> “This is the latest chapter in a disturbing trend where we see government agencies increasingly transforming search warrants into digital dragnets. It’s unconstitutional, it’s terrifying and it’s happening every day,” said Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
If companies would respect the spirit behind GDPR and not store data that is not needed to fulfill a user's requests and protect the data that they must have in a way that makes dragnet searches impossible, this would not be a problem.
Instead, we have sites not being ashamed in informing you about literally thousands of external ad broker, tracking, notifications and whatnotelse integrations.
> If companies would respect the spirit behind GDPR and not store data that is not needed to fulfill a user's requests and protect the data that they must have in a way that makes dragnet searches impossible, this would not be a problem.
Saving user watch history is useful for users. Sure, make it optional, but I find it really useful that youtube shows me if I've already watched a video, and that I can find recently seen videos in my watch history.
I'd prefer to have that sort of thing stored locally, perhaps synced between all of my browsers/computers (directly, without storing the history unencrypted on servers).
There should really be levels of history. I don't want youtube keeping every video I've ever watched on file, so I have history off. However, now, if I leave a video and come back to it the next day, my place in the video is lost. Lemme specify the length of time to keep history pls.
And how do we classify special government and law enforcement access projects, grants, and the like?
I won't say it is selling, but it is for economic gains.
And when they "anonymize" data, basically selling derivative data products of various kinds, what do we call it when that is enough for another entity to identify many, despite the stated intent being otherwise?
I did not intend to talk anyone down.
I did intend to just state the truth because sometimes we need someone to do that.
If said truths feel/smell/appear somehow bad, I am not sure what to say. Bet lots of us have that problem.
I always understood "selling data" to be shorthand for the whole metrics-for-ads transaction, seems obviously that "selling" the data itself would be a one-time sale but being able to offer "updated insights" every time someone runs a new ad campaign is repeat business.
I think it's important to distinguish adtech companies from data brokers like LexisNexis who actually sell your data to 3rd parties. Lots of people read inaccurate statements like "Meta sells your data" and interpret that literally.
the ol' "hashed minutae" and "in aggregate" chestnut. Meta at one point allowed you to target ads to a specific person (nevermind the cambridge analytica stuff.) Google is in the business of selling time, eyeballs, and mindshare to advertisers.
Google and meta (et al) receive money in exchange for the info of their user base. That they're playing 3 card monte (shell game?) with the data to "hide PII" - which has been mathematically proven to be impossible (currently, perhaps forever) seems a hair not worth splitting, considering their market caps.
Put simply, if there wasn't a financial reason to do the data collection google would simply not do it. You don't get rich shareholders by writing a lot of checks to seagate.
Any client software can do this for the users who want it. There is no need for the service provider to track user watch history on the server by default.
I’m sure it might be useful if your primary business is something like, oh let’s say, delivering advertisements based on users preferences and behaviour.
At the end of the day the recommendation algo is why tiktok grew so fast and is so sticky, users want the companies to remember stuff, just not to use that memory against them (ya right)
> If companies would respect the spirit behind GDPR and not store data that is not needed to fulfill a user's requests and protect the data that they must have in a way that makes dragnet searches impossible, this would not be a problem.
This is ridiculous. Literally the authorities are the one demanding information, so that they can abuse that power.
And you're blaming the people with information?
Stop fighting the wrong war: hold the people with power accountable. That's the government here. They can use force and put you in jail. That's power.
Anyone collecting data needs to consider how the data can be misused. Whether that be by a (repressive) government, a hacker, or a future purchaser of the data
If companies would respect the spirit behind GDPR and not store data that is not needed to fulfill a user's requests and protect the data that they must have in a way that makes dragnet searches impossible, this would not be a problem.
Instead, we have sites not being ashamed in informing you about literally thousands of external ad broker, tracking, notifications and whatnotelse integrations.
To u/decremental: you seem to be shadowbanned, here's an Archive link: https://archive.ph/kAXQ1