[HN Gopher] Media companies that also sell personal data
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Media companies that also sell personal data
Author : kjhughes
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-11-12 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| seydor wrote:
| based on their academic services, I wouldn't be too worried
| because those services are crap. Their academic analytics stuff
| barely passes the test and is mostly used because nobody wants to
| make a competitor. Most academic metadata is openly available to
| anyone who wants to use it, but people know that academia is more
| about networking, PR, politics etc rather than the exactness of
| academic analytics. Then elsevier's own websites were pretty crap
| for the (pre-SciHub) times i used them , sometimes being offline,
| other times with stupid web design etc. They don't have a
| technical moat other than being so entrenched in academic
| politics.
|
| I assume something similar is going on in the other spaces. They
| live in a legacy world that will be replaced with AI overnight.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I'm not so sure quiet captues the moment. The invasion has been
| effective due to pointless distraction after pointless
| distraction - and algorithms tuned to surface those distractions.
| A monopoly of the collective mind.
|
| Few can hear this coming, not because it's quite but because of
| the excessive volume from excessive noise.
| c7b wrote:
| Oh wow. Elsevier alone has much more grip on global academia than
| any one company should have (what the article didn't mention,
| they also own Overleaf, so they have access to a non-negligible
| fraction of all STEM research before it is available to anyone
| but the authors). But I didn't know that it is part of an even
| larger conglomerate l (LexisNexis alone would make for a
| formidable Elsevier competitor).
| elashri wrote:
| I couldn't find this link between Elsevier and overleaf. What I
| did find is that overleaf is owned by digital science UK which
| is owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. The later owns a lot
| of publication companies and group. They own Nature and more
| than 50 share in Springer. Am I missing something?
| c7b wrote:
| Hmm, I remember hearing that they purchased Overleaf several
| years ago - maybe I misremembered, or things have changed
| again since then.
| caconym_ wrote:
| "Big Tech" is a distraction. They barely even "sell" data;
| rather, they use it to power platforms where advertisers can
| target users without learning who they are. At such a large scale
| there are obviously exceptions (see: Cambridge Analytica), but
| directly selling user data is generally not how they make their
| money.
|
| The abuses of the companies you never hear about are orders of
| magnitude worse. They are plugged into every institution of
| society you interact with in your daily life, so you essentially
| can't opt out, and their primary business model is siphoning off
| sensitive de-anonymized personal data and selling it to anybody
| willing to pay. It ought to be criminal, and the fact that it
| isn't just goes to show how captured and neutered our government
| has become.
|
| I assume our legislators' PR focus on "Big Tech" wrt. data
| privacy is by design. If the American people really understood
| the true shape of things, there'd be blood in the streets.
|
| (I'm not saying "Big Tech" doesn't cause substantial harm, but in
| my view it's harm of a different sort.)
| [deleted]
| drdec wrote:
| > The abuses of the companies you never hear about are orders
| of magnitude worse. > They are plugged into every institution
| of society you interact with in your daily life, so you
| essentially can't opt out, and their primary business model is
| siphoning off sensitive de-anonymized personal data and selling
| it to anybody willing to pay.
|
| This would be much more impactful if you named one of these
| companies and gave some concrete examples of what they are
| doing.
| caconym_ wrote:
| For a start, you should probably read OP's article. I know
| often HN commenters don't read the article before commenting,
| and I'm sometimes guilty of this myself, but in this case the
| linked article offers fairly important context for my comment
| in the sense that it explicitly names at least one such
| company and gives concrete examples of what they are doing
| with your data.
|
| For another salient example, check out this article^[1] about
| cell carriers selling their customers' real-time location
| data without consent.
|
| ^[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/fcc-issues-
| wrist...
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| Very much like a soldier refusing to execute immoral orders, we
| need the smartest engineers working at these companies to stop
| implementing such features. As it stands, engineers working in
| big tech are often celebrated on platforms like HN. Especially
| the companies that are just creating spying machines, and
| addictive time-wasters.
|
| We outlaw addictive chemical substances, and maybe such tech
| should also be looked at in similar light.
|
| At our company, the use of cell phones is not permitted inside
| certain manufacturing zones. It's a bit sad to see some of the
| younger employees being very restless when they can't check
| their phone every 30 seconds.
| ajb wrote:
| Once you have more than 100 people - and there are obviously
| more than 100 "smartest engineers" - solutions of the form
| "everyone should be ethical enough not to do this, without
| further incentives" are impractical.
| Jensson wrote:
| > We outlaw addictive chemical substances, and maybe such
| tech should also be looked at in similar light.
|
| Yeah, so the solution is not to convince engineers, but to
| convince politicians to get laws like GDPR. Trying to
| convince workers or companies to stop earning money has never
| worked well.
| [deleted]
| webmobdev wrote:
| No, BigTech are the biggest data-miners in the industry as they
| have _daily_ regular and "unrestricted" access to our lives
| through the devices we use everyday. Thanks to our mobile
| phones, computers and the internet, they even have insights and
| personal data from all the other services we use. BigTech also
| purchases and partners with data brokers. And all of them do
| sell their data to the _government_ (as the new government data
| center in Utah highlight, the PRISM program is thriving).
| BigTech is the most successful privatisation of intelligence
| gathering in the history of our world, and I 'd say even a
| monument to capitalism.
|
| While a triumph for capitalism, this is unfortunately also
| really bad for us ordinary citizens in a democracy as it upsets
| the balance of power between the rich and our elected
| representatives. The last time this happened, and a government
| fought to correct this balance with them (the British vs the
| East india Company), the British empire itself crumbled. If
| left unchecked, I fear history will repeat itself again with
| our current and sole superpower too.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I think the main harm identified here is summed up in the line;
|
| "The truth is pay-walled, but lies are for free"
|
| It's not _what_ information is or isn 't collected. It can be
| valuable, and great social good can come out of so-called "big
| data". And we can, as a society, sensibly decide what is
| allowable in terms of prediction and prejudice (which are
| essentially the same thing in this context).
|
| The problem is utility asymmetry. Having a few for-profit
| corporations own and trade our data is a societal catastrophe in
| the making, and can only tend toward fascism.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| It's somewhat ironic that I cannot view the full article; it's
| paywalled, and I am not a Wired subscriber.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Using wget pretending to be something else will probably see
| you right. Text based without JavaScript pulls Wired articles
| nicely.
| nouryqt wrote:
| https://archive.ph/pQQV1
| hammock wrote:
| The truth has always been paywalled. Good information comes at
| a cost, information asymmetry is power. What is different now
| is that information of all types is being shadowbanned
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > information of all types is being shadowbanned
|
| That sounds interesting, please say more.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| If we did, that too would shadowbanned. For example, look
| at how people were pointing to early studies that the mRNA
| jabs caused heart issues in males 40 and under about 1.5
| years ago. Raising such concerns was enough to get account
| here shadowbanned even when they posted to papers.
| switchbak wrote:
| The interesting thing is the truth there was not behind a
| paywall. It was in the anarchic corners of the internet
| that allowed such heresy. What was behind the paywalls
| was pure state serving propaganda.
|
| The last few years have been a real lesson to those who
| are paying attention. Unfortunately I've been really
| disappointed with how few of my friends have kept an open
| mind despite the poisoned information landscape.
| bombcar wrote:
| The only reason the Internet was a "bastion of truth" for
| awhile was that the whole thing was outside the walls.
|
| The walls have moved and the truth has been confirmed,
| everything that is outside the walls is heresy, don't
| even _think_ of going to look at it, as it is bad.
| DenisM wrote:
| > The problem is utility asymmetry. Having a few for-profit
| corporations own and trade our data is a societal catastrophe
| in the making, and can only tend toward fascism.
|
| It occurred to me that a few centuries ago every knight had his
| own little army that was loyal to him, and lent out to the king
| in the time of need. The idea that the army would belong to the
| people was alien at the time, however today few question the
| wisdom (even dictators pay lip service to it).
|
| Could it be that the idea of big information belonging to the
| people will one day also seem entirely commonplace?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I read recently about the concept of "civic databases" -
| someone pointed out the absurdity of the worlds scientific
| papers being "catalogued by one post grad on the run, but used
| by everyone".
|
| Yeah. But even if you gave me access to every data set
| worldwide I still would have trouble making head or tail of it.
| but it's a start
| turtleyacht wrote:
| It stuck with me too. Who's going to write the stored procs
| and views? Unless it's all going to be tables only.
|
| "Software Diffusion, infer relationships about these tables
| and create an explorer for me."
|
| jancsika's comment [1] in a thread on _The Cypherpunk
| Manifesto_ :
|
| > There should be a sustainable solution to bootstrapping
| civic databases to archive and make available/discoverable
| all the shits citizens care about without waiting 70+ years
| for it to enter the public domain.
|
| > It's absurd as it is now. We've got a scientific database
| duct-taped together by a fucking grad student in hiding, and
| AFAICT nearly every researcher uses it.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33555419
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Yes that one.
|
| Glad it reverberated a little across this corner of the
| internet.
|
| It's a great term - conveys what we mean. Maybe "Civic
| DataSets"
| tootie wrote:
| Counterpoint: Public media. While I don't think there's any
| statutory obligation, you will likely never find paywalls or
| brokered data. And the content is very reliable.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > "The truth is pay-walled, but lies are for free"
|
| Verified, researched information is more costly to build than
| lies, which anyone can just make up out of thin air.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| It's not so simple. Good lies, the kind of disinformation
| that swings elections, wins wars, and controls populations,
| can be extraordinarily difficult to build. Think Operation
| Mincemeat. The backstories, legends, covers and dissemination
| costs can rival research in pursuit of truth. And by the same
| token, deep truths are sometimes there in the open for anyone
| with eyes and the wits to observe and write-up.
|
| What I think you're talking about is "bullshit", which is
| really a kind of ephemeral non-data, like spam, advertising
| and opinions.
|
| Flooding the public sphere with that, especially now using
| ever more plausible generative "AI" tools, devalues public
| truth and makes private intelligence stores seem more
| attractive and valuable.
|
| In the limit this can even become a justification for
| cloistered data, as the Church understood so well with Latin
| scriptures. We'll be told "The people can't be _trusted_ with
| the truth ".
| factsarelolz wrote:
| But a vast majority of research is publicly funded (by tax
| payers). So if it's paid for by said individuals should they
| have to pay again to see the results?
| lazyeye wrote:
| This is not remotely true. Lies can be very much pay-walled
| too.
| bombcar wrote:
| _facts_ can be found everywhere, for free or for pay.
|
| But what is harder to find is what people really want, which
| is to be told how to _feel_ about something, and that 's more
| and more behind a paywall.
|
| (Which can still be completely _wrong_ mind you!)
| lazyeye wrote:
| Being told how to feel is more behind a paywall? This is
| also not remotely true.
| kornhole wrote:
| Because it is unlikely this data will ever become a common good
| available to all, we can use creative ways to poison it. For
| example, I buy things for me under the kids names and have my
| partner use my card to buy things for herself. I only have one
| real ID social media account which is intentionally enigmatic
| and stale. Of course my networks obfuscate a lot. Unfortunately
| this is a systemic problem, and the one percent like me are a
| drop in the bucket.
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