[hilbertseries]

I don't think this is correct. Meta and Google don't sell direct access to your data. They sell advertising targeting you, based on your personal data.

I'm pretty sure it's illegal to sell users email address to a data broker under GDPR.

[bennyelv]

In the context of a business email address GDPR is far less restrictive. See GDPR Recital 47 (7): https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-47/

Direct marketing is not explicitly banned. If you have a reason to believe that the data subject in question (a B2B person operating in the context of their work) is interested in buying your stuff then you could claim "legitimate interest" and process their contact details/market to them.

That's what people are relying on at the moment. Whether all the data protection authorities in all the member states will agree with the market's assessment of this remains to be seen...

[xnx]

Right. Meta and Google are much less shady about this.

[ethbr1]

Not really... they're just vertically integrated and have their own ad networks.

Consequently, they're not protecting data because they care about privacy -- they're protecting data because the wider they share the raw data, the less value it (their product) is.

It's economic self-interest, not ethics.

If they didn't have ad networks, they'd sell anything and everything in a heartbeat.

[twicetwice]

Be that as it may, their object-level behavior is still far less shady. And in fact this is an argument that it is good that they exist, because in the counterfactual world where they don't, their niche would be filled by these non-vertically-integrated data brokers and advertisers who ARE financially incentivized to leak and sell and share far more information.

I used to be all gung-ho about being anti-FAANG, those evil privacy violators, but having now talked to friends who have worked at places like FB and Google, their internal data security practices are far more stringent than I had imagined (my friends complain about how difficult these rules make their jobs!). And yeah, sure, they are scooping up as much information about you as they can, and I'm not a big fan of that fact. But I have been convinced that they are actually somewhat decent stewards of that information, and the alternative is far worse.

All that being said, this is a pretty loosely-held belief, and all the surveillance and so on is quite icky to me. I'm still trying to slowly de-google my life and all that, just with a bit less paranoia and urgency.

[ethbr1]

> their niche would be filled by these non-vertically-integrated data brokers and advertisers who ARE financially incentivized to leak and sell and share far more information

I look at it a slightly different way.

Absent the vertical integration, they wouldn't dominate the market.

Absent dominating the market, they wouldn't wield as many resources.

Absent as many resources, they wouldn't have been able to build a panopticon in the first place.

And even if there were excesses in an alternate world... there would be a market of competitors, which would encourage different behavior.

And possibly even (gasp!) regulation because of the worst excesses.

Instead, FAANG wield vast resources, culled from entrenched monopoly positions, and act just responsible enough (plus lobbying) to avoid regulation.

[lancesells]

Outside of using a Meta product or a Google product it's all completely shady. I shouldn't be tracked going to the DMV website or purchasing something online or using a dating app or going into a store or...