Comment by duxup
3 days ago
But many tech companies try to track everyone for their own reasons ...
They are surveillance companies. That's part of the problem.
3 days ago
But many tech companies try to track everyone for their own reasons ...
They are surveillance companies. That's part of the problem.
This is an underrated observation. The companies built surveillance as a competitive advantage. The "system" rewards bolstering this advantage.
Distributing surveillance id the data of your usage is extremely difference from understanding how your app is being used.
We don't grant companies extraordinary powers to arrest/imprison/kill for any reason they see fit. The government involvement problem is VERY separate from the greedy company problem. And the government is supposed to be working for the people, we don't like being spied on, they should be making laws to prevent it, not looking to get in on it. There's even a document they're supposed to be referring to for guidance on such issues.
Increasingly with our digital identities we are citizens of private companies that don’t need governance it’s all or nothing.
There is a difference between tracking with real name, vs tracking with unique identifier for showing better ads. I really don't understand how people in HN think that tracking for showing personalized short videos is same as sending names of people who searched for particular term to police.
Learning about the difference collapse the differences. The best thing to say is I want to understand and saying we don’t understand is a big step in that direction.
Ads are just information too. Where you search good content or bad content, the results (videos and ads) align with that easily. If you really want to unites how it’s really easy to go read something written by someone sorry experienced. In case you work in or around adtech it’s your call but ignorance isn’t really a reason.
Your secondary point speaks to m, meta data, which can be as good as identifiable data.
If someone removes your name from your bank statement it will still tell a lot about you.
If we think it can’t be tied to, the grocery store loyalty program which can also share your individually purchased item data will now share what groups of items you buy and potentially for what purpose.
Then there’s the clickstream of what your browser visits. Let’s remove the name from that, but that data is available too.
Your cell phone location data can’t be attributed to you, but generated maybe it can overlap and then everything wider in it.
All is this kind of data has been commercialized by tech and conveniently available for other privacy invading purposes as well.