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Is more government the solution to every problem? Just let people make their choice of whether the product Facebook offers is worth the privacy tradeoff.



Regular folks have no idea how any idea how any of these systems work. It's hard for most people to understand the privacy tradeoffs.

Something like "nutrition facts" for data privacy seems like a reasonable policy.


I think that this is actually a part of the GDPR so in a months time we may have it.


My problem with this argument is that I cannot surf the web without being tracked even if I have chosen not to use their platform. Even if I stopped using the web completely, their platform would still gather info about me from anyone else that has my contact info and has decided to share info with the platform.


My mother/family/friends are not even aware there is a trade off. They only privacy 'problem' they know about is accidentally posting something personal in the wrong spot. There's no understanding of the extensive data collection, connection, and trade that's happening behind the scenes.


If that worked, there would be no outrage about this because everyone who would be unhappy would have already not used it, so there would be no 'reveal' and no scandal happening.

Since people didn't know, and are shocked and annoyed, it follows that people weren't able (for whatever reason) to make the decision in advance.

Is more government not the solution to every problem? It's like a legal wikipedia of all the behaviours people have found to abuse each other in society, all gathered in one place and applied to everyone. Sounds good.


What if you can't judge the privacy tradeoff because it's a complete black box?


Nothing black box about it. If you send data to a company, they have that data.


Except...there is data that is not explicitly sent. My mum doesn't know what an IP address is and therefore wouldn't know it's used for location tracking.


I guess. If I send a letter requesting information to a company with my return address on the envelope and the company sends back a package, is it so shocking that they have recorded your address at the end of the transaction?




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