Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

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> To me, constantly complaining about sites/companies doing this stuff or wanting laws to make them stop... It just feels silly and pointless. ... companies will gather and use what data they have access to

Yet every time there's an equifax or quora data breach at the top of the front page the consensus is almost always that companies should get less data, should keep it for less time, and end users should push back against the constant data grab.

How do we square that circle?

How do we avoid FaceGooBook when it has its fingers everywhere? Even if you avoid their front end services there's countless sites using FaceGooBook for logins, captcha, fonts, frameworks that can't simply be uBlocked away without breaking something.

Are we meant to simply trust FaceGooBook that data from those sources isn't added to the others?

Without the pushback of things like GDPR (I think it has parts that won't go remotely far enough - mainly national budgets for ICO enforcement), end users seem to have neared a point of "tough, you lost".

Safety/Quality regulations reduces choices and quantity. This hits poor the most, as they can no longer buy inferior but cheap products and services. See China.

Instead regulations should be focus on reducing scam and misleading offerings. If someone wants to buy/use despite knowing the risks, let him.

> Safety/Quality regulations reduces choices and quantity.

They also prevent people dying when they plug in their appliance, or dying because there's lead paint on the product, or buying flour that's adulterated with alum, plaster of Paris or chalk.

The history of food and electrical regulations, on both sides of the Atlantic, are enough to convince me that rich and poor (I have been both) are better served by enough regulation to ensure basic standards are met. In the case of the US and food, prior to such regulation, adulteration was more common than not[0].

> If someone wants to buy/use despite knowing the risks, let him.

This is never the case. The risks are hidden, the product masquerades as a genuine iPhone charger, or contains unsafe substances that cannot be known without laboratory testing. Data is taken "to provide a better service", without mention of the 206 places it's sold to, or other uses for which it is mined, or the fun psychological experiments staff might run on their users.

To relate it back to the original discussion about data, I am fully in favour of regulations that demand adequate safeguards and protections of personal data, and high expectations of diligence from companies that must use such data. It goes without saying that I am in favour of severe penalties for egregious breach of such regulations.

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-04/harvey-wiley-us-chemi...

... self reporting data leaks is "the good part" of gdpr that I mentioned in my caveat. :) I think that's important, effective and in bureaucratic.

The attempt to increase formal contract making between website and user... that's the part I find frustrating.

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