[danShumway]

> and the only known recourse currently is to scrap privacy.

I agree that low response rates are a problem, but people should still have the choice whether or not to give this information. To me, when I see that voluntary participation in these studies is so low, that's not a problem with privacy, that's a problem with the institutions doing the collection.

A good example of that is political surveys, which are really hard because people don't answer their phones. But why don't people answer their phones? Because they're swamped with scams, political ads, and other spam. Half of the time that someone says they're conducting a political survey on a phone call, what they're really doing is campaigning for a candidate.

The problem isn't that people are allowed to decline phone calls, the problem is that most of the phone calls people get are unwanted crap -- so it really doesn't make sense for them to answer the phone, they're making the correct choice by letting unrecognized numbers go to voicemail.

As a further analogy, if 50% of mail in the US postal service was infested with live spiders, you might see delivery rates for paper bills and official notices plummet. That would be a problem. But the solution wouldn't be to force people to open their mail anyway, it would be to stop putting spiders in people's Amazon boxes. And as it is with spiders, so too it is with advertisers.

You want to improve voluntary participation rates? Focus on removing bad actors and making people feel safe about their data. Governments, telemarketers, political groups, advertisers, and just companies in general all have serious issues with self-policing how they use and collect data. That's not anyone else's fault or problem to solve.

[Nextgrid]

> A good example of that is political surveys, which are really hard because people don't answer their phones. But why don't people answer their phones? Because they're swamped with scams, political ads, and other spam.

But why should people answer political surveys? It's a waste of time similar to the other nuisance calls you mentioned.

Even if we assume all the other nuisance calls are eliminated, there's still no reason anyone should answer a political survey. It's a waste of their time and there is no way to ensure how this data will be used.

[danShumway]

It would make elections a bit less stressful. There are a lot of vested interests in both political campaigns and in the public at large that want accurate polling before elections. That's extremely difficult to do right now.

I know some people debate whether having that information is healthy, which I won't comment on, but I do understand why someone might want it.

Now, at an individual level, what do I personally get out of answering any specific survey -- that's a much tougher question for me to answer.