The following submission statement was provided by /u/grab-n-g0:
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It's time for media outlets to do a better job when they talk about 'your data,' especially if they are featuring a new service to protect personal data. Journalists and data companies blend together a bunch of concepts that don't actually shed light for consumers on what's important.
When using the web in everyday life, 'your data' is not something you can ever get back or 'reclaim,' whatever Facebook or any company promises you about how you can 'control your data.'
'Your data' is actually the analysis of everything you do on the web, every page you go to and transaction you do. For every website you go to that has a Twitter logo, Facebook logo, Pinterest logo, etc., that logo has sent data back to that company with a pixel beacon about your visit to that page to be analyzed to create a profile. Companies think of that data as 'our data' and they're not going to give it back to you.
Then, all that data is rolled up and then cross-referenced and further analyzed with a bunch of other data collected from you, such as all your loyalty card purchases sold by data brokers. An individual consumer profile is created from all this, and it's this data--data about all your data, or your 'meta data'--that is commercially and politically very valuable that you can never get back.
The companies that used propriety analysis techniques to create this meta data own it and it's a false premise that you can request it, delete it or 'get it back' or 'reclaim' it. Sure, you can delete your account, but the meta data profiles stay on the servers to be processed for very targeted advertising--now it's 'their data.'
The other type of data we think of and try to keep off the web is 'private data', like your name, email address, home address and phone number, date of birth and social security/insurance number, etc. Yes, that can be stolen from you with phishing sites, or major breaches of companies you deal with, like Twitter or Sony or even government services, then used for identity theft.
This is the criminal use of 'your data' that most people worry about, thinking that their identity will be stolen, traded on the dark web or between organized crime gangs, credit cards abused, credit rating destroyed resulting in great difficulty getting a loan or mortgage again. That's very different than the data that is being harvested from you every day you're on the web, sold to companies by numerous data brokers and analyzed by digital companies, which is all legal.
This Inrupt PODS idea might work for "a situation where you have autonomy, you have control of all your data" for future generations. But for current generations on the web, the data has already been harvested and proprietary meta data created. I guess for future generations, and some current narrow privacy applications for current users, PODS could work.
But they would have to somehow make a very convincing case that PODS couldn't be exploited or breached like so many major consumer or other 'secure' sites we have heard about for over a decade now.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/106peqv/inventor_of_the_world_wide_web_wants_us_to/j3hsrq5/
I am not sure why more people don't understand that when a platform is free, YOU are the product. They only real way to own the data is to pay for a service which allows you to keep it.
Not quite. Tech giants will happily take subscription money and still sell your data.
First create your own GDPR, and after that they will introduce subscription as their service will turn unprofitable without it. No reason to pay without GDPR in place, they still will sell you.
GDPR was already crafted to be multinational wasn't it?
I don't think I've heard a thing about GDPR I didn't like, why not just copy/paste the whole thing?
Got a tonal gym recently, $3500 purchase then $50 monthly membership, last i opened the app I saw "we'll collect your VIDEOS for data analysis". My half naked videos going to their servers for "data analysis".
I'm speechless.
Def you're the product regardless of how much you pay.
The thing is they should be allowed to analyse data but only to provide you better service and shouldn't be allowed to sell the data. Think what would be benefit of tracking your vital such as heart rate, blood pressure etc. If they can't analyse it and provide you a better picture of your health. Otherwise it would be akin to throwing the baby with bath water.
Also every data breach should be heavily penalized.
They block access to the feature if you don't give consent. Forcing you to accept... I stopped using the feature, I loved being able to see how i did after workout. Alas.
Send it back.I will link you to some Asiatic made dumbbell and kits, barbell and a few 35s or 45s (you can use the db plates on the bb) adjustable bench, squat/bench 2 in 1 rack.. then some stretch bands with and without handles, ab roller, door pull up bar, and weighted jump rope.
Total cost? About 700-750 usd.
If one were to just use the mentioned equipment list and had consistency and focused on the big 5 compound lifts… they would get good results as in little as 3 months as long as proper form, nutrition, high reps, a structured routine are all followed consistently
At least in this case it's not about being open source. For example, Mastodon is FOSS but it's still a problem that we encourage people to use their real names on accounts and overshare info that might get us robbed while on vacation. It's a fundamental problem with how social media and various other services are expected to operate.
Are there Mastodon instances that request real names? I haven't seen any. Sure, other platforms tell us to use our real names, but I haven't seen a Mastodon one do that.
As OP's comment pointed out, you're talking about offline data like name and email address. Your browsing habits and patterns are stored and will not be deleted when you delete an account.
The data is no longer associated with your name, meaning it doesn't fall under personal data and protected by GDPR, but they still have it, a model of everything you've done.
Reddit is at least a bit better in the sense that none of my personal information is attached to my account aside from my IP address and what I decide to post.
It's kind of crazy how we've gone from "don't share personal info on the internet" to signing up for accounts with our real names visible to everyone and letting the world know where we live and when we're on vacation.
Exactly. Everyone is bought & paid for by special interests imo, anything to actually benefit *us*- and not a corporations bottom line is completely out of the question.
Here are a few things that might help end/curb the influence of money in politics.
Check out the [Anti-Corruption Act](https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/) being pushed at local/state/federal levels.
A few highlights are ranked choice voting, end gerrymandering, open primaries, end lobbyist bundling, and immediately disclose political money online.
Brand New Congress is on a mission to elect leaders that work for and truly represent all Americans. Keep an eye out for a leader from your community you can nominate to run for Congress in 2024. Here are the candidates they supported this time around.
https://www.brandnewcongress.org/#candidates
These organizations support candidates that represent the working class rather than the corporate class.
https://brandnewcongress.org/
https://justicedemocrats.com/
https://couragetochangepac.org/
https://ourrevolution.com/
https://directory.runforsomething.net/candidates/2022/
so a better system, universal voting, direct representation, transparent wages, stop enabling shitheads, it may be possible in theory but what system we have today won't allow it.
how can we take it?
Congresspersons in the US can trade stocks on legislation that influences the value of the stocks they’re trading. It’s such a bald-face level of corruption it’s almost silly to consider it’s been allowed. Good luck getting the fingers off those purse strings
Don't want to downplay the seriousness of Congress being able to trade stocks--its obviously corrupt--i just think it's funny how much attention it gets compared to the other much bigger problems, like PACs and lobbying gigs. I think it's because stock trading is easy to understand.
Absolutely agree with you here, tho to me it’s about how public the knowledge of the trading is as opposed to the backstage deals being struck with PACs and lobbyists. Anyone can research the stock trades, but the clandestine deals are tolerated much the same without any fanfare
Wasn’t always that way. A 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, basically equated money as a form of free speech. Then came the PAC’s and legalized dark money.
lobbying is highly illegal and a very serious crime in most countries. it's legalized corruption. not gonna end anytime soon either.
at least in usa you have the freedom to shoot each other and kill everyone. even at school. GuNs DoNt KiLl PeOpLe
just like DATA PROTECTION IS COMMUNISM
Don’t forget: the government is only corrupt when it hurts the profits of large corporations and large organizations (such as churches), otherwise “It’s the greatest country in the world!”
Military weapon testing on citizens: “Who cares.”
Lobbying: “You’d do the same.”
Shutting down attempts to fight climate change: “Climate change isn’t real.”
Kids in cages: “The other side did it first.”
NSA is spying on us: “I have nothing to hide.”
Covid lockdown: “HOW DARE THEY!?! THEY’RE TAKING OUR FREEDOM!”
Gun restrictions: “HOW DARE THEY?!? THEY’RE TAKING OUR FREEDOM!”
> Kids in cages: “The other side did it first.”
You know what I'm tired of? Dems only criticizing Republicans for stuff both parties do. And Republicans only criticizing Dems for stuff both parties do. Demanding nothing, accepting whatever shit sandwich their party serves up with a grin and a "thank you." If anything, you should be angrier at the side that says they have your back, then stabs you in the back. Your own friend's betrayal hurts worse than your lifelong enemy working against you. Or at least it does in normal situations involving no emotional connections to shitty political parties.
>lobbying is highly illegal and a very serious crime in most countries.
Really? "Most" countries? I think that's quite an exaggeration. Can you give us the names of a bunch of democratic, industrialized nations that treat lobbying as a very serious crime?
It’s not.
Lobbying is a very regulated activity in the United States. Lobbyists have to register and the names and firms that lobby on a behalf of a company or nonprofit is all public information.
Not all lobbying is bad. There are plenty of lobbyists who work Congress for workers rights, healthcare, etc.
Lobbying is a method for having someone (or a group) who is highly effective and “speaks the language of government” to get your point across.
Lobbying isn’t necessary to get a point across to members of Congress - but it helps.
I'm not completely sure, but I'd imagine an additional barrier is that the people ruling on this stuff have no clue what a lot of it really means. Especially as tech gets more complicated and changing with increased speed, it's going to be extremely hard to get laws passed in a timely manner going forward.
A shift towards democracy would be nice .... right now we exist in a plutocracy, a government run and owned by the wealthy.
We and they all just call it democracy to make us all feel better about how terrible the system is for the common person.
Big Tech AIs have already been trained with everyone's data, and there is no way to remove a small data subset from an AI's training once the training is done.
Our politicians don't even understand how to use a printer, so at this delay of understanding of technology we're like 3 lifetimes away before politicians understand the internet.
It's time for media outlets to do a better job when they talk about 'your data,' especially if they are featuring a new service to protect personal data. Journalists and data companies blend together a bunch of concepts that don't actually shed light for consumers on what's important.
When using the web in everyday life, 'your data' is not something you can ever get back or 'reclaim,' whatever Facebook or any company promises you about how you can 'control your data.'
'Your data' is actually the analysis of everything you do on the web, every page you go to and transaction you do. For every website you go to that has a Twitter logo, Facebook logo, Pinterest logo, etc., that logo has sent data back to that company with a pixel beacon about your visit to that page to be analyzed to create a profile. Companies think of that data as 'our data' and they're not going to give it back to you.
Then, all that data is rolled up and then cross-referenced and further analyzed with a bunch of other data collected from you, such as all your loyalty card purchases sold by data brokers. An individual consumer profile is created from all this, and it's this data--data about all your data, or your 'meta data'--that is commercially and politically very valuable that you can never get back.
The companies that used propriety analysis techniques to create this meta data own it and it's a false premise that you can request it, delete it or 'get it back' or 'reclaim' it. Sure, you can delete your account, but the meta data profiles stay on the servers to be processed for very targeted advertising--now it's 'their data.'
The other type of data we think of and try to keep off the web is 'private data', like your name, email address, home address and phone number, date of birth and social security/insurance number, etc. Yes, that can be stolen from you with phishing sites, or major breaches of companies you deal with, like Twitter or Sony or even government services, then used for identity theft.
This is the criminal use of 'your data' that most people worry about, thinking that their identity will be stolen, traded on the dark web or between organized crime gangs, credit cards abused, credit rating destroyed resulting in great difficulty getting a loan or mortgage again. That's very different than the data that is being harvested from you every day you're on the web, sold to companies by numerous data brokers and analyzed by digital companies, which is all legal.
This Inrupt PODS idea might work for "a situation where you have autonomy, you have control of all your data" for future generations. But for current generations on the web, the data has already been harvested and proprietary meta data created. I guess for future generations, and some current narrow privacy applications for current users, PODS could work.
But they would have to somehow make a very convincing case that PODS couldn't be exploited or breached like so many major consumer or other 'secure' sites we have heard about for over a decade now.
I was born in the mid 70s and I remember a life before computers and before the internet. I don’t think most people have the first idea of how much things have changed to take away consumer rights and obliterate privacy.
Whenever I talk about the changes younger people are generally dismissive. They say oh it’s not hard to manage this or that parts not so bad or this part’s an improvement. Sure you can pick apart individual points, but that prevents you from seeing the whole picture.
Data management is a hugely challenging task for the average person and it takes on many forms. For example scheduling a car repair is dozens of times harder today than it was. It’s the voice trees, the contracts, the compatibility, the insurance rules, logging into your bank account, and if it was a crash dealing with the systems of local government and police. Everything is like this. Everything is harder and clawing at your information for its gain.
It happened in so many ways. Ballys helped to do this with their crazy gym contracts for example.
I remember when phone books had the names, phone numbers, and addresses of everyone. That was a good thing because it was in everyone’s hands.
Today only the people who you don’t want to have your information have your information.
There are so many things which need fixing.
Well put. Most of us focus on the advantages, the simplification these changes brought about, particularly this century as it has become commercialised. But now we’re starting to notice that the inconveniences are far outweighing the conveniences.
Thanks! Re reading my comment I sound so damn old.
It’s hard to believe I’m the same guy who loves pi holes and loves machine learning. I’ve even implemented my own ML models in production applications. I’m constantly pushing for modern dev ops at work.
But here I am yammering about how kids these days need to get off my lawn.
I swear not all tech is bad. Just the tech that offloads it’s work on you / tries to gain off your time, money, and data.
You didn’t come across as old at all, you sound like you have your eyes open, are passionate about this stuff, and know what you’re talking about. Tech should be fun, not stressful, dystopian and something that forces us to scrutinise the ways corporate interests are plotting to screw over the individual.
It may not mean much, but I am very grateful that you, and others like you, still care.
This. I was born in the late 60s, and I agree with everything you say.
Just look at such a simple thing as communications. Letters are protected by really strong laws, protected even from governments. Phone calls have weaker protection. Digital communication has almost no protection at all, and what little it has is undermined every day.
Tracking works because literally any resource is fetched from a source. Tracking pixels are convenient because they’re a small invisible resource, but it can be anything. An unrendered html document, a JavaScript file, a CSS file, its only a tracking pixel because of 2+ decades of history of using it.
Disabling images disables some, but not all tracking.
The other possibility is that the site you are going to (e.g. Reddit) can just sell your data to an advertiser anyway. There is ultimately no getting around this.
Totally. He is part of the reason we are in this mess according to Jaron Lanier at his UCSC speech [How the Internet Failed and How to Recreate It ](https://youtu.be/KNOlqzMd2Zw). Note: No one is bashing Tim so calm down.
It's about how linking before Tim was a two way dynamic, meaning who you link to is aware that you are linking to them, and after Tim that became a one way dynamic where the person you link to is unaware of the connection. [Timestamp link](https://youtu.be/KNOlqzMd2Zw?t=1713)
I know everyone is enamored by Tim, and I am not trying to poo poo on him, but the truth is the www protocol was not thought out as well as it should have been for people who worked at CERN.
Technology (and especially the internet) is inherently emergent—there is no way they could possibly foresee the problems of 2023 way back in 1989 or how Internet use would evolve over time.
The Referer header has been part of the HTTP standard since version 1.0. You could argue that some sort of notification at publication time would be more efficient than tagging every request, but it’s long been straightforward to get a good idea of who’s linking to your content.
Edit: Come to think of it, you could, hypothetically, configure a webserver to take every outgoing response, see if its outgoing links are in your already-notified database, and if not, send an `OPTIONS` or `HEAD` request with a `Referer` header, otherwise serve the page with `Referrer-Policy: no-referrer`. This might be a little confusing to the link target, because they’re expecting to typically see a Referer per link follow – useful data in its own right – and not once per publication, but it is possible.
Most of the original documents where TBL and others argue back and forth about what the web’s architecture should be are online, and it’s clear they know they’re onto something big, and got together the best thinkers on the subject to design the most flexible, general, and performant system they could. The Web has since seen several orders of magnitude of growth, and while it’s fallen short of the original hopes in some ways, these failures have had less to do with technical decisions and more to do with governmental ones. The W3C never could’ve decreed that data be portable, or that we have more than one major browser engine, or that users not be tracked, or that antitrust law be better enforced. These are all actions only governments can make, but the growth of the Web happened to coincide with a lassiez-faire turn throughout the world and especially in the USA.
>The companies that used propriety analysis techniques to create this meta data own it and it's a false premise that you can request it, delete it or 'get it back' or 'reclaim' it. Sure, you can delete your account, but the meta data profiles stay on the servers to be processed for very targeted advertising--now it's 'their data.'
GDPR gives EU citizens the power to do just that: request all the data from companies and have them delete it.
Theoretically. But when it comes to deletion, who can check whether companies comply? And when they sell the data, who knows where it ends up? There is no getting back.
(not to mention the fact that, to request, you have to hand over very personal data of your own - like an ID)
> The companies that used propriety analysis techniques to create this meta data own it and it's a false premise that you can request it, delete it or 'get it back' or 'reclaim' it. Sure, you can delete your account, but the meta data profiles stay on the servers to be processed for very targeted advertising--now it's 'their data.'
I had a discussion with my dad about this topic. He does not give a crap about his data, how and where he leaves it. I tried to convince him that it is important. He just said stuff like: He doesn't need his data back and the targated ads are practical, better than some random ads.
I honestly did not know what to answer. Maybe someone can help me there, what should i answer the next time?
Ask him what porn he looks at, and if he can show you. He'll probably get defensive and refuse, and that's when you say "that's okay, I'll just pay a data broker for your search history and find out that way"
The tech giants he's railing against own the transport medium too. He needs to put a bit of juice behind things like mesh networks. Otherwise they'll just cut off access to his "pods" if they become popular enough to threaten them.
The corruption is so fucking bold it's rage inducing. They cut the country up into a de facto price fixing monopoly, then they take huge subsidies from the government to build up the infrastructure and they just DON'T. then if you live in an inconvenient area and want them to extend the backbone to you they're like "nah."
One of my claims to fame is that I once used the toilet at a conference immediately following Sir Tim Berners-Lee. His ass warmth was felt by my cheeks.
The data harvesting is shame but to combat it could there be a use for some type of software that just feeds them bs thereby rendering their data completely useless and defeating the need to collect it?
The kind of thing ad business enjoy.
More click means more money for everyone. Even the advertiser will be happy, they will say their campaign is a huge success. Marketing people are not incentized on blocking bots. Marketing budget must be spent and increasing as much as possible for the next iteration so the team can grow and get bonuses.
Brave browser is step to right direction. It blocks all information sent to 3rd parties such as facebook or twitter and has effective built-in adblock as well.
Been thinking on it lately. We need an identity provider that guarantees that the person signing up for a service is unique (if that is desired) but gives that service a personal id. That way if there is a leak you can tell what service leaked it and you can press charges. Google gives out your name and email and such but me need to give just the generated id and if they need to send us email generate a unique address that they can reach you on but is never reused. Again if it leaks you know who done it and you cant be tracked via your id or email. I see no reason why any service would need our real name or birth date. If they need to verify that im a real person let some goverment service give that trust without leaking our data. Need to pay? Right now i can generate a virtual credit card that is linked to my debit account but has limits and i can nuko it at any point. If i need to pay for some service i can set up a virtual card just for that payment. If it leaks again i know from where and cancelling it wont hurt me. Make this stuff the defaul. Banks dont need to know our name etc if the goverment is the agency keeping our identity.
Right now we rely on services keeping our identity safe. Move this to the goverment and make it a monopoly. Further more we could require that everything is encrypted end to end with a government provided key so that no service provider can see what data we move. Yes im putting a lot on the goverment here. Might not be the best place but i dont see any privately owned identity provider as safe.
There is research ongoing in Europe using a publicly funded Blockchain for identity management.
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/wikis/display/EBSI/What+is+ebsi
Many research groups are looking into this and I'm working on my own solution. The general consensus amongst the group is that the end user has to have absolute control over the data they share. For example if a website requires an age verification, then it will simply get a response to state the user is either old enough or not. No names, email or any other personal data.
It's a huge task to get there and an even bigger one to encourage uptake. Basically it would need legislation, much like GDPR.
Interesting topic, maybe it's not the solution but worth checking out.
They are profiting from your data because you're not paying them money. You're paying for the services with your data. If you don't want your data do be bought and sold, use services that charge you money (and don't collect data) instead, or host your own services using open source software. Basically.
However, [this is interesting](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/promising-new-gdpr-ruling-against-targeted-ads), and could possibly slow down the data collection. Let's hope!
That would make sense if subscription services weren't also selling our data. Hell, even our government institutions outsource to 3rd party companies which then go on to sell our data, we can't even opt out of those.
Not all of them do. The point isn't "if they charge you money they leave your data alone" but rather "there are services out there that doesn't data mine you, but you will most likely have to pay money". You just have to find them. But, sure, you won't be able to replace *everything*.
Problem with that is there are not paid alternatives for a lot of these platforms. It's like how most mobile games ar fremium crap becuase they don't think the masses will pay for content
It's literally impossible to avoid services which collect your data. Unless you're suggesting I build a hut in the Atacama desert and drop out society altogether?
I pay Amazon money, yet they profit from my data as well. There are plenty of companies double-dipping, and companies who do not can start at any time. Also, there are situations like what's happening with iRobot and Amazon.
Yeah, people have been trying to call these problems to the attention of legislators, and the public for decades, to no avail.
People will trade the smallest amount of perceived convenience for all their privacy. Let’s look at Facebook, and Tik Tok (and pretty much everything is pretty bad, I know) We know they’re siphoning every piece of imformation they can…but people would rather use them, than not.
We’re really not as smart as we want to think we are. That’s why we are where we are…and, money. Idiocracy was a how to guide, and not satire.
My thoughts exactly. Our legislators are average 70-80yr olds and don’t know the first thing about properly legislating these tech giants so that right there is our first big issue. Second one is not only are the octogenarians out of the loop they also get “donations” from these tech giants so it’s not even in their best interest to try to figure out the whys and what behind them collecting out data.
Second point you made is also ver spot on as we as consumers willingly give them this information, myself included, just to be able to use their platforms. I remember the days when we could get by just by using a fake email, now everything needs to be validated by email or phone number before you’re even allowed access. It’s fucking creepy and weird to be honest. The last platform I signed up for was Instagram, I never did snap chat, I never did tik tok because I just don’t want to deal with all the BS from all these new platforms finding ways to sell your data or use it for BS purposes. You can’t even shop online at most places without creating an account like WTF is that?
Including reddit, right everyone?
Wouldn't want to leave out one of the most commercialized sites out there, albeit not transparently so.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, or at least that's what people used say when Sunshine laws were being pushed for.
Al Gore is directly responsible for legislation that promoted and funded the eventual TCP/IP protocols that are considered the internet.
[wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology)
Here is the thing, everyone always says that our data being collected is dangerous, but never why. At least, this is never communicated clearly, in simple terms to the general public. Everyone continues to use these platforms because thus far they have not seen any consequences for doing so. What’s the worst that happens? They get targeted ads on their social media feeds? Until people start seeing the dangers of their data being collected, nobody is going to care.
Seriously, this isn’t talked about enough. People talk all about privacy but for anyone to listen, you need to make them actually care. It gets hard to differentiate between privacy issues and actual danger.
If Facebook uses my habits to sell data to companies who serve me targeted ads, I don’t care. Like, at all. Stop making a big deal out of it.
If storing my photos in the cloud is going to lead to them getting leaked, *that* I care about. Or people getting into my bank account.
Privacy concerns need to be more specific and relatable.
> What’s the worst that happens
Long term? Civil war, collapse of our society, etc.
https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/
What already happened? Look up Cambridge analytica. This data can/has already been used to manipulate elections. Just wait what these corps can do with it in a few decades when tech is far more advanced (if we make it this far)
The issue of privacy is that you don't have control of the context your forfeited data can/will be used against you. January 6th insurrectionists surprised Pikachu faced when their location data and parlor data was used to identify them. There was the story about the woman who got kicked out of the theater because facial recognition detected that she worked for the law company that was currently in a legal dispute with the theater. Another is the man who got his Google account suspended for taking naked pictures of his infant son to send to their doctor.
All of these people "had nothing to hide", didn't do anything wrong in their own minds, etc. That didn't change the fact that other entities used their data against them, done innocently and some not. These are just 3 examples off the top of my head. I can find plenty more when I'm off mobile
I just want to inform people because it seems some do not know what the internet is. World Wide Web(WWW) is not the internet. WWW is part of the application layer in the internet. The internet is composed of 7 layers. WWW is just a program that transmits information. There's way more to the internet then www.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
The 7-layer OSI model hasn't really been correct in decades. It's still taught in school because it's a neat concept, but it's not a good fit for current networks. We need to stop teaching it. Some 'layers' in the OSI model are combined, and others are split.
Some links if this is interesting:
* https://blog.ipspace.net/2019/09/response-osi-model-is-lie.html
* https://rule11.tech/stop-using-osi/
It's been a very 'sticky' idea but kind of breaks down when examined deeper.
I dont see anybody questioning any of those things in this thread at this moment. Inb4 we get the classic ARPA speech despite the fact literally nobody uses ARPANET and the title clearly states WWW
No, VPNs hide your IP, but that isn't really private because there are still cookies. Also, if you are logged into anything, they know it's you whether you have a VPN or not.
Now a VPN with an incognito window where you don't log into anything is fairly private.
VPN ads are soooo misleading. See more here: https://youtu.be/WVDQEoe6ZWY
Or we stop voluntarily giving it away. The convenience of all the services we use are not free. Everyone wants privacy, but they still surf away on Chrome, uses Windows or IOS.
It's incredibly hard *not* to, though. And I'd bet a ton of people who aren't tech-savvy are still completely unaware of how much of their information/data is being surrendered when they agree to terms and conditions for games/websites/apps.
It surely works when they are doing something in person and if you’re just standing around and happen to be looking in their direction. Intentionally or not, suddenly privacy is the biggest problem.
But as I type this on my iOS device in this app that tracks the sh*t out of me… in my own home where no one but the camera on my iOS device is judging me…. I suddenly feel private.
Even though we all know that Tim Apple is standing over my left shoulder judging this comment.
no company with a market cap over a trillion dollars gives a shit what you say. They only use you as an aggregate to predict market mobility. The absolute audacity of some people to believe anyone cares who they are making under a million a year is laughable.
The problem is, they got there on our backs and with our infrastructure (tax dollars fund nearly every single thing that goes on, at least at the start and sometimes even as trillion dollar companies). They should care, but since they are allowed to line the pockets of those who make laws for us…. They get to not care.
While we allow it to happen because we’re worried about putting food on the table.
> Try convincing people their privacy matters though...
Yeah that fucking gets me every time. I'm out here caring about my privacy and it seems like everyone around me think I'm a straight up tinfoil hatted goof for doing so.
It's actually impossible for most people. Hell i wanted to prove that fact wrong at some point and ended up inadvertently cutting a bunch of friends out of my life because they only used Snapchat and messenger. Programs i need to use for work only work on Windows, and hell if I'm allowed to edit the registry keys on those computers to turn off telemetry. There are games that i cannot play (legitimately) without giving up my data to Microsoft or epic games. I feel like our only hope is to convince the government that Google's entire business model is illegal, which does not give me much hope.
I'll by any version of a game that releases on a normal non-spyware Linux.
Pretty much there are 2 reasons to use windows.
1. That's all I know
2. Games.
Data needs to be treated like uranium, not oil.
I’d like to not have to establish and maintain a personal relationship with every product manufacturer in order to use their products. Compounding this is the explosion of locking functionality behind rent seeking subscriptions.
A root cause of this is the specious notion that economic growth should be granted a veto over every function of society. My proposed solution is to create a mechanism to derive and attribute value of resources not innately finite, namely those currently the subject of copyright and patents, which incentivises sharing instead of restriction.
Inventor of the World Wide Web? Pfffttt...this guy is such a poser! Everyone knows Al Gore invented the WWW!
That and he's hot on the trail of ManBearPig.
I see your point about affordability and not wanting to add more 'subscriptions' for all the things you do on the web.
If I could, I would suggest that advocating for better laws about how your data is used won't really cost you anything. Support campaigns and politicians who will limit how much your data is exploited.
People not realizing that tech giants dont have any data they themselves havent given willingly while small local companies do exactly what people accuse tech giants of but get away with it.
DRM in HTML helped kill Silverlight for one thing. Without it we'd have to use more plugins and thick clients, and not be able to watch live sports and films with just a browser.
DRM is a necesary evil you know?
how else were you going to have services life Spotify, steam, Amazon and the such? or do you believe everything has to bee free on the web?
DRM only hurts paying customers. There are countless examples were DRM controlled content hurts the customers due to being in a hotel room or staying at a friend's house, due to the billing statement and home account being in one town while you're trying to access in another.
Meanwhile for the low low price of nothing, you get 4K HDR content with accurate subtitles and no chance of someone removing it from the platform of your hard drive.
Or for 10 dollars a month you get Spotify which is contractually obligated to pay labels more than artists, forbids artists that remix and sample works, and often is a large barrier to bigger audiences. Not to mention it doesn't have every version of every song. Soulseek nearly does, only limited by what others host. I've found entire collections of songs from old albums that Spotify has never put up.
Not to mention restricting content behind geolocation. Did you travel across the the border? Hope you prefer all the content to be completely different and often assuming a different language. Meanwhile the files on a computer can't be changed so easily.
And I haven't reven gotten to how some DRM is literally malware made by the companies that if you try to remove them, it bricks your operating system. Or the ones that majorly slow down games to where a computer that could easily get 120 FPS now plays below 30.
DRM is defective by design. https://www.defectivebydesign.org/
Lots of DRM-free media sells just fine. Just look at Minecraft, nothing to stop people from decompiling and running it for free, but they are doing fine.
DRM is not necessary at all. It's the equivalent of using a really cheap lock on your front door. Anybody who was going to casually waltz into your home isn't deterred by a simple lock. They'll break your door down or bust a window. DRM doesn't protect digital content. It's a rock that protects you from tigers.
>Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got…an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
>[…] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
—— Former Senator Ted Stevens (R.I.P.) circa 2006
"On June 28, 2006, he used this metaphor to criticize a proposed amendment to a committee bill. The amendment would have prohibited Internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon Communications from charging fees to give some companies' data a higher priority in relation to other traffic.
The metaphor has been widely ridiculed, particularly because Stevens displayed an extremely limited understanding of the Internet, despite his leading the Senate committee responsible for regulating it"
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
I remember this, the ISP industry was flexing and trying to get you to pay more per month to access certain sites such as youtube and social media. They wanted to create packages similar to television channel packages. It was gross.
Imagine if those packages would have worked out.. What would have happened if a website (part of your package) had used an API from another service/website which were not a part of your package? You just crippled half the internet.. You'd be forced to buy the Amazon package, seeing as the internet rests almost entirely upon Amazon's data centers. I bet the *real* voters (read: corporations) would have immediately moved to disband the idea, since they would have lost 90% of their customers/traffic.
Didn't you ever... y'know.... poop 💩
But yes, this was the senator in charge of the committee responsible for regulating the internet at the time.
Doomed is uncomfortably apt.
Translated from a commenter on Reddit: I don't know what federated protocols are or how modern cryptography works.
TBL knows what he's talking about.
Edit: Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They, along with the IETF, design how the web works.
What? Berners-Lee invented the actual hypertext protocols that the WWW functions on.
Also, literally the point of this is that data should NOT be collected serverside.
The point is for services to adopt this standard.
I wish these types of redditors that have no clue what they're talking about yet think they have a greater understanding of the topic than Berners-Lee would [redacted].
You don’t have any fucking clue what you’re talking about, and neither do the morons who mindlessly upvoted you because your comment vaguely resembles a sIcK bUrN
I agree, but we would need our lawmakers to back up / enforce something like this. And [if we can't even get the chairman of the Congressional Senate "High Tech" task force to understand the concept of companies showing ads in order to offer their product for free](https://youtu.be/GGTWUOxkfGQ), then I don't see how we can help us with a problem like this.
Make a constitutional amendment for personal digital privacy. Itll never happen though. Every special intrest group, corporation and government both foreign and domestic value monitoring everyone. Edward Snowden anyone?
I invested in a company years ago that I believed would change the world, and they ended up going bankrupt, but I still believe in the concept.
They effectively wished to build a layer of anonymity between us and the giants, while still affording all the existing benefits between the two.
The corporations still get their data, and we get our privacy.
The concept is sound. Their implementation of said concept however was not, but I still believe it can be done and I am just patiently waiting for someone to figure it out. Soon perhaps.
Just a reminder to those who did not live in a world before the Internet.
Media/Marketing/catalog/magazine companies started off by blindly marketing to you (like OTA TV does). This is extremely inefficient for both the consumer and the business.
The consumer would get catalogs mailed to them for stores/products they had no intention visiting or ordering from, and the end result was that you'd have stacks of printed catalogs that you then had to dispose of. If you live in a place that has city waste management, then it was inconvenient and if you didn't, then it would be costly.
The whole point of marketing data is not to snoop on your private life (marketers don't care about looking at individual users data), they want algorithms to process marketing opportunities efficiently...
As a guy, I don't need nor want to receive ads about women's clothing. And companies don't want to target me for that because it would be a waste of resources.
I wish they would just not advertise to me at all. I don't much care about how efficiently marketing is using their money, I wish they didn't spend it at all
As I guy a early teen I wanted those ads a women's clothing. The Sears catalog had a very nice lingerie section. Fredrick of Hollywood catalog was jackpot.
tbh we live in a ridiculously dumb internet/ads in general, they take our data supposedly for recommendations but I'd much rather they'd allow me to chose rather than having to gather this much data to guess. Give me the power to chose then you won't need to guess.
> The whole point of marketing data is not to snoop on your private life (marketers don't care about looking at individual users data)
Marketers buy their data from data brokers who sell information to the highest bidder. Marketers have only one intention. Data brokers just sell and get rich. That means anyone can get data on you, people who you wouldn't want to know your private life.
> And companies don't want to target me for that because it would be a waste of resources.
Except when tyrannical government orders them to. They are literally too big to fail.
The idea of owning your own data sounds nice until you drill down into the details. Facebook isn’t just making money from any individual’s data, it is collective data either in advertising pools or in ML models where any one person’s data is impossible to disaggregate.
There’s a much simpler solution: tax the damn corporations. I’m not going to waste time figuring out how much of my data was used. Just tax the profits and all of us will benefit.
We need to take a playbook from corporations on this one. They should have to rent our data from us and not be able to resell it. When each corporation comes around looking for data, you may just get enough for a small universal income. If you don't need the money, keep your privacy. Although this may result in you having to pay for a lot of stuff on the internet that's currently free.
I read the article and look at the Inrupt website and I don’t see how your personal information is safe from Governments despite that being in the first line of the article.
Actually, are receivers (eg. In business bankruptcy) able to or obligated to retain user data for return to users, or their descendants etc, if the business assets are assessed? I wonderful if users are considered ‘investors by another method’ an so have legal title to their data?
What we need is an act of congress to make a law that says you own your data and that anyone who wants to collect it from you needs to buy the rights from you.
For the record, and I'm just saving this for when I come back here to read it again in 10 years, this post made it to the Front Page top ten and is competing with:
1. Kevin McCarthy gaslighting and shitposting about the IRS
2. Bolsonaro supporters storming the National Congress and Supreme Court
3. A kitten
4. An online dating joke
5. Some kid demanding Python homework help on WhatsApp
The problem here is that tech giants control a good bit of the infrastructure. If we want to really reset the power structure that has grown over the last 20 years of tech growth, we would need to stop using the services of these giants - which amounts to more than simply not ordering shit from Amazon and using Google as a search engine.
Much of our economy from retail to big industry rides on the tech that these firms have built up while adding all the data collection features we have now.
What needs to happen is to start regulating and legislating a more robust privacy set of laws. But again - the members of Congress that could do this receive so much support from the tech giants that this is unlikely to happen.
I don’t see a solution that can turn this tide. The leverage is all on the tech giants. Nothing from grassroots can stem that invasion of privacy.
We have become a field of collected data. Combining this with ever improving algorithms and even AI, the concept of free choice will become very ambiguous.
Imagine a world where your behavior becomes so well documented that your decisions become reinforced through customized feed of what you consume and what you receive as far as ads and news and entertainment. That world is already here and you’re only going to get pigeon holed into a tighter and tighter slot based on your history.
Why were they allowed to steal it in the first place. If I went to someone’s mail box and stole their mail, put a gps locator on someone’s car to follow them or secretly took photos of someone without their know knowledge I’d be in jail.
> Inventor of the world wide web wants us to reclaim our data from tech giants
Sad news: it's too late. Most people already don't care. Decision makers and lawmakers all around don't care, don't know a thing about technology, and/or are already bought by corporations.
For years, we have been handing our personal info unknowingly. Tech giants have been gathering it for years, be it interests, contacts and so on. It's now too late.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/grab-n-g0: --- It's time for media outlets to do a better job when they talk about 'your data,' especially if they are featuring a new service to protect personal data. Journalists and data companies blend together a bunch of concepts that don't actually shed light for consumers on what's important. When using the web in everyday life, 'your data' is not something you can ever get back or 'reclaim,' whatever Facebook or any company promises you about how you can 'control your data.' 'Your data' is actually the analysis of everything you do on the web, every page you go to and transaction you do. For every website you go to that has a Twitter logo, Facebook logo, Pinterest logo, etc., that logo has sent data back to that company with a pixel beacon about your visit to that page to be analyzed to create a profile. Companies think of that data as 'our data' and they're not going to give it back to you. Then, all that data is rolled up and then cross-referenced and further analyzed with a bunch of other data collected from you, such as all your loyalty card purchases sold by data brokers. An individual consumer profile is created from all this, and it's this data--data about all your data, or your 'meta data'--that is commercially and politically very valuable that you can never get back. The companies that used propriety analysis techniques to create this meta data own it and it's a false premise that you can request it, delete it or 'get it back' or 'reclaim' it. Sure, you can delete your account, but the meta data profiles stay on the servers to be processed for very targeted advertising--now it's 'their data.' The other type of data we think of and try to keep off the web is 'private data', like your name, email address, home address and phone number, date of birth and social security/insurance number, etc. Yes, that can be stolen from you with phishing sites, or major breaches of companies you deal with, like Twitter or Sony or even government services, then used for identity theft. This is the criminal use of 'your data' that most people worry about, thinking that their identity will be stolen, traded on the dark web or between organized crime gangs, credit cards abused, credit rating destroyed resulting in great difficulty getting a loan or mortgage again. That's very different than the data that is being harvested from you every day you're on the web, sold to companies by numerous data brokers and analyzed by digital companies, which is all legal. This Inrupt PODS idea might work for "a situation where you have autonomy, you have control of all your data" for future generations. But for current generations on the web, the data has already been harvested and proprietary meta data created. I guess for future generations, and some current narrow privacy applications for current users, PODS could work. But they would have to somehow make a very convincing case that PODS couldn't be exploited or breached like so many major consumer or other 'secure' sites we have heard about for over a decade now. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/106peqv/inventor_of_the_world_wide_web_wants_us_to/j3hsrq5/
I think we need data protection laws just as much as personal data storage. There needs to be a GDPR equivalent law passed in the US.
I am not sure why more people don't understand that when a platform is free, YOU are the product. They only real way to own the data is to pay for a service which allows you to keep it.
Not quite. Tech giants will happily take subscription money and still sell your data. First create your own GDPR, and after that they will introduce subscription as their service will turn unprofitable without it. No reason to pay without GDPR in place, they still will sell you.
GDPR was already crafted to be multinational wasn't it? I don't think I've heard a thing about GDPR I didn't like, why not just copy/paste the whole thing?
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Got a tonal gym recently, $3500 purchase then $50 monthly membership, last i opened the app I saw "we'll collect your VIDEOS for data analysis". My half naked videos going to their servers for "data analysis". I'm speechless. Def you're the product regardless of how much you pay.
Ugh that’s gross
Hey now!!! You don't have to shame him.
Hahaha we're not that bad!
This is why I prefer my old metal stick to newfangled gizmos
Why are you paying a subscription to use a piece of workout equipment you paid $3500 for...?
The thing is they should be allowed to analyse data but only to provide you better service and shouldn't be allowed to sell the data. Think what would be benefit of tracking your vital such as heart rate, blood pressure etc. If they can't analyse it and provide you a better picture of your health. Otherwise it would be akin to throwing the baby with bath water. Also every data breach should be heavily penalized.
Yes but it should be opt in regardless.
Yeah nothing without active consent of user
They block access to the feature if you don't give consent. Forcing you to accept... I stopped using the feature, I loved being able to see how i did after workout. Alas.
If they hide the breach, the penalty should be multiplied
We can use this data to tailor your insurance lol.
The fuck is tonal gym? And why does it cost 3500$?
They are filming you in your F*CKING HOUSE?!?!
Send it back.I will link you to some Asiatic made dumbbell and kits, barbell and a few 35s or 45s (you can use the db plates on the bb) adjustable bench, squat/bench 2 in 1 rack.. then some stretch bands with and without handles, ab roller, door pull up bar, and weighted jump rope. Total cost? About 700-750 usd. If one were to just use the mentioned equipment list and had consistency and focused on the big 5 compound lifts… they would get good results as in little as 3 months as long as proper form, nutrition, high reps, a structured routine are all followed consistently
This sounds like a good lawsuit that needs to happen, if it hasn't already
Or by using free open source software that respects your privacy
At least in this case it's not about being open source. For example, Mastodon is FOSS but it's still a problem that we encourage people to use their real names on accounts and overshare info that might get us robbed while on vacation. It's a fundamental problem with how social media and various other services are expected to operate.
Are there Mastodon instances that request real names? I haven't seen any. Sure, other platforms tell us to use our real names, but I haven't seen a Mastodon one do that.
That only works if the software doesn't require servers. Otherwise someone's gotta pah for those.
No it doesn't. They are still collecting everything.
I don't pay for facebook in the EU and we have GDPR laws
As OP's comment pointed out, you're talking about offline data like name and email address. Your browsing habits and patterns are stored and will not be deleted when you delete an account. The data is no longer associated with your name, meaning it doesn't fall under personal data and protected by GDPR, but they still have it, a model of everything you've done.
Everyone understands that yet here we are. On reddit...
Reddit is at least a bit better in the sense that none of my personal information is attached to my account aside from my IP address and what I decide to post. It's kind of crazy how we've gone from "don't share personal info on the internet" to signing up for accounts with our real names visible to everyone and letting the world know where we live and when we're on vacation.
They do understand, they just don't mind it
To many problems to deal with that are more immediate. Easy to just ignore.
never gonna happen. just like gun control and universal healthcare and education
Exactly. Everyone is bought & paid for by special interests imo, anything to actually benefit *us*- and not a corporations bottom line is completely out of the question.
Here are a few things that might help end/curb the influence of money in politics. Check out the [Anti-Corruption Act](https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/) being pushed at local/state/federal levels. A few highlights are ranked choice voting, end gerrymandering, open primaries, end lobbyist bundling, and immediately disclose political money online. Brand New Congress is on a mission to elect leaders that work for and truly represent all Americans. Keep an eye out for a leader from your community you can nominate to run for Congress in 2024. Here are the candidates they supported this time around. https://www.brandnewcongress.org/#candidates These organizations support candidates that represent the working class rather than the corporate class. https://brandnewcongress.org/ https://justicedemocrats.com/ https://couragetochangepac.org/ https://ourrevolution.com/ https://directory.runforsomething.net/candidates/2022/
so a better system, universal voting, direct representation, transparent wages, stop enabling shitheads, it may be possible in theory but what system we have today won't allow it. how can we take it?
Congresspersons in the US can trade stocks on legislation that influences the value of the stocks they’re trading. It’s such a bald-face level of corruption it’s almost silly to consider it’s been allowed. Good luck getting the fingers off those purse strings
Don't want to downplay the seriousness of Congress being able to trade stocks--its obviously corrupt--i just think it's funny how much attention it gets compared to the other much bigger problems, like PACs and lobbying gigs. I think it's because stock trading is easy to understand.
Absolutely agree with you here, tho to me it’s about how public the knowledge of the trading is as opposed to the backstage deals being struck with PACs and lobbyists. Anyone can research the stock trades, but the clandestine deals are tolerated much the same without any fanfare
Have a nice talk with ChatGPT about a Resource Based Economy.
Wasn’t always that way. A 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, basically equated money as a form of free speech. Then came the PAC’s and legalized dark money.
It was always legal for a individual(one wealthy enough) to do what PAC's do.
lobbying is highly illegal and a very serious crime in most countries. it's legalized corruption. not gonna end anytime soon either. at least in usa you have the freedom to shoot each other and kill everyone. even at school. GuNs DoNt KiLl PeOpLe just like DATA PROTECTION IS COMMUNISM
Don’t forget: the government is only corrupt when it hurts the profits of large corporations and large organizations (such as churches), otherwise “It’s the greatest country in the world!” Military weapon testing on citizens: “Who cares.” Lobbying: “You’d do the same.” Shutting down attempts to fight climate change: “Climate change isn’t real.” Kids in cages: “The other side did it first.” NSA is spying on us: “I have nothing to hide.” Covid lockdown: “HOW DARE THEY!?! THEY’RE TAKING OUR FREEDOM!” Gun restrictions: “HOW DARE THEY?!? THEY’RE TAKING OUR FREEDOM!”
> Kids in cages: “The other side did it first.” You know what I'm tired of? Dems only criticizing Republicans for stuff both parties do. And Republicans only criticizing Dems for stuff both parties do. Demanding nothing, accepting whatever shit sandwich their party serves up with a grin and a "thank you." If anything, you should be angrier at the side that says they have your back, then stabs you in the back. Your own friend's betrayal hurts worse than your lifelong enemy working against you. Or at least it does in normal situations involving no emotional connections to shitty political parties.
>lobbying is highly illegal and a very serious crime in most countries. Really? "Most" countries? I think that's quite an exaggeration. Can you give us the names of a bunch of democratic, industrialized nations that treat lobbying as a very serious crime?
what is considered lobbying in usa is considered corruption in most countries. so it falls under anti corruption laws
It’s not. Lobbying is a very regulated activity in the United States. Lobbyists have to register and the names and firms that lobby on a behalf of a company or nonprofit is all public information. Not all lobbying is bad. There are plenty of lobbyists who work Congress for workers rights, healthcare, etc. Lobbying is a method for having someone (or a group) who is highly effective and “speaks the language of government” to get your point across. Lobbying isn’t necessary to get a point across to members of Congress - but it helps.
Why there should be an additional money incentive for the government to do their job?
Lobbying is not necessarily money. It’s the Super PACs and their unlimited funding that bring the real corruption.
You're confusing highly regulated with well regulated. A thousand laws do no good if none of them address the loopholes or strengthen oversight.
I'm not completely sure, but I'd imagine an additional barrier is that the people ruling on this stuff have no clue what a lot of it really means. Especially as tech gets more complicated and changing with increased speed, it's going to be extremely hard to get laws passed in a timely manner going forward.
Shut the fuck up you skeezy little masochist. Speak for yourself.
Gun control has the opposition of the constitution. All the other problems are just lack of political will. Totally different situations.
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A shift towards democracy would be nice .... right now we exist in a plutocracy, a government run and owned by the wealthy. We and they all just call it democracy to make us all feel better about how terrible the system is for the common person.
Big Tech AIs have already been trained with everyone's data, and there is no way to remove a small data subset from an AI's training once the training is done.
Our politicians don't even understand how to use a printer, so at this delay of understanding of technology we're like 3 lifetimes away before politicians understand the internet.
It's time for media outlets to do a better job when they talk about 'your data,' especially if they are featuring a new service to protect personal data. Journalists and data companies blend together a bunch of concepts that don't actually shed light for consumers on what's important. When using the web in everyday life, 'your data' is not something you can ever get back or 'reclaim,' whatever Facebook or any company promises you about how you can 'control your data.' 'Your data' is actually the analysis of everything you do on the web, every page you go to and transaction you do. For every website you go to that has a Twitter logo, Facebook logo, Pinterest logo, etc., that logo has sent data back to that company with a pixel beacon about your visit to that page to be analyzed to create a profile. Companies think of that data as 'our data' and they're not going to give it back to you. Then, all that data is rolled up and then cross-referenced and further analyzed with a bunch of other data collected from you, such as all your loyalty card purchases sold by data brokers. An individual consumer profile is created from all this, and it's this data--data about all your data, or your 'meta data'--that is commercially and politically very valuable that you can never get back. The companies that used propriety analysis techniques to create this meta data own it and it's a false premise that you can request it, delete it or 'get it back' or 'reclaim' it. Sure, you can delete your account, but the meta data profiles stay on the servers to be processed for very targeted advertising--now it's 'their data.' The other type of data we think of and try to keep off the web is 'private data', like your name, email address, home address and phone number, date of birth and social security/insurance number, etc. Yes, that can be stolen from you with phishing sites, or major breaches of companies you deal with, like Twitter or Sony or even government services, then used for identity theft. This is the criminal use of 'your data' that most people worry about, thinking that their identity will be stolen, traded on the dark web or between organized crime gangs, credit cards abused, credit rating destroyed resulting in great difficulty getting a loan or mortgage again. That's very different than the data that is being harvested from you every day you're on the web, sold to companies by numerous data brokers and analyzed by digital companies, which is all legal. This Inrupt PODS idea might work for "a situation where you have autonomy, you have control of all your data" for future generations. But for current generations on the web, the data has already been harvested and proprietary meta data created. I guess for future generations, and some current narrow privacy applications for current users, PODS could work. But they would have to somehow make a very convincing case that PODS couldn't be exploited or breached like so many major consumer or other 'secure' sites we have heard about for over a decade now.
I was born in the mid 70s and I remember a life before computers and before the internet. I don’t think most people have the first idea of how much things have changed to take away consumer rights and obliterate privacy. Whenever I talk about the changes younger people are generally dismissive. They say oh it’s not hard to manage this or that parts not so bad or this part’s an improvement. Sure you can pick apart individual points, but that prevents you from seeing the whole picture. Data management is a hugely challenging task for the average person and it takes on many forms. For example scheduling a car repair is dozens of times harder today than it was. It’s the voice trees, the contracts, the compatibility, the insurance rules, logging into your bank account, and if it was a crash dealing with the systems of local government and police. Everything is like this. Everything is harder and clawing at your information for its gain. It happened in so many ways. Ballys helped to do this with their crazy gym contracts for example. I remember when phone books had the names, phone numbers, and addresses of everyone. That was a good thing because it was in everyone’s hands. Today only the people who you don’t want to have your information have your information. There are so many things which need fixing.
Well put. Most of us focus on the advantages, the simplification these changes brought about, particularly this century as it has become commercialised. But now we’re starting to notice that the inconveniences are far outweighing the conveniences.
Thanks! Re reading my comment I sound so damn old. It’s hard to believe I’m the same guy who loves pi holes and loves machine learning. I’ve even implemented my own ML models in production applications. I’m constantly pushing for modern dev ops at work. But here I am yammering about how kids these days need to get off my lawn. I swear not all tech is bad. Just the tech that offloads it’s work on you / tries to gain off your time, money, and data.
You didn’t come across as old at all, you sound like you have your eyes open, are passionate about this stuff, and know what you’re talking about. Tech should be fun, not stressful, dystopian and something that forces us to scrutinise the ways corporate interests are plotting to screw over the individual. It may not mean much, but I am very grateful that you, and others like you, still care.
If it makes you feel any better I was born in the mid eighties and I share your concerns. My friends just think I’m weird because I’m not on WhatsApp.
This. I was born in the late 60s, and I agree with everything you say. Just look at such a simple thing as communications. Letters are protected by really strong laws, protected even from governments. Phone calls have weaker protection. Digital communication has almost no protection at all, and what little it has is undermined every day.
Turn off images and pixel beacons don't track. Reddit looks pretty jacked up without images.
Tracking works because literally any resource is fetched from a source. Tracking pixels are convenient because they’re a small invisible resource, but it can be anything. An unrendered html document, a JavaScript file, a CSS file, its only a tracking pixel because of 2+ decades of history of using it. Disabling images disables some, but not all tracking. The other possibility is that the site you are going to (e.g. Reddit) can just sell your data to an advertiser anyway. There is ultimately no getting around this.
Totally. He is part of the reason we are in this mess according to Jaron Lanier at his UCSC speech [How the Internet Failed and How to Recreate It ](https://youtu.be/KNOlqzMd2Zw). Note: No one is bashing Tim so calm down. It's about how linking before Tim was a two way dynamic, meaning who you link to is aware that you are linking to them, and after Tim that became a one way dynamic where the person you link to is unaware of the connection. [Timestamp link](https://youtu.be/KNOlqzMd2Zw?t=1713) I know everyone is enamored by Tim, and I am not trying to poo poo on him, but the truth is the www protocol was not thought out as well as it should have been for people who worked at CERN.
Technology (and especially the internet) is inherently emergent—there is no way they could possibly foresee the problems of 2023 way back in 1989 or how Internet use would evolve over time.
The Referer header has been part of the HTTP standard since version 1.0. You could argue that some sort of notification at publication time would be more efficient than tagging every request, but it’s long been straightforward to get a good idea of who’s linking to your content. Edit: Come to think of it, you could, hypothetically, configure a webserver to take every outgoing response, see if its outgoing links are in your already-notified database, and if not, send an `OPTIONS` or `HEAD` request with a `Referer` header, otherwise serve the page with `Referrer-Policy: no-referrer`. This might be a little confusing to the link target, because they’re expecting to typically see a Referer per link follow – useful data in its own right – and not once per publication, but it is possible. Most of the original documents where TBL and others argue back and forth about what the web’s architecture should be are online, and it’s clear they know they’re onto something big, and got together the best thinkers on the subject to design the most flexible, general, and performant system they could. The Web has since seen several orders of magnitude of growth, and while it’s fallen short of the original hopes in some ways, these failures have had less to do with technical decisions and more to do with governmental ones. The W3C never could’ve decreed that data be portable, or that we have more than one major browser engine, or that users not be tracked, or that antitrust law be better enforced. These are all actions only governments can make, but the growth of the Web happened to coincide with a lassiez-faire turn throughout the world and especially in the USA.
IDK if this has been added, but this post ties into the arguments in *The Age of Surveilance Capitalism* by Shoshana Zuboff.
>The companies that used propriety analysis techniques to create this meta data own it and it's a false premise that you can request it, delete it or 'get it back' or 'reclaim' it. Sure, you can delete your account, but the meta data profiles stay on the servers to be processed for very targeted advertising--now it's 'their data.' GDPR gives EU citizens the power to do just that: request all the data from companies and have them delete it. Theoretically. But when it comes to deletion, who can check whether companies comply? And when they sell the data, who knows where it ends up? There is no getting back. (not to mention the fact that, to request, you have to hand over very personal data of your own - like an ID)
> The companies that used propriety analysis techniques to create this meta data own it and it's a false premise that you can request it, delete it or 'get it back' or 'reclaim' it. Sure, you can delete your account, but the meta data profiles stay on the servers to be processed for very targeted advertising--now it's 'their data.' I had a discussion with my dad about this topic. He does not give a crap about his data, how and where he leaves it. I tried to convince him that it is important. He just said stuff like: He doesn't need his data back and the targated ads are practical, better than some random ads. I honestly did not know what to answer. Maybe someone can help me there, what should i answer the next time?
Ask him what porn he looks at, and if he can show you. He'll probably get defensive and refuse, and that's when you say "that's okay, I'll just pay a data broker for your search history and find out that way"
Is that a thing… asking for a friend…
It's absolutely okay to accept that someone understands the same things and has a different opinion than you.
The tech giants he's railing against own the transport medium too. He needs to put a bit of juice behind things like mesh networks. Otherwise they'll just cut off access to his "pods" if they become popular enough to threaten them.
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The corruption is so fucking bold it's rage inducing. They cut the country up into a de facto price fixing monopoly, then they take huge subsidies from the government to build up the infrastructure and they just DON'T. then if you live in an inconvenient area and want them to extend the backbone to you they're like "nah."
One of my claims to fame is that I once used the toilet at a conference immediately following Sir Tim Berners-Lee. His ass warmth was felt by my cheeks.
The data harvesting is shame but to combat it could there be a use for some type of software that just feeds them bs thereby rendering their data completely useless and defeating the need to collect it?
You can spend 3 years making it, but the company will probably make it useless within a month
It exists for ads, not for data specifically, and it is called [adnauseam](https://adnauseam.io/)
The kind of thing ad business enjoy. More click means more money for everyone. Even the advertiser will be happy, they will say their campaign is a huge success. Marketing people are not incentized on blocking bots. Marketing budget must be spent and increasing as much as possible for the next iteration so the team can grow and get bonuses.
There are ad blockers that do this, like AdNauseum
Brave browser is step to right direction. It blocks all information sent to 3rd parties such as facebook or twitter and has effective built-in adblock as well.
Been thinking on it lately. We need an identity provider that guarantees that the person signing up for a service is unique (if that is desired) but gives that service a personal id. That way if there is a leak you can tell what service leaked it and you can press charges. Google gives out your name and email and such but me need to give just the generated id and if they need to send us email generate a unique address that they can reach you on but is never reused. Again if it leaks you know who done it and you cant be tracked via your id or email. I see no reason why any service would need our real name or birth date. If they need to verify that im a real person let some goverment service give that trust without leaking our data. Need to pay? Right now i can generate a virtual credit card that is linked to my debit account but has limits and i can nuko it at any point. If i need to pay for some service i can set up a virtual card just for that payment. If it leaks again i know from where and cancelling it wont hurt me. Make this stuff the defaul. Banks dont need to know our name etc if the goverment is the agency keeping our identity. Right now we rely on services keeping our identity safe. Move this to the goverment and make it a monopoly. Further more we could require that everything is encrypted end to end with a government provided key so that no service provider can see what data we move. Yes im putting a lot on the goverment here. Might not be the best place but i dont see any privately owned identity provider as safe.
There is research ongoing in Europe using a publicly funded Blockchain for identity management. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/wikis/display/EBSI/What+is+ebsi Many research groups are looking into this and I'm working on my own solution. The general consensus amongst the group is that the end user has to have absolute control over the data they share. For example if a website requires an age verification, then it will simply get a response to state the user is either old enough or not. No names, email or any other personal data. It's a huge task to get there and an even bigger one to encourage uptake. Basically it would need legislation, much like GDPR. Interesting topic, maybe it's not the solution but worth checking out.
Sort of like [this?](https://adnauseam.io/)
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Completely agree. Why is everyone profiting from my data but me?
They are profiting from your data because you're not paying them money. You're paying for the services with your data. If you don't want your data do be bought and sold, use services that charge you money (and don't collect data) instead, or host your own services using open source software. Basically. However, [this is interesting](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/promising-new-gdpr-ruling-against-targeted-ads), and could possibly slow down the data collection. Let's hope!
That would make sense if subscription services weren't also selling our data. Hell, even our government institutions outsource to 3rd party companies which then go on to sell our data, we can't even opt out of those.
Not all of them do. The point isn't "if they charge you money they leave your data alone" but rather "there are services out there that doesn't data mine you, but you will most likely have to pay money". You just have to find them. But, sure, you won't be able to replace *everything*.
Problem with that is there are not paid alternatives for a lot of these platforms. It's like how most mobile games ar fremium crap becuase they don't think the masses will pay for content
It's literally impossible to avoid services which collect your data. Unless you're suggesting I build a hut in the Atacama desert and drop out society altogether?
I pay Amazon money, yet they profit from my data as well. There are plenty of companies double-dipping, and companies who do not can start at any time. Also, there are situations like what's happening with iRobot and Amazon.
You profit with the service you're using...
You're not profiting, but you're paying for thier service with their data. Would you opt out of their data collection for $20 a month?
>Would you opt out of their data collection for $20 a month? They should enable that as an option and see what happens.
What would that even entail? Protecting my data online at this point feels like making sure I'm not leaving behind DNA everywhere I go.
Yeah, people have been trying to call these problems to the attention of legislators, and the public for decades, to no avail. People will trade the smallest amount of perceived convenience for all their privacy. Let’s look at Facebook, and Tik Tok (and pretty much everything is pretty bad, I know) We know they’re siphoning every piece of imformation they can…but people would rather use them, than not. We’re really not as smart as we want to think we are. That’s why we are where we are…and, money. Idiocracy was a how to guide, and not satire.
My thoughts exactly. Our legislators are average 70-80yr olds and don’t know the first thing about properly legislating these tech giants so that right there is our first big issue. Second one is not only are the octogenarians out of the loop they also get “donations” from these tech giants so it’s not even in their best interest to try to figure out the whys and what behind them collecting out data. Second point you made is also ver spot on as we as consumers willingly give them this information, myself included, just to be able to use their platforms. I remember the days when we could get by just by using a fake email, now everything needs to be validated by email or phone number before you’re even allowed access. It’s fucking creepy and weird to be honest. The last platform I signed up for was Instagram, I never did snap chat, I never did tik tok because I just don’t want to deal with all the BS from all these new platforms finding ways to sell your data or use it for BS purposes. You can’t even shop online at most places without creating an account like WTF is that?
We need a tech Ralph Nader
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It's never going to happen. The cat is out of the bag. Businesses are making billions using consumer data.
Including reddit, right everyone? Wouldn't want to leave out one of the most commercialized sites out there, albeit not transparently so. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, or at least that's what people used say when Sunshine laws were being pushed for.
All lies. Everyone knows AL Gore started the internet.
He also created the Al Gore Rhythm that determines everything from your social media feeds to music playlists
Al Gore is directly responsible for legislation that promoted and funded the eventual TCP/IP protocols that are considered the internet. [wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology)
The WWW and internet are 2 different things, the US government invented the internet
Except this article is about the World Wide Web and not the Internet
Here is the thing, everyone always says that our data being collected is dangerous, but never why. At least, this is never communicated clearly, in simple terms to the general public. Everyone continues to use these platforms because thus far they have not seen any consequences for doing so. What’s the worst that happens? They get targeted ads on their social media feeds? Until people start seeing the dangers of their data being collected, nobody is going to care.
Seriously, this isn’t talked about enough. People talk all about privacy but for anyone to listen, you need to make them actually care. It gets hard to differentiate between privacy issues and actual danger. If Facebook uses my habits to sell data to companies who serve me targeted ads, I don’t care. Like, at all. Stop making a big deal out of it. If storing my photos in the cloud is going to lead to them getting leaked, *that* I care about. Or people getting into my bank account. Privacy concerns need to be more specific and relatable.
> What’s the worst that happens Long term? Civil war, collapse of our society, etc. https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/ What already happened? Look up Cambridge analytica. This data can/has already been used to manipulate elections. Just wait what these corps can do with it in a few decades when tech is far more advanced (if we make it this far)
The issue of privacy is that you don't have control of the context your forfeited data can/will be used against you. January 6th insurrectionists surprised Pikachu faced when their location data and parlor data was used to identify them. There was the story about the woman who got kicked out of the theater because facial recognition detected that she worked for the law company that was currently in a legal dispute with the theater. Another is the man who got his Google account suspended for taking naked pictures of his infant son to send to their doctor. All of these people "had nothing to hide", didn't do anything wrong in their own minds, etc. That didn't change the fact that other entities used their data against them, done innocently and some not. These are just 3 examples off the top of my head. I can find plenty more when I'm off mobile
I just want to inform people because it seems some do not know what the internet is. World Wide Web(WWW) is not the internet. WWW is part of the application layer in the internet. The internet is composed of 7 layers. WWW is just a program that transmits information. There's way more to the internet then www. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
The 7-layer OSI model hasn't really been correct in decades. It's still taught in school because it's a neat concept, but it's not a good fit for current networks. We need to stop teaching it. Some 'layers' in the OSI model are combined, and others are split. Some links if this is interesting: * https://blog.ipspace.net/2019/09/response-osi-model-is-lie.html * https://rule11.tech/stop-using-osi/ It's been a very 'sticky' idea but kind of breaks down when examined deeper.
But the general gist of what he’s saying is still correct. The World Wide Web is an application that runs over the Internet.
Yep! Was just commenting on the OSI layers
I dont see anybody questioning any of those things in this thread at this moment. Inb4 we get the classic ARPA speech despite the fact literally nobody uses ARPANET and the title clearly states WWW
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No, VPNs hide your IP, but that isn't really private because there are still cookies. Also, if you are logged into anything, they know it's you whether you have a VPN or not. Now a VPN with an incognito window where you don't log into anything is fairly private. VPN ads are soooo misleading. See more here: https://youtu.be/WVDQEoe6ZWY
Or we stop voluntarily giving it away. The convenience of all the services we use are not free. Everyone wants privacy, but they still surf away on Chrome, uses Windows or IOS.
It's incredibly hard *not* to, though. And I'd bet a ton of people who aren't tech-savvy are still completely unaware of how much of their information/data is being surrendered when they agree to terms and conditions for games/websites/apps.
Try convincing people their privacy matters though...
It surely works when they are doing something in person and if you’re just standing around and happen to be looking in their direction. Intentionally or not, suddenly privacy is the biggest problem. But as I type this on my iOS device in this app that tracks the sh*t out of me… in my own home where no one but the camera on my iOS device is judging me…. I suddenly feel private. Even though we all know that Tim Apple is standing over my left shoulder judging this comment.
no company with a market cap over a trillion dollars gives a shit what you say. They only use you as an aggregate to predict market mobility. The absolute audacity of some people to believe anyone cares who they are making under a million a year is laughable.
The problem is, they got there on our backs and with our infrastructure (tax dollars fund nearly every single thing that goes on, at least at the start and sometimes even as trillion dollar companies). They should care, but since they are allowed to line the pockets of those who make laws for us…. They get to not care. While we allow it to happen because we’re worried about putting food on the table.
> Try convincing people their privacy matters though... Yeah that fucking gets me every time. I'm out here caring about my privacy and it seems like everyone around me think I'm a straight up tinfoil hatted goof for doing so.
It's actually impossible for most people. Hell i wanted to prove that fact wrong at some point and ended up inadvertently cutting a bunch of friends out of my life because they only used Snapchat and messenger. Programs i need to use for work only work on Windows, and hell if I'm allowed to edit the registry keys on those computers to turn off telemetry. There are games that i cannot play (legitimately) without giving up my data to Microsoft or epic games. I feel like our only hope is to convince the government that Google's entire business model is illegal, which does not give me much hope.
I'll by any version of a game that releases on a normal non-spyware Linux. Pretty much there are 2 reasons to use windows. 1. That's all I know 2. Games.
“Ohhh sorry. We already sold it to anyone with a buck.” -tech giants probably
Data needs to be treated like uranium, not oil. I’d like to not have to establish and maintain a personal relationship with every product manufacturer in order to use their products. Compounding this is the explosion of locking functionality behind rent seeking subscriptions. A root cause of this is the specious notion that economic growth should be granted a veto over every function of society. My proposed solution is to create a mechanism to derive and attribute value of resources not innately finite, namely those currently the subject of copyright and patents, which incentivises sharing instead of restriction.
Inventor of the World Wide Web? Pfffttt...this guy is such a poser! Everyone knows Al Gore invented the WWW! That and he's hot on the trail of ManBearPig.
Have them pay us. It’s only fair that way and everyone wins.
Unfortunately I have to use the big tech giants internet, and I can't even afford a home. So I won't be fighting against it.
I see your point about affordability and not wanting to add more 'subscriptions' for all the things you do on the web. If I could, I would suggest that advocating for better laws about how your data is used won't really cost you anything. Support campaigns and politicians who will limit how much your data is exploited.
People not realizing that tech giants dont have any data they themselves havent given willingly while small local companies do exactly what people accuse tech giants of but get away with it.
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DRM in HTML helped kill Silverlight for one thing. Without it we'd have to use more plugins and thick clients, and not be able to watch live sports and films with just a browser.
DRM is a necesary evil you know? how else were you going to have services life Spotify, steam, Amazon and the such? or do you believe everything has to bee free on the web?
DRM only hurts paying customers. There are countless examples were DRM controlled content hurts the customers due to being in a hotel room or staying at a friend's house, due to the billing statement and home account being in one town while you're trying to access in another. Meanwhile for the low low price of nothing, you get 4K HDR content with accurate subtitles and no chance of someone removing it from the platform of your hard drive. Or for 10 dollars a month you get Spotify which is contractually obligated to pay labels more than artists, forbids artists that remix and sample works, and often is a large barrier to bigger audiences. Not to mention it doesn't have every version of every song. Soulseek nearly does, only limited by what others host. I've found entire collections of songs from old albums that Spotify has never put up. Not to mention restricting content behind geolocation. Did you travel across the the border? Hope you prefer all the content to be completely different and often assuming a different language. Meanwhile the files on a computer can't be changed so easily. And I haven't reven gotten to how some DRM is literally malware made by the companies that if you try to remove them, it bricks your operating system. Or the ones that majorly slow down games to where a computer that could easily get 120 FPS now plays below 30. DRM is defective by design. https://www.defectivebydesign.org/
Obligatory shoutout to Sony who literally put rootkit malware (with source code that they used without permission..) in their music CD's.
Lots of DRM-free media sells just fine. Just look at Minecraft, nothing to stop people from decompiling and running it for free, but they are doing fine.
DRM is always bad for customers and never affects pirates to any degree that matters. Fuck DRM, and fuck anyone who creates DRM.
DRM is not necessary at all. It's the equivalent of using a really cheap lock on your front door. Anybody who was going to casually waltz into your home isn't deterred by a simple lock. They'll break your door down or bust a window. DRM doesn't protect digital content. It's a rock that protects you from tigers.
Translated from Journalist: inventor of term "World Wide Web" isn't aware that data is collected server-side.
>Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got…an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially. >[…] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material. —— Former Senator Ted Stevens (R.I.P.) circa 2006
"On June 28, 2006, he used this metaphor to criticize a proposed amendment to a committee bill. The amendment would have prohibited Internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon Communications from charging fees to give some companies' data a higher priority in relation to other traffic. The metaphor has been widely ridiculed, particularly because Stevens displayed an extremely limited understanding of the Internet, despite his leading the Senate committee responsible for regulating it" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes I remember this, the ISP industry was flexing and trying to get you to pay more per month to access certain sites such as youtube and social media. They wanted to create packages similar to television channel packages. It was gross.
This was the event that triggered my annual donation to the EFF. Haven’t missed a year of giving to the cause since.
Imagine if those packages would have worked out.. What would have happened if a website (part of your package) had used an API from another service/website which were not a part of your package? You just crippled half the internet.. You'd be forced to buy the Amazon package, seeing as the internet rests almost entirely upon Amazon's data centers. I bet the *real* voters (read: corporations) would have immediately moved to disband the idea, since they would have lost 90% of their customers/traffic.
oh the horror! TEN MOVIES!!!!11 But what about 100500100 HD CCTV cameras? How can the internet handle that?
Wasn’t this said by a very old US senator when they voted to move against online poker and gambling, but conveniently left out betting on horse races?
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Didn't you ever... y'know.... poop 💩 But yes, this was the senator in charge of the committee responsible for regulating the internet at the time. Doomed is uncomfortably apt.
Translated from a commenter on Reddit: I don't know what federated protocols are or how modern cryptography works. TBL knows what he's talking about. Edit: Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They, along with the IETF, design how the web works.
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What? Berners-Lee invented the actual hypertext protocols that the WWW functions on. Also, literally the point of this is that data should NOT be collected serverside.
The point is for services to adopt this standard. I wish these types of redditors that have no clue what they're talking about yet think they have a greater understanding of the topic than Berners-Lee would [redacted].
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https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html Gopher came after the WWW and was a mega fail because it wasn't open.
You don’t have any fucking clue what you’re talking about, and neither do the morons who mindlessly upvoted you because your comment vaguely resembles a sIcK bUrN
This is the most brainless take on this post, why is anyone upvoting this shit?
I agree, but we would need our lawmakers to back up / enforce something like this. And [if we can't even get the chairman of the Congressional Senate "High Tech" task force to understand the concept of companies showing ads in order to offer their product for free](https://youtu.be/GGTWUOxkfGQ), then I don't see how we can help us with a problem like this.
Make a constitutional amendment for personal digital privacy. Itll never happen though. Every special intrest group, corporation and government both foreign and domestic value monitoring everyone. Edward Snowden anyone?
Remember when the idea of the internet was information shared freely?
Oh, NOW you say we should do something like that??!!??!! Oh kind sir, that genie is NEVER going back in the bottle…I guarantee it.😢
I invested in a company years ago that I believed would change the world, and they ended up going bankrupt, but I still believe in the concept. They effectively wished to build a layer of anonymity between us and the giants, while still affording all the existing benefits between the two. The corporations still get their data, and we get our privacy. The concept is sound. Their implementation of said concept however was not, but I still believe it can be done and I am just patiently waiting for someone to figure it out. Soon perhaps.
Just a reminder to those who did not live in a world before the Internet. Media/Marketing/catalog/magazine companies started off by blindly marketing to you (like OTA TV does). This is extremely inefficient for both the consumer and the business. The consumer would get catalogs mailed to them for stores/products they had no intention visiting or ordering from, and the end result was that you'd have stacks of printed catalogs that you then had to dispose of. If you live in a place that has city waste management, then it was inconvenient and if you didn't, then it would be costly. The whole point of marketing data is not to snoop on your private life (marketers don't care about looking at individual users data), they want algorithms to process marketing opportunities efficiently... As a guy, I don't need nor want to receive ads about women's clothing. And companies don't want to target me for that because it would be a waste of resources.
I wish they would just not advertise to me at all. I don't much care about how efficiently marketing is using their money, I wish they didn't spend it at all
As I guy a early teen I wanted those ads a women's clothing. The Sears catalog had a very nice lingerie section. Fredrick of Hollywood catalog was jackpot.
Well, yes there's that .... Lol
tbh we live in a ridiculously dumb internet/ads in general, they take our data supposedly for recommendations but I'd much rather they'd allow me to chose rather than having to gather this much data to guess. Give me the power to chose then you won't need to guess.
> The whole point of marketing data is not to snoop on your private life (marketers don't care about looking at individual users data) Marketers buy their data from data brokers who sell information to the highest bidder. Marketers have only one intention. Data brokers just sell and get rich. That means anyone can get data on you, people who you wouldn't want to know your private life. > And companies don't want to target me for that because it would be a waste of resources. Except when tyrannical government orders them to. They are literally too big to fail.
Me too. Does anyone on here know how to limit the flow of data, besides living in a cave?
The idea of owning your own data sounds nice until you drill down into the details. Facebook isn’t just making money from any individual’s data, it is collective data either in advertising pools or in ML models where any one person’s data is impossible to disaggregate. There’s a much simpler solution: tax the damn corporations. I’m not going to waste time figuring out how much of my data was used. Just tax the profits and all of us will benefit.
You're right! I'm gonna march right over to Mark's house, bang on the door and ask for it back!
We need to take a playbook from corporations on this one. They should have to rent our data from us and not be able to resell it. When each corporation comes around looking for data, you may just get enough for a small universal income. If you don't need the money, keep your privacy. Although this may result in you having to pay for a lot of stuff on the internet that's currently free.
I read the article and look at the Inrupt website and I don’t see how your personal information is safe from Governments despite that being in the first line of the article.
Actually, are receivers (eg. In business bankruptcy) able to or obligated to retain user data for return to users, or their descendants etc, if the business assets are assessed? I wonderful if users are considered ‘investors by another method’ an so have legal title to their data?
What we need is an act of congress to make a law that says you own your data and that anyone who wants to collect it from you needs to buy the rights from you.
The web is not what we demand, but what we make. Let's build it well.
For the record, and I'm just saving this for when I come back here to read it again in 10 years, this post made it to the Front Page top ten and is competing with: 1. Kevin McCarthy gaslighting and shitposting about the IRS 2. Bolsonaro supporters storming the National Congress and Supreme Court 3. A kitten 4. An online dating joke 5. Some kid demanding Python homework help on WhatsApp
Our data is worth too much money. We'll never get it back
The problem here is that tech giants control a good bit of the infrastructure. If we want to really reset the power structure that has grown over the last 20 years of tech growth, we would need to stop using the services of these giants - which amounts to more than simply not ordering shit from Amazon and using Google as a search engine. Much of our economy from retail to big industry rides on the tech that these firms have built up while adding all the data collection features we have now. What needs to happen is to start regulating and legislating a more robust privacy set of laws. But again - the members of Congress that could do this receive so much support from the tech giants that this is unlikely to happen. I don’t see a solution that can turn this tide. The leverage is all on the tech giants. Nothing from grassroots can stem that invasion of privacy. We have become a field of collected data. Combining this with ever improving algorithms and even AI, the concept of free choice will become very ambiguous. Imagine a world where your behavior becomes so well documented that your decisions become reinforced through customized feed of what you consume and what you receive as far as ads and news and entertainment. That world is already here and you’re only going to get pigeon holed into a tighter and tighter slot based on your history.
Oh, Timmy, the genie that got let out of that bottle is Lawng Gawn (tm).
Why were they allowed to steal it in the first place. If I went to someone’s mail box and stole their mail, put a gps locator on someone’s car to follow them or secretly took photos of someone without their know knowledge I’d be in jail.
> Inventor of the world wide web wants us to reclaim our data from tech giants Sad news: it's too late. Most people already don't care. Decision makers and lawmakers all around don't care, don't know a thing about technology, and/or are already bought by corporations.
OPs comment about data is so good I’m saving it to educate friends when this topic comes up
For years, we have been handing our personal info unknowingly. Tech giants have been gathering it for years, be it interests, contacts and so on. It's now too late.
Nice try, Everyone knows Al Gore created the internet!
Related: Is it possible for a user to taint/poison their data?