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A comment on Our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too many times. Parent comment

Re:Our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too ... by deelowe on Friday September 10, 2021 @10:24AM (#28481984)
You can make this argument about literally anything. Should your tires contain GPS trackers and share that info with their manufacturer on the off chance that you sped, drove on the wrong surface, or there was a manufacturing defect that could possibly lead to an accident?

This shit needs to stop. It's getting out of hand fast. In just a few years, literally every powered device we own will be logging video, sound, location, and network traffic in real time continuously. What's to stop equifax from leveraging all this new info for credit reports? Insurance companies for premiums? Lawyers for civil defense? Class action lawsuits? Police? Divorce proceedings?

We are not heading in a good direction here. A police state is bad in and of itself, but swapping the police with a "free and unregulated market" is infinitely worse.

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Re:Our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too ... by freedomben on Friday September 10, 2021 @11:11AM (#28482672)
I mostly agree with you, but at the same time, we are far from a "free and unregulated market." There are mountains of regulations to comply with, and more than one startup idea I've had to disrupt this type of shit never got off the ground because I would have had to spend months of my time just reading rules or hiring extremely expensive consultants.

I think the problem is not necessarily lack of regulation (although there are consumer protection/privacy rules that we badly need), it's that the big companies are the ones writing the regulation and conveniently it makes it really hard for anyone to disrupt or challenge them.

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Re:Our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too ... by deelowe on Friday September 10, 2021 @11:16AM (#28482740)
Are we still talking about tracking and sharing of user data? Because from I can tell, outside of very specific pii situations, it is largely unregulated today.
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Re:Our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too ... by freedomben on Friday September 10, 2021 @11:36AM (#28483029)
Ah fair point, I seem to have broadened the scope in my mind. Just tracking and sharing of user data in general, so long as you aren't trying to do business with entities that are regulated, is pretty wide open in most states in the US.
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