[philipallstar]

> It seems like we can’t just necessarily leave it up to companies – or their ragtag teams of crackpot lawyers rewriting privacy policies every few months – to keep our private data private.

It's not a medical requirement from a doctor, so just keep a diary if you want to. Not everything needs to be an app. All the money spent on regulations and regulators to cover increasingly niche opt-in services that are entirely unnecessary is a waste.

[ksenzee]

I've never used Flo specifically, so I don't know what kind of data analysis it has available, but period data is the #1 most useful health data to have an app crunch for you, and "your period starts tomorrow" is a pretty darn useful notification to get.

[JohnFen]

Most of the women I know well enough to know this about them track and predict the onset of their next period without needing an application. It isn't exactly rocket science.

[newtwentysix]

Well, until some years ago we remembered dozens of phone numbers, birthdays, routes, physical addresses, due dates, etc.

The trick is to "give a tool for 1-2 generations of customers" , and then they'll be fully dependent on the tool.

[dylan604]

1-2 generations? give an advanced anything to anyone with no true knowledge of how to do it without the tool and you'll have people fully dependent in hours.

kids today cannot navigate without turn-by-turn. nobody looks at the map to get names of major streets, they just blindly follow the directions. I learned how to navigate as a kid just by being bored and staring out the window and being able to recognize things. Now, kids don't even look out the window as they keep their heads down and eyes glued to a screen.

[newtwentysix]

Yes, I agree with your point.

[ksenzee]

This is a strawman argument. Nobody is arguing that period apps are a necessity. Women have been tracking our periods without computers since prehistoric times. Women were doing rocket science calculations before computers, for that matter. Of course we can do without period apps. But they're more useful than any other health tracking device or app that I can think of.

[embedding-shape]

We're using Flo specifically, mostly for sharing stuff like "her period starts tomorrow" to the both of us, she doesn't really need a notification for that :)

[ksenzee]

I'm not sure I understand your argument. It's important enough that she has it set up to share that data to both of you, but it's so unimportant she doesn't need a notification for it?

[embedding-shape]

Yes, it is useful for me as a partner to know, ideally without having to ask her, and not important for her to be notified, since without the notification she'll notice it anyways sooner or later...

[filleduchaos]

I'm sorry but this is bordering on parody to me. The way she would notice it "sooner or later" is by her bleeding on her clothes and possibly even furniture. In what world is it important for you to just know about it and somehow not important for her to avoid that?

[embedding-shape]

> The way she would notice it "sooner or later" is by her bleeding on her clothes and possibly even furniture.

No, many can feel it beforehand, and you notice it when you go to the bathroom before as well, as certain things change their properties slightly, it's not a "nothing" phase and then "floods out of your body".

It's borderline parody how little education there is for males when it comes to things like this.

[justonceokay]

Even if it was a requirement, doctors do not generally have legal authority to compel action. Hell, the average doctor would probably agree that the average patient hardly ever does what they’re told…

[johnny22]

privacy legislation would just solve the problem by itself though.

[Zak]

Privacy legislation by itself does not solve the problem; what Flo did was already illegal. Effective enforcement is also necessary.

[kortex]

They need to make an example out of these companies. If your whole business model is built around handling sensitive data, and you are caught shipping off that data to brokers, you should be liquidated or at least fined to within an inch of bankruptcy, as basically all of your profits are a sham.

[inetknght]

Fined into bankruptcy and all managers up to and including the CEO criminally charged.

[bombcar]

There needs to be penalties that piece the "limited liability" because otherwise it's just "pay to get away with it" as we currently have.

I've been for a "corporate death penalty" (if companies are people, they can be executed) which would result in the shareholders losing everything along with executives being perp-walked.

[ndriscoll]

Not just executives. They don't will these things into existence. Someone had to build functionality to send user data to Facebook.

[ceejayoz]

They've been thumbing their noses at EU privacy legislation and fines for quite some time already.

[arijun]

What does thumbing their noses mean? They have been paying while continuing their behavior, or not paying at all?

The first seems like it could be resolved with an escalating fine schedule, and the second could be mitigated by requiring Apple/Google to remove it from the app store (one of the rare cases walled gardens are on consumers' side).

[ceejayoz]

> What does thumbing their noses mean? They have been paying while continuing their behavior, or not paying at all?

Malicious compliance. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple

"While Apple implemented App Store policies to allow developers to link to alternative payment options, the policies still required the developer to provide a 27% revenue share back to Apple, and heavily restricted how they could be shown in apps. Epic filed complaints that these changes violated the ruling, and in April 2025 Rogers found for Epic that Apple had willfully violated her injunction, placing further restrictions on Apple including banning them from collecting revenue shares from non-Apple payment methods or imposing any restrictions on links to such alternative payment options. Though Apple is appealing this latest ruling, they approved the return of Fortnite with its third-party payment system to the App Store in May 2025."

Or https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/

"UPDATE: Previously, Apple announced plans to remove the Home Screen web apps capability in the EU as part of our efforts to comply with the DMA."

(This one resulted in enough fuss they backed down.)

[arijun]

Ah you mean generally, not in this specific case.

[ceejayoz]

> privacy legislation would just solve the problem by itself though

Just like banning drugs and murder did!

[krystalgamer]

"would just solve", lol.

[sdoering]

Why is it a waste? If you want to provide an app, one should follow the law and the regulations. It isn't the wild west (and even that had regulations).

Also: Why blame the victims, not the perp?

[philipallstar]

> Why blame the victims

This is a bit of a revealing phrasing, but I'll bite anyway. If someone shot themselves in the toe because they were being careless, am I blaming the victim by saying that they shouldn't have been careless? Not everything is cops and robbers.

[kakacik]

Nobody is blaming victims, please stop these wild fabulations. OP meant that you can't trust app owners especially long term, as you write its worse than wild west, literally nobody.gives.a.fuck. till they are dragged to the court, then they fight, dissolve company, still sell the data, start a new one and rinse and repeat. People are simply way more greedy than moral on average if there is any lesson in current times.

Look at say zuckenberg - a typical sociopath lying again and again through his nose with big grin just to get what he wants (ie scandals how FB employees go to DB to spy on their exes or enemies is popping up for 10 years at least and there is no stop, every time there is another assurance how it can't be done now blablabla... and thats just specific meta employees).

Nobody likes that, but just sitting and waiting for almighty regulators while blindly trusting apps in good faith to do their jobs is... not working much, is it. Be smart, adapt to real environment out there, not some wishful thinking. In parallel push for change as much as you can, vote with wallet and your time. Once sought-for paradise comes then feel free to use anything anyhow. At least that seems like smarter approach to me.

[ndriscoll]

> still sell the data

So add liability for the buyers of the data or any services derived from the data (e.g. targeted ads). Make it so large advertisers demand audits showing privacy laws are being followed. Also have personal criminal liability for people building and maintaining systems that collect, store, or process data for illegal purposes. Executives, PMs, engineers, the whole lot. Put them in prison if they continue.

[SlinkyOnStairs]

> All the money spent on regulations and regulators to cover increasingly niche opt-in services that are entirely unnecessary is a waste.

That isn't what's happening. The regulations don't get little niche cases added to them, they're writen to be generally applicable to all niches.

> It's not a medical requirement from a doctor, so just keep a diary if you want to.

"Just don't use the computer if you don't want companies to rat you out to the fascist government that'll imprison or kill you for having a miscarriage" is a ridiculous victim-blaming position.

It's the practical reality of a fascist government that they won't enact privacy laws. And yes, women really shouldn't be using period tracking apps in the US, or made by the US. But that doesn't mean privacy laws are some "silly waste of my tax money".

It's not a "medical requirement" except for the many many many cases where it is. Similarly, this position extends to literally everything. Nothing "needs to be an app". But unless we want to pack up and discard the entire software industry, it really ought to be better about privacy like this.

[philipallstar]

> "Just don't use the computer if you don't want companies to rat you out to the fascist government that'll imprison or kill you for having a miscarriage" is a ridiculous victim-blaming position.

No-one's saying this, and based on your wording you seem to be trained on some very predictable and narrow corpuses.

> It's not a "medical requirement" except for the many many many cases where it is.

Flo is not a medical device. It's not prescribed. It's just a consumer app, no different medically or legally to writing your feelings diary into Google Keep. If you have an actual medical device app then this would be a problem.

[SlinkyOnStairs]

> No-one's saying this

No-one was saying it explicitly. I merely took what you said and re-stated what it concretely meant in the real world.

The generalization to "all computers" is an assumption, but you appear to maintain a narrow view of what is "medically necessary" and just now generalize to things like dairies, so I believe I am correct in asserting that you would generalize this to all "non-essential" software.

[HumblyTossed]

Forest for the trees, dude.