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Comment by rbecker | Hacker News Reader

Until a company starts using this same data to screen prospective employees for unionization risk, or uses purchasing history to identify and filter vegans from slaughterhouse jobs, so there's less risk of those animal cruelty videos getting out. Or show you higher prices online if they determine you're willing to spend more [1]. Or...

Or are they doing that already? How would you know?

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323777204578189...

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User data must be kept secret to be valuable. Facebook only makes money if it keeps user data mostly secret from advertisers.

That's because Facebook sells ad space. There are companies that don't do this, and are happy to sell your information. Like, say, the California DMV...

Is the California DMV a private company?

Obviously not, but the point was snide humor.

Do you really not believe there are private companies which sell personal data?

Sure, CC companies have been doing it since the 1950s. But only aggregate data has any value. Advertisers care a lot more about finding a large group of potential buyers than individuals.

Something like the more data you have the less detail you know, because noise expands faster than signal.

If you're implying that advertisers only want aggregate data to build a marketing strategy that requires leveraging the individualized data from ad platform holders like facebook, that feels like some serious cognizant dissonance about the meaning of privacy.

Facebook also makes money by letting politicians micro-target potential constituents with propaganda.

Is that a new thing? Seem to me that's been happening for like hundreds of years. I've worked at a PR firm and in a Newsroom. I've seen the sausage being made.

The key phrase was "micro-targeting" not "propaganda". Previously, if you put out an ad full of religious zealotry to appeal to fundamentalist Christians, you would risk turning off more moderate parts of your base. Now you can make sure only the "right" people see that message.

Love to hear it

> to be valuable

And selling lists of vegans to slaughterhouses is one way to extract that value. Similar for all the other abuses I listed. I assumed it was obvious.

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