Comment by mmooss

2 days ago

I don't understand the FTC. Why and how did they start protecting consumer privacy? Could they have done it before? Do they have an overall systematic plan for protecting it comprehensively? Do they have a guiding principle?

I'm glad they are moving forward on it, at least until Monday.

21 comments

mmooss

Reply
kevingadd  2 days ago

This is largely the work of Lina Khan and the people reporting to her. She's fairly new to the FTC still (Biden appointee) and has been intentionally pushing on all of this.

Protecting it is difficult since the house/senate and scotus are all determined to roll back pro-consumer laws but that's not really something the FTC can fix, only voters can fix that.

Voters don't seem to see these things as important though based on how they voted most recently. They have other priorities I suppose.

  • johnnyanmac  1 day ago

    I'll be generous and say that voters are distracted by other things. easy unsubscribe is great, but it's never going to win an election.

    I'll also be cynical and say that voters were also lacking critical thinking in terms of how the president elect simply said he'd do things with no action plan behind it. He already went back on several "promises" even before properly stepping in as President. This is just shame on us at this point.

  • robertlagrant  1 day ago

    > Voters don't seem to see these things as important though based on how they voted most recently. They have other priorities I suppose.

    This is why saying "but you can elect new officials" is a canard. You only have two choices, each with thousands of consequences.

  • input_sh  1 day ago

    Lina Khan deserves all the praise and then some.

    Banning non-competes, preventing Microsoft-Blizzard merger (amongst many others), enforcing the right-to-repair, filing lawsuits to lower drug prices, making cancelling subscriptions easier...

    Your friendly reminder that both Amazon and Meta were openly against her taking the position, that the upcoming administration will scrap the antitrust lawsuits against both of them (the one against Meta was supposed to start in spring, the one against Amazon in 2026) and that this is why Bezos and Zuckerberg are cozying up to Trump.

xyst  2 days ago

They don’t give a shit about privacy directly but GM was egregious in collecting this data

- confusing consumers

- sneakily signing up consumers to “smart driver” as part of onstar

- data brokers subsequently building profiles on users and selling this data to _insurance companies_

- consumers later finding out their insurance doesn’t get renewed because of this secret driver profile that was built without their explicit consent

If GM followed the rules by disclosing this directly, allowing consumers to opt out. They probably wouldn’t be in this embarrassing position.

It’s in the FTC release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/...

  • soco  1 day ago

    Please allow me to be cynical and see here no embarrassment whatsoever. They cashed on this for years and will surely find other ways (and have some already) to further cash on people. It's only one of the schemes which got foiled, and only for a while. Yes, I have zero trust and the presumption is of guilt.

    • infecto  1 day ago

      Did they really "cash" in on it? When I saw the prior articles on GM it sounded like a very minor revenue stream that did not scratch their overall revenue from vehicle sales.

      2 replies →

  • diggan  1 day ago

    > They don’t give a shit about privacy directly

    But then this submission is explicitly about them giving a shit, and your own example shows that they do give a shit. Since GM didn't allow people a choice regarding their privacy, FTC looked into it?

    I really don't understand how someone can see this story about FTC giving a shit, and then proclaim "They don't give a shit". If they didn't give a shit, why do something?