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Comment by geoduck14

3 years ago

>But, I didn't opt in for them to have this information about me to begin with.

Everyone is up in arms about Facebook and Google collecting our information... meanwhile credit bureaus are sitting in the shadows giggling to themselves

9 comments

geoduck14

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caconym_  3 years ago

The obsession with "big tech" as the biggest abuser of consumer privacy frustrates the hell out of me, and must be a real delight to credit bureaus, cell carriers, data brokers, fintech parasites, and all the rest of the slimy fuckers who do far worse things every day and aren't even on the public's radar.

  • randmeerkat  3 years ago

    Reporting an employee’s salary vs Zuckerberg selling your political motivations to manipulate elections are two different ballparks. It’s not that people aren’t frustrated with other abusers of customer privacy, it’s just big tech is the best at it.

    • caconym_  3 years ago

      The Big Techs that run on ad revenue typically keep user data to themselves, and offer advertisers a platform for targeting ads without knowledge of individual users. There have been some scandals (CA is the one I always think of, and there are more) but typically selling de-anonymized user data is not the business model of these companies. That doesn't stop people from saying it is, but AFAIK they are largely incorrect.

      Contrast that with e.g. the somewhat recent revelations that cell carriers have been selling individuals' granular, de-anonymized location history data to, essentially, anybody willing to pay.

      From a privacy standpoint, which I think is the context here, I consider the latter sort of thing to be far worse.

    • fallingknife  3 years ago

      They are 2 very different ballparks in that I would much rather let FB sell my info which I provide willingly than a credit bureau sell my salary history, which I don't.

      1 reply →

    • cm2012  3 years ago

      Facebook doesn't sell your info. You cannot buy people political affiliations on fb.

sio8ohPi  3 years ago

Well yeah -- did you think it was somehow about consumer rights?

Democrats and Republicans alike want to use the threat of regulation and anti-trust action to force social media companies to adopt moderation policies favorable to them. They both recognize (IMO correctly) that they must make these threats; principled adherence to economic liberty leaves one without leverage and is likely to result in companies simply caving to one's opposition (c.f. the behavior of most companies with respect to China).

Credit bureaus don't influence elections, ergo there is little advantage to be gained by making threats against them.