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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

I for one are happy to be tracked so that my experience is optimal.

Edit: I understand the potential issues and especially with someone like Google using it for other things. But I am more concerned about the backlash against using data to improve our world.

There are many different areas which would be improved greatly from more data and would be to everyone's benefit.

Personally I have always shared as much as I can as I believe that the more we share the more the problem corrects itself. But each to their own.

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Good for you. If you ever change your mind, you'll realize that you don't really have a choice in the matter anyway.

Of course you are and that's fair. Would it also not be fair to have these privacy settings available with any of the deceptive tactics mentioned in the report?

I’ve noticed that there seems to be a correlation between tracking and advertising, so I get a better experience and less tracking if I avoid both.

I don't see people willing to share their data (with companies like Google) as the issue. The problem I'm concerned about is that there is a decreasing amount of choice in the matter. While you ultimately have a choice in a lot of these privacy-concerning cases, it's increasingly difficult and annoying to do so. People eventually cave and Google (et al) profits greatly by pushing them to do so.

> There are many different areas which would be improved greatly from more data and would be to everyone's benefit.

I agree wholeheartedly that data can be used for some really fantastic things, but it should not come at the cost of choice/freedom nor privacy.

I'm also thinking about it in terms of opportunity cost. Namely, companies like Google and Facebook are poisoning the waters for would-be data-based companies that would have much greater impacts on quality of life for everyone. While they help some things at the moment, I think they are ultimately hurting would-be bigger and better data driven endeavors.

Yeah but that's the problem of technology though especially the AI-driven one.

It forces consolidation of data as a way to compete. You can't both have lots of competition and good use of data as the value is in the accumulated data.

What I think we still need a revolution in is how to make consumers data brokers of their own data. There are some attempts at making this a reality but it's not clear what the utility which will force this transcendence is going to be.

I hope you never suffer bad consequences of giving up your privacy.

If i do most of us do :)

Me too, but that's not why Google is tracking me.

I choose to give Google my location data because I hope I am making a tiny contribution to good causes (optimizing public transit routing, training self-driving cars etc)

Is your perspective that if everyone shared everything, that we'd all see that we've all got embarrassing/illegal/otherwise unsavory aspects and would eventually change society to see people more realistically? Sort of a "nude beach" perspective? I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from.

My perspective is more that if everyone shared everything then whoever decided to fuck you up would fuck everyone else up too and thus it would be easier to establish new security measures which work for everyone. I believe in security through mass adoption.

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