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Comment by jsrozner

4 days ago

Your argument applies to the grocery pricing situation: "if you don't want the grocery store to aggregate all of your interactions, don't shop there".

All aspects of the commercial transaction should be clear and transparent: I give the grocery store cash, it gives me food. My data shouldn't be taken from me, and nor should I have to consent to my data to be taken from me in order to shop there.

Google can store and serve me my data. It cannot use my data for commercial purposes that do not directly serve me. Nor should it be able to aggregate my interactions in a way that serves to increase its own profit, as this, over time, increases the relative power of the firm.

21 comments

jsrozner

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twoodfin  3 days ago

Nothing is “taken” when a shopkeeper writes down in his notebook that Sam Gallo bought two loaves of bread and a gallon of milk.

I’m glad the parent of this thread specified the need for a Constitutional amendment. Anything less would be an obvious intrusion on free speech.

  • jsrozner  3 days ago

    I agree. Hand-taken notes are valid. If a single individual wants to follow me around in the physical world and record my every action, then so be it.

    But if the single individual begins using robots to follow me around, it becomes problematic. The issue is in the power of the technology that is deployed. What's less clear is where to draw the line: can the shopkeeper type his notes (yes), but can he fill his store with surveillance cameras that correlate my every entry into his store (this one becomes unreasonable and this is the case for which we need laws).

sib  3 days ago

When you buy a 600g loaf of whole wheat bread from Ralph's Supermarket at 6:17pm on Tuesday Sep 22 2026 for USD4.99, there is zero (0) reason to consider that any more your data than Ralph's data.

Just as you can use that set of facts plan and optimize your budget, so should Ralph's be able to use that data to plan and optimize their business.

  • AshleyGrant  3 days ago

    That the company can use the fact that a customer purchased something is completely separate from tying that information to me.

    And they should not be able to sell that data to data brokers, whether is anonymized or tied to individual customers.

consensus1  4 days ago

Does showing you less ads for things you actually want to buy instead of more random adds serve you directly? You could make a pretty solid argument that it does.

  • ndriscoll  4 days ago

    No, ads are approximately never to your benefit, and if they are, it's entirely by accident. Their entire purpose is to corrupt your preferences or misinform you to the benefit of the advertiser. If you actually wanted to buy the thing, they wouldn't need to spend money on ads (and anyone competent would measure lift over a baseline, not just raw "did people buy the thing" for campaign effectiveness).

    If you're to see any ads at all, it is vastly preferable that you see random ads for things that you would never be interested in and that register as pure noise to you. Things you could be convinced to buy, or propaganda that elicits some response (positive or negative) are the worst case to encounter.

    • tzs  3 days ago

      The ads I receive in the mail from local grocery stores serve to inform me when stores that I normally don't shop at have something I already want on sale at a better price than my usual stores.

      How is this corrupting my preferences or misinforming me?