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Comment by giosalinas | Hacker News Reader

This is very common, everyone is doing it, and it just for measure UX and understand pain points from users, that's all, nobody is fixated with your taps.

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I really can't wait until "everyone is doing it" ceases to be an excuse.

We need a word (like "Godwin's Law" or "whataboutism") to shove in people's faces when they spam the response threads with "everyone is doing it" and "are you surprised?" when a tweet or news item like "BigCo or BigGov is doing Bad Thing X." No we're not surprised but we didn't know, I want them to stop, and fuck you, your comment is not adding to the conversation.

It's a valid argument, though. I'll put it in different words to show.

"This is useful for legitimate reasons and is an industry standard practice --- even though it has rife potential for abuse, too."

It being a "standard industry practice" doesn't really affect the utility of the trade-off. "Kindle tracks every page turn in order to determine how long you have left in the book" would be a statement of the trade-off, and how much abuse there is and the worthwhileness would be a potential topic of discussion, but "industry standard practice" doesn't really have much bearing. If it's wrong for one person to do it, it's wrong for everyone, even if all people are doing it.

> It being a "standard industry practice" doesn't really affect the utility of the trade-off.

It doesn't affect the utility of the trade-off, but all else being equal we usually accept what exists now. Fighting what already defacto exists is hard-- either as lone consumers, where we're tilting at windmills to little effects... or as regulators, where we risk unintended consequences.

> "Kindle tracks every page turn in order to determine how long you have left in the book" would be a statement of the trade-off

Nah, Kindle tracks all these actions so that developers can improve ux and understand how the device is being used. Wonder how often people turn pages by mistake? Look for quick pairs of page forward with page backward. Then maybe you can think about touch sensitivity. How much will be people be annoyed if you remove the buttons? See what proportion of users exclusively, mostly, or don't use buttons.

> If it's wrong for one person to do it, it's wrong for everyone, even if all people are doing it.

It's wrong for anyone to abuse the information. If we have an industry of people using the information ethically, and then one bad actor misuses the information, we need to consider that background. Do we take measures solely against misuse, or do we attempt to stop the collection to have more certainty in stopping the misuse?

"This is useful for legitimate reasons" is an entirely different argument than "industry standard practice", which is just marketing speak for "everyone does it". The first is valid, the second is not.

Was already argued / responded to here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22185382

You could have addressed that instead of parroting the same point. :P

I don't think it's an excuse, but it is a reality. I'm genuinely shocked that people are surprised by this, and more importantly, seem to think it's restricted to "devices". When you browse the web, almost inevitably, about a dozen different companies are watching your every move.

How would you even identify a pain point from this data? With any confidence? Seems like the main utility of this data is to have something to back up your pitch to management when you are trying to show off and move up. It would be hard for me to believe this beats just asking people who rely on your software what they think are the pain points.

> This is very common, everyone is doing it

If everyone pushed their customers off a bridge should Amazon, too?

I think his point is there's some types of data that only have a very limited utility, and we shouldn't necessarily getup in arms about. Yes, Amazon can tell when I turn my lights in my house on and off via Alexa. Do I care? No. Amazon is seeing where adn when I tap on my Kindle to help me estimate read times, improve the UI, etc. Do I care? no.

> that only have a very limited utility,

This data doesn't only have a very limited utility. It's more limited than I thought it was from the title, but still pretty powerful stuff.

"I have nothing to hide, so I don't mind big brother watching every step I take."

That's the straw man version of what I said, yes. Except I didn't say "nothing to hide" I said that some types of data have limited value. I'm fine with Big Brother knowing when I turn off my lights. Monitoring my bank balance or my driving habits is something else, which is why I don't use the safe driver discount tools that plug into your OBD2 port in your car.

I interviewed at a big insurance company for the team measuring the data used the safe driver discount and they basically said something to the affect of "who says we have to decide anyone is safe ;)... or with enough data, maybe one day we won't have to insure unsafe people at all"

So good call holding your data close here.

Edit: Exited the interview half way through, would never work there

This is exactly why I won't use it. In my entire driving live, which is a long time, I had exactly one accident, and that was three years ago, a small fender bender that they paid $0 to other parties. My rates shot up. They ignore the 25 years of flawless driving before that, and the safety courses I've taken.

The problem with deciding which data is too important to share and which is not is that you don't know what may be inferred from the data (and the combination of multiple varieties of data). Smart power meters being used to track what tv shows you watch is a fun one, but there's plenty, and it will only increase.

The only defense against that and attacks that become possible in the future is to not share any data with the attackers. Amazon, Google and the government are obvious attackers in this scenario.

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