might raise your premiums. That is an easy use for grocery store data that will have clear downsides to most people.
If someone's making money off my back they better give me a cut, and a big one. 50c off a bag of grapes doesn't cut it.
For example, if you do have the funds, send a private shopper. But an even more direct example is skipping the discounts associated with club cards for privacy reasons.
This will further entrench the class divide between the wealthy and the rest of us.