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Comment by leetcrew | Hacker News Reader

> A label on food is easily looked at and any important information can be found within seconds.

I don't really agree. if I look at the label on a box of poptarts, I can see the number of calories in a serving and the ratio of carbs, fat, and protein. from this I can conclude that it is a relatively unhealthy food, but I have no idea how to interpret the breakdown of exactly what types of fat they contain. are polyunsaturated fats bad? what about monounsaturated? the nutrition facts are right there on the box, but I don't really know what they mean without doing a bunch of research.

the actual ingredients list is worse. there are at least ten ingredients in poptarts that I just don't recognize. I can clearly tell that they are not an "all natural" food, but not much else. if I had a food allergy or wanted to avoid a specific additive for whatever reason, it would certainly be useful, but otherwise not so much.

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Imagine a “Privacy facts” label at facebook.com/privacy.

The format of the page is mandated by the government, including the font and margins. It is easily scraped and must be by law. This label is required in place of a privacy policy.

Facebook.com will:

Store data about you forever in a profile.

Share data about you with 3rd parties.

Show you advertisements based on a profile.

Show you content based on a profile.

Share profile about you information with law enforcement.

Facebook.com’s top five markets by revenue are:

Advertising

News Redistribution

Device Development

This may still be opaque and ignored by most people. Standardizing the language and format in a way that laypeople can read delivers actual value to consumers.

Would be cool if it was required that such a label needs to be placed prominently on any signup page.

As a vegetarian, I find ingredient lists pretty reliable and useful, and consult them regularly. There are a lot of non-obvious things you have to look out for if you're vegan, but even there it's usable and useful.

With a few things people like to avoid, it's tricky -- MSG notably can be under a bunch of different names -- but most common allergies are clearly highlighted, or at least not hidden.

If you don''t have specific things you need to avoid, then of course a list of the specific things in it is not useful, but why/how would it be? It has a purpose and it serves that purpose.

"Is this healthy?" isn't an answerable question. There's no one specific answer true for multiple people--it's analogous to "Will this website respect my privacy?" On the other hand, "Is this vegetarian" and "Will this website share my data with third parties" are. (Or are closer to being so.)

I want to know if there's meat in an item of food, and the label tells me that in a fairly easy-to-read format.

I want to know if my data will be shared to third-parties by a website, and the privacy policy maybe provides it to me, but in a very inaccessible manner.

There's as many characters on the side of a box as 3 tweets.

Privacy policies are many, many more than 3 tweets.

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