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by thaeli 1076 days ago
As a user, I don't care about your ML model. I care about not sending you personal info. Coarser info isn't good enough - you can convince me you actually deserve my real info, or you can get no info (preferable), or you can get fake info (alternative if you degrade or break my user experience because I wouldn't give you that info).

I understand there are some legit use cases for validated info. Unfortunately, targeted advertising and other types of profiling are also common use cases for the same info. It's a lot like MAC randomization on public wifi - it sucks, it breaks legit use cases, but it was needed because too many companies were using it to track people.

1 comments

You should care. My point is give me coarser info or no info, but not fake information—and I say this as a researcher working on synthetic data generation methods to improve privacy. Fake information is a pain for developers _and_ users. Unreliable fake data has real, significant (and potentially disastrous) consequences that are often difficult to anticipate.