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Comment by ibdf | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why everyone is always so shocked. People want smart devices/services that understand them. Where do you think the data comes from? From you!

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I don't need MoviePass to understand me. I want MoviePass to take my money and give me movie tickets.

Which isn't profitable. If you want MoviePass to exist, they need another source of revenue...

Agreed. Seems like an app for common sense would make a couple gazillion and then some.

That's the struggle. Virtually unlimited movie tickets each month for the price of one movie ticket a month sounds too good to be true because it is. There's no way for this to work without some other source of revenue. If you would like the option to pay more and NOT be tracked, we just call that buying movie tickets and you've been able to do it all along.

It's still too good to be true. Why aren't there dozens of apps offering me $100/yr flat-out for my location data?

MoviePass is a play to intermediate the movie-shopping experience, so they can extort kickbacks from theaters.

Yes but is the issue here not that they were not told that they were being spied on?

This can be used to excuse the worst kind of behaviour. Maybe if MoviePass can't operate profitably without violating people's privacy, it's just not a good startup idea.

This is used to excuse the worst kind of behavior. I don't see MoviePass as any sort of exception to the rule here. I see as par for the course.

And to be honest, that is disappointing to me.

But since a million people are happy to sell their location data for movie tickets, it is a good startup idea. To say otherwise an excuse to restrict other users' freedom, a pretty bad behavior.

> But since a million people are happy to sell their location data for movie tickets, it is a good startup idea. To say otherwise an excuse to restrict other users' freedom, a pretty bad behavior.

It is a different story if they are upfront with what MoviePass is using it's users' location data for.

MoviePass shouldn’t exist. That’s the problem.

If you are bothered by them, they just don't use them. I'm fine giving up basic information in exchange for movie credit.

But as a consumer I don't care what MoviePass wants or needs, that's not my problem. I'd milk them for all the tickets they're worth and then when they shutter I'd just go back to buying tickets like I used to for decades past. They offer marginal convenience at best for something that really wasn't all the inconvenient to begin with.

I think it's because there is no apparent user facing feature that uses this data. In the future they may get parking related features, or deeper ride share integrations. But because they're not upfront with how they are using the data, and their are currently 0 user facing features it seems unwarranted.

Nobody is asking moviepass to understand them...

No, they just want subsidized tickets, but then whine that MoviePass gets something out of the deal.

yeah not like they are being paid or anything.

The market equilibrium rests where you can extract maximum value, if they can get away with tracking, they will do it, it has absolutely nothing to do with it being a fair deal or not.

Moreover how can our government condemn commercial data mining while at the same time expanding domestic surveillance? "Don't share your data its harmful! Unless you share it with us!".

Just because we have not made progress in domestic surveillance does not mean we can't make progress in commercial data mining. It may be hypocritical to have one at the rate we do and legislate the other (though I don't think it necessarily is), but it's better to do that than to have both.

> Moreover how can our government condemn commercial data mining while at the same time expanding domestic surveillance?

The same way they can condemn kidnapping for hire while maintaining prisons?

If you don’t have a problem with random tech companies tracking your every move, why shouldn’t the government?

No, those are two completely separate things.

Domestic mass surveillance is unconstitutional.

Back when the US Constitution was drafted, there was virtually no commercial data gathering. So we arguably need the Fourth Amendment extended to the commercial sector. Maybe also the First Amendment.

They won't, because commercial mass surveillance is an essential part of modern government mass surveillance.

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