Hacker News Reader

Comment by x0x0 | Hacker News Reader

it's a simple test: if data companies collect where clearly explained to the user, would the user approve or not?

"By entering this store, we will permanently record your location every 60 seconds. The main purpose of said data collection is attempting to stitch your actions on the internet to store visits to more effectively sell advertising. Further, we will sell this data to many companies, most of whom we don't directly interact with. Our privacy 'policy' will most likely never be audited, and the worst possible outcome of violations is a fine in the low millions of dollars. We will hand this information over to police and lawyers if they clear the high bar of, well, asking for it. The nsa doesn't bother asking."

What do you think people would choose?

View on HN

Well put analogy.

My guess is that most people would not be okay with that and choose to opt out.

But my question/argument is, would that be a rational decision? I don't see a lot of benefit for the customer to deny the store those options, so why do it if there's nothing to be gained from denying.

> attempting to stitch your actions on the internet to store visits to more effectively sell advertising

I think this is the key factor. If people see themselves as susceptible to such manipulation, then it does benefit them to deny such behavior to prevent stores from affecting them negatively.

>But my question/argument is, would that be a rational decision?

Does that matter? We[1] live in a capitalist democracy. One of the tenets of capitalism is that consumers should be well-informed and "vote with their dollars/feet", and the core principle of democracy is that the individual citizens get to decide how their society is run. We don't live in a LessWrong-ocracy where the world is run based on somebody's idea of rational objectivity or whatever.

I'm in politics so I know exactly how frustrating it can be when the average Joe doesn't necessarily agree with your vision of a rational decision, but if that's the case, the solution is to change their minds, not to circumvent or obfuscate to get around them.

[1] - I'm thinking Westerners in general, but I'm American, so I may be over-generalizing, we're good at that :-)

Notice that the very many organizations that track people, from businesses to government, rarely notify those they track (in an effective manner) and sometimes go to great lengths to hide it (e.g., many stories report police departments hiding their surveillance tactics, such as with Stingray).

If the argument is that it's good for the people tracked, why hide it?

(EDIT: Deleted the first paragraph; I can't find the reference.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com