this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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I disagree with the base premise that being opt out needs to be a right. That implies that having data be harvested for companies to make profits should be the default.
We should have the right to not have our data harvested by default. Requiring companies to have an opt in process with no coercion or other methods of making people feel obligated to opt in is our right.
Actually and time for data sales to be illegal. Not even opt-in.
As the years have passed, it has become the acceptable consensus for all of your personal information, thoughts, and opinions, to become freely available to anyone, at anytime, for any reason in order for companies to profit from it.
People keep believing this is normal and companies keep taking more. Unless everyone is willing to stand firm and say enough, I only see it declining further, unfortunately.
The death of the private life
I'm there with you, and I'd join in a protest to get it.
I would maybe not go quite that far but at the very least this should apply to commercial interests and living people.
I think there are some causes where it should be acceptable to have your data usable by default, e.g. statistical analysis of health threats (think those studies about the danger of living near a coal power plant or similar things).
I disagree. Yes, there are benefits to a lot of invasions of privacy, but that doesn't make it okay. If an entity wants my information, they can ask me for it.
One potential exception is for dead people, I think it makes sense for a of information to be released on death and preventing that should be opt in by the estate/survivors, depending on the will.
But they literally can't ask you for it if it is about high volumes of data that only become useful if you have all or close to all of it like statistical analysis of rare events. It would be prohibitively expensive if you had to ask hundreds of thousands of people just to figure out that there is an increase in e.g. cancer or some lung disease near coal power plants.
I sure hope those studies are not being done by for profit companies!
How would that benefit the average person?
Less price gouging
How do you expect that to result?
I don't expect... It is already happening. Prime example are rents and wages.
There is nothing to be done about it. Too late
Dynamic pricing is a more current battle ground.
All of these are fixed based on cohort specific information and with dynamic pricing it can be literally individual level data.
The question was how "less price gouging" would result from a right not to have "your data harvested by default".
By denying corpos data, their models are less effective especially if you are salting it when ever possible.
Do you really need Faceerh and Sundar the creep to have access to your tax returns and locations? Also, do you need them to know you like Asian women with large tits? Or that you and your friends enjoy a hobby?
Doesn't that seem awfully roundabout? You make the practice less effective at the price of also making beneficial uses of the data, eg for medical research, less effective.
The mega-rich can see my tax returns if I can see theirs. The data of the rich and famous is much more valuable than mine. Let's not pretend that this helps the little guy. The little guy doesn't throw around money to get their flight data removed from Twitter.
🤡
Send me your name, birthdate, web browsing history, online spending history, real time location, and a list of people you know and I will explain it to you.