[_8j50]

No. This needs to be criminalized. Not liking a good or service is one thing. Having things done to you or your information without consent for the purpose of spying on you is stalking with extra steps. Many of these companies still deprive you of your privacy even without using their services by developing shadow profiles on you.

[ipaddr]

This is an image that loads from a different host.

Neither of these companies will create a shell profile if you never visit them.

If they are criminal why would you use them?

[Retric]

> If they are criminal why would you use them?

People don’t give money to scammers because they know their scammers.

It’s the same with privacy issues, people who don’t know what’s happening can’t make informed choices.

[notatoad]

>people who don’t know what’s happening can’t make informed choices.

it's really distasteful how privacy advocates always assume that everybody who doesn't feel the same way they do is uninformed. the average person has a basic understanding that companies keep track of them online. everybody who's spent more than five minutes online without an adblocker understands retargeting.

it's not that people don't understand, it's that they don't care. telling people they're not informed enough to make their own decisions isn't going to convince them to start caring about the issue you care about.

[somehnguy]

> everybody who's spent more than five minutes online without an adblocker understands retargeting. I think you’re being absurdly generous here. I think there are way more people online who have no idea what this sentence even means than people who understand it. Like 99:1 ‘way more’. I can’t think of a single person I know who doesn’t work in the computer field who would understand that without being explicitly told. It simply isn’t something your average person ever even thinks about.

Even people like my parents - who have been using computers in some capacity since the late 90s but don’t work in anything related to computing - had no idea that Verizon was selling their browsing data despite being account holders who ‘agreed’ to the T&C and received e-mails warning them that it was going to start doing so.

[skummetmaelk]

Yes, everyone knows. That's why there are people in this thread and others like it, on a website catering to highly technical people, who are surprised at how deep the tracking goes and what it is used for.

Surely then, the average person is much more informed!

[notatoad]

i encourage you to talk to an "average person" about this some time. check with your parents to see how much they assume they're being tracked online.

most people i've discussed the topic with misunderstand how much they're being tracked, but assume that they are being tracked more than they actually are, not less. and they're totally okay with that.

[mkr-hn]

A common one is noticing that targeting works so well they see ads for things they've talked about and assume their phone is listening in on them. Though I wouldn't say they're okay with it.

[d110af5ccf]

I was with you until the last bit.

> and they're totally okay with that

No. In my experience they are very much not ok with it at all but have absolutely no idea what to do about it. I know what I'm doing with computers and I have difficulty figuring out all the different ways info can leak and how to plug those holes. In many cases you can't plug those holes without opting out of various services entirely. We badly need regulation preventing this stuff because in practice you can't vote with your feet or your wallet.

[Nextgrid]

The fact that people suspect Facebook of outright listening to them (even when that's not the case) suggest people aren't fully aware of what data is collected, how it is used and how it can be misused.

"Facebook listening to people" wouldn't be noteworthy if people weren't creeped out by it.

[_8j50]

Informed or not, they were not allowed to give consent. No problem with people consenting to be tracked.

[hw]

Please, no more annoying popups asking me if i want to accept cookies or be tracked. I am in the ‘do not care’ camp and i just want to be able to visit sites without having to click accept every time.

These consent banners are a false sense of privacy. People who “dont know” are most likely just going to give consent anyway. It’s the same thing as TOS consent.

[d110af5ccf]

It would be nice if we could get standardized browser headers similar to DNT that sites could use to automatically fill those things out for us. A standardized set of bit flags like { third party, first party, none } versus { all, only necessary } versus { trackers, cookies, ... } that could go in a "data processing consent header" or some such.

Then you would only see those popups if either your browser or the website didn't support or wasn't sending those headers for whatever reason.

[Nursie]

> These consent banners are a false sense of privacy.

They are also a set of dark patterns. They annoy you so you just click OK, they make it sound like if you want to opt out you're the unreasonable one, and they hide the options as best they can. Sometimes they hide them entirely.

If they weren't intent on tracking and reselling that data, they wouldn't need to ask. They don't need to have these dialogues, that is their choice.

[Sparyjerry]

People give consent all the time when it is still bad for them. It is a moral question in the end, the same way, we can say people consent to selling their body for sex, but have made it illegal, or say people consent to gambling knowing the odds put them at a disadvantage every single bet, or how people consent to credit card debt at insane rates not knowing just how much they are being taken advantage of. Consent matters, but in the end it's what we all believe should be tolerated from an ethical standpoint. Personally I see many issues with data collection and data sharing, even if not malicious, but that give the opportunity to be abused by others with a grudge or agenda I might not support. Not just banking information, but location data, purchasing history, and more. I'm not saying every has enemies out there but if anyone wanted to cause harm with that information they could.

[autoexec]

> it's really distasteful how privacy advocates always assume that everybody who doesn't feel the same way they do is uninformed

The problem with pervasive user tracking and surveillance capitalism is that is impossible to be informed. No user has any idea what happens to their data once it gets collected by a 3rd party, and there is zero way for them to know who has it now, how accurate that data is, or how it will be leveraged against them.

Increasingly the data being taken from us in secret is used in far reaching ways. It's not just about what ad gets pushed at us, but it's how much we pay for things, how long you wait on hold, what a company will tell you their policies are, what jobs you are offered, etc.

While you might find it distasteful, I can tell you that you yourself don't understand what data has been collected about you, who has it now, or what impacts it will have on your life and your future. You can't make an informed choice about what services to use because you aren't even allowed to know what the costs are, or will be. Jjust like how nobody who uses ubereats had any idea that data was being secretly collected by tiktoc or what it will be used for.

[amelius]

This is why user-tracking should be opt-in. And not opt-in by clicking a button, but opt-in by filling out a physical form and sending it by mail.

[lmm]

> Neither of these companies will create a shell profile if you never visit them.

Citation? I bet TikTok will create shadow profiles for anyone who browses the web (and sure, somewhere in the 89 zillion line small print for whatever tools they offer to small time webmasters will be a carefully phrased line about how it might occasionally send small amounts of visitor information to them) just like Google does.

[harry8]

>This is an image that loads from a different host.

False. It's a pixel. It's not visible to the user from whom its existence and purpose is being deliberately concealed.

[charcircuit]

The purpose isn't to spy on you. It's to track the performance of an ad shown to you on tiktok.

[Nextgrid]

Which collects data on you and creates a profile. Whether it's currently used to increment an impression counter doesn't mean it can't be used for something more nefarious down the line.

[charcircuit]

Collecting data about what you did is not necessarily spying. If a game keeps tracks of my wins. That's not spying even though it's collecting data on what I did.

[Nextgrid]

My point is that it's collecting way more data than the single bit it needs in order to tell "yes this ad has been seen, increment the counter".

[charcircuit]

It's not just about telling if an ad has been seen, but what a user does on your site after clicking on the ad. Do they immediately bounce? Do they buy something?

You want to be able to see that you are actually getting a positive return from the money you are spending on ads.

[jjj123]

It’s still spying even if there’s a rational reason for it.

[JumpCrisscross]

> This needs to be criminalized

Literally criminalised? As in you’ll throw people in jail for putting up a pixel? Made illegal, sure.

[_8j50]

Yes. Make the law clear and lock up CEOs just as you would common stalkers.

[mst]

Given the, uh, highly variable, quality of government legislation wrt the internet I am seriously skeptical they'd do more good than harm if they tried.

Then again we as an industry and/or community don't seem to be doing too well either.

Not a trivial problem or policy space, sadly.

[raverbashing]

Wouldn't be a bad idea to be honest

If they're acting so antagonistically against GDPR maybe , for some of the most egregious cases, throwing some people in jail will do the trick

I mean, whoever does the whole song and dance for rejecting cookies that shows a loading gif and takes a while does deserve it

And if you think I'm exaggerating, guess who has the best info now on the Ukraine war? Tiktok.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If they're acting so antagonistically against GDPR maybe throwing some people in jail will do the trick

This is how you get a legal code like America's, where a cop and prosecutor can put almost anyone in jail with the flimsiest excuse.

I understand the impulse. But the solution to bad enforcement isn't ratcheting up penalties. It's increasing enforcement.

[lmm]

> This is how you get a legal code like America's, where a cop and prosecutor can put almost anyone in jail with the flimsiest excuse.

Then how come America, with its strict procedural safeguards, has that legal environment where people now feel unsafe even talking to cops, whereas many European countries with a more common-sense, less rules-lawyery approach (like the big fines handed out to a lot of privacy-violating tech companies lately) have a much friendlier culture with fewer obvious abuses?

[raverbashing]

You are correct.

Usually what I find is that the American companies/people usually try to follow the "bare" letter of the law, where Europeans need to follow the spirit, as this is how it is "usually" enforced.

And while the former might let you get away with "one weird trick" the latter usually leaves more margin to interpretation which can be both a blessing and a curse.

[Nextgrid]

Considering this is already illegal, at least under the GDPR and plenty of companies still do so, maybe jail isn't that bad of an idea after all?

[jjgreen]

No, not jail. Make it a capital offence.