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Comment by ihsw2 | Hacker News Reader

How does one reconcile this with jaded cynicism of "regulations for thee but not for me"?

Furthermore, does this regulation target the hardware products themselves, the software performing the recognition, the biometric data itself, the transfer of this biometric data, aggregate ("anonymized") biometric data, the processing of biometric data? There is a lot to talk about here.

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I’m fine with Microsoft’s motives being hurting rivals with regulation, if it gives me more privacy rights. In fact that’s great, because their coffers are much larger than the eff or whoever else could take up this lobbying effort.

> if it gives me more privacy rights

Meanwhile, microsoft still defaults to collecting/retaining telemetry information from users of their software.

Microsoft has to play these games because Google and Facebook do. But if it disappeared overnight MS would still be in business... and they would not.

<disclaimer, MS employee>

I'd like to point out that MS adheres to GDPR regulations and has applied those protections to all users.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-extending-gdp...

I'd like this to be verifiable. For Windows 10 telemetry it is certainly not.

OK? But it still defaults to 'collect all the things':

> But users now have access to a privacy dashboard that allows you to easily regulate or opt out of any data collection.

How about microsoft does not collect user data by default and lets them opt in?

> > But users now have access to a privacy dashboard that allows you to easily regulate or opt out of any data collection.

> How about microsoft does not collect user data by default and lets them opt in?

A) Not all users are technical enough to understand how telemetry helps developers find faults and better understand crashes/bug reports.

B) "Most" users don't care if data is collected about the software and not the data they put in that software.

C) If you work in tech, I'm sure you know how many people pick options other than default.

There is a big difference between collecting telemetry (data about the product you're using) for improving the product internally and collecting private data for reselling to the highest bidder.

Here's the thing; Microsoft is a large corporation with lots of assets to protect. This kind of sketchy technology can easily be (is already?) a race to the bottom in terms of privacy and morality, and a big company has more to lose.

Incidentally, big companies also have economies of scale in complying with regulation.

So they can be all for facial recognition tech AND benefit from the regulation of it.

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