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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

> The market can't act against what it can't see. Privacy loss is often irreversible.

You're not wrong, but on the other hand has "the market" shown any serious signal that it cares about privacy? From what I can see people seem more than glad to trade privacy and personal information for free services and cheaper hardware. Take Samsung putting ads on their "smart" TV's UI and screenshotting what people are watching for profiling, that's been known for a while now. The market seems fine with it.

And I mean, at this point I could just gesture broadly at all of Facebook.

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I hear this argument a lot but I think it is exactly OPs point when he says, “The market can’t act against what it can’t see”.

Your average consumer doesn’t know the extent of what they’re trading. Take Facebook, even with high profile stories and documentaries it’s reasonable for your average consumer to assume that what Facebook tracks about them is what they actively give to Facebook themselves.

I’ve had conversations with people that say, “I rarely even post on Facebook” and “If they want to monitor pictures of my food/dog/etc whatever who cares”, without any solid understanding of what even having the app installed alone is giving Facebook.

It's ok, if they will be educated they will care. Just like they care now about not using single use plastics, buying the biggest and most gas guzzling SUV or flying on holidays across the globe.

They won't care even when they'll know. And they might not ever know.

Yes exactly. I don't think an abstract understanding of the costs is enough. If the cost isn't physically or viscerally felt, it just doesn't factor into people's decision making.

This is where the pricing system really comes into great effect. People buy and drive fewer SUVs when gas is more expensive. If we want people to buy fewer SUVs, increase the fuel tax.

Education is not enough, and in fact might not even be necessary at all. Just introduce real costs to capture the "abstract" costs (externalities) and the problem will likely correct itself.

> has "the market" shown any serious signal that it cares about privacy?

Depends on what you consider a serious signal of care. If 'voting with you wallet' is the measure, increasing levels of income inequality, stagnant wages, weakening employee rights through the gig-economy, etc. are effectively taking away that choice, as most market participants cannot afford to make the choice.

Also, what is the paid alternative to Apple or Google photos that allows me to have the same end user experience, without giving up my privacy? "the market" doesn't even have such an offer that I can see. The closest I can find (and that's through here) is photostructure.com, and even that's lacking all the local-ML-foo that makes Apple/Google photos a compelling option over anything else.

> Take Samsung putting ads on their "smart" TV's UI and screenshotting what people are watching for profiling, that's been known for a while now.

Known by who? I'd wager a year's salary that >50% of Samsung TV owners (and bump that number up to >75% of Samsung TV users) do not know this is happening.

Income inequality and stagnant wages etc are not the consequences of Apple and Google.

No one suggested they are. But they still make it much less likely for the average Joe to put money and effort to protect their privacy, and this is known to those that make major pricing decisions.

We’re talking about Apple here. People who can afford a Mac over a cheap pc/chrome book already have disposable income and are making trade-offs with it.

That is not really true. Many people of lower income will buy a Mac after their cheap laptops break because they perceive them, correctly or not, to be the most reliable and thus less expensive on the long term laptops. Sometimes even second hand.

Also, Chromebooks are not viable alternatives for many people especially of lower income. Having to rely on being always online is an issue when you can't always guarantee having internet. Been there, done that.

> That is not really true. Many people of lower income will buy a Mac after their cheap laptops break because they perceive them, correctly or not, to be the most reliable and thus less expensive on the long term laptops.

This is not true. The tiny user-base of OSX compared to Windows is already evidence that most people are not buying MacBooks.

> From what I can see people seem more than glad to trade privacy and personal information for free services and cheaper hardware

I'd argue that's more of what parent was talking about with regards to visibility.

"Privacy" isn't something anyone can see. What you see are the effects of a lack of privacy.

Given the dark market around personal data (albeit less in the EU), how are consumers to attribute effects to specific privacy breaches?

If Apple sells my app history privately to a credit score bureau, and I'm denied a credit card despite having a stellar FICO, how am I supposed to connect those dots?

> You're not wrong, but on the other hand has "the market" shown any serious signal that it cares about privacy?

Is there a pro-privacy Google out there whose products languished while Google's succeeded?

The Silicon Valley VC network did not fund nor support companies that promoted privacy. I can not think of a single example.

Not a single major venture from SV VC network even attempted to innovate the "business model". We can make machines reason now but, alas, a business model that does not depend on eradicating privacy is beyond the reach of the geniuses involved. It is "Impossible"? I think, "undesirable" is more likely. No one is even seriously trying. Point: money behind SV tech giants is not motivated at all to fund the anti-panopticon.

The salient, sobering, facts are that all these companies are sitting on a SV foundation that was and remains solidly "national security", "military", and "intelligence". The euphemism used is to mention SV's "old boy network".

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

>that's been known for a while now

Ask a representative sample and I wager only a very small percentage of people are actually aware of (1) the breaches of privacy that are happening (e.g. your TV sending mic dumps and screenshots of what you're watching), and (2) the hard consequences of those invasions (that is, beyond the immediate fact that you're being snooped upon), like higher insurance premiums on auto and health, being targeted by your opinions, etc.

To be honest I would expect if you told people "your TV will report what you're watching" they will think "wait, doesn't my cable company already know what I'm watching???"

If you tell them it's the manufacturer this time in addition to the cable company, I'm not sure how many would freak out over the extra entity.

Very few.

I'm not sure how you'd measure it, but there seems to be a huge disconnect between techie privacy advocates and the rest of the world. The former keeps claiming the latter just doesn't understand, or needs to be informed, but I just don't think that's realistic.

I think it's pretty common knowledge that these companies are harvesting all imaginable data to serve users more / better advertisements and to keep them on the site, yet usage continues to grow despite all the scandals. I think advocates need to make more convincing claims to everyone else that they're being harmed.

In my anecdotical experience, that's not remotely true. Yes there is a disconnect between techies and regular people, in that for us it's obvious that these companies are harvesting all this data and processing it in all this ways and sharing it with all these people, but for the majority of people it's not. Even for you, do you think you fully understand how your data is being utilised and what the consequences are?

I think we've been repeatedly shown that people don't care. From Cambridge Analytica, to what Snowden shared, to voice-based assistants (like Amazon Alexa), every instance is met with feigned surprise and then a collective shoulder shrug.

> Even for you, do you think you fully understand how your data is being utilised and what the consequences are?

I don't think anyone can say with certainty, but I read these threads so I'm quite aware they're collecting and monetizing every imaginable thing they can. It's difficult to articulate any measurable / real negative consequences to me, personally.

> You're not wrong, but on the other hand has "the market" shown any serious signal that it cares about privacy? From what I can see people seem more than glad to trade privacy and personal information for free services and cheaper hardware. Take Samsung putting ads on their "smart" TV's UI and screenshotting what people are watching for profiling, that's been known for a while now. The market seems fine with it.

I'd guess that most of that's due to information asymmetry. Privacy losses aren't advertised(and often hidden) and are more difficult to understand, but price is and is understood by everyone.

Take that Samsung example: it's not like they had a bullet point on the feature list saying "Our Smart TVs will let us spy one what you're watching, so we can monetize that information."

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