[HN Gopher] Against Transparency
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Against Transparency
Author : NotInOurNames
Score : 64 points
Date : 2025-04-19 14:39 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pluralistic.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (pluralistic.net)
| 9283409232 wrote:
| I don't know if I would even call this clickbait but this is not
| an argument against transparency. It's an argument against poor
| regulations. I would argue Prop 65 is the opposite of
| transparency because just about everything causes cancer so
| people have learned to ignore the warning. It was a law that was
| passed in a time when we didn't have as much information as we do
| now and it should be updated and made more specific.
|
| > You know what would be better than a privacy policy? A privacy
| law.
|
| I agree but I wouldn't call privacy policies transparent. They
| are made of vague legal speak like "we may or may not share your
| information with advertisers and partners." There are good
| arguments in here but they are framed against the wrong target.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| The framing being used is that what we currently do is "pro-
| transparency." We make laws to "inform" consumers and then
| trust that the market will sort the rest out. Cory rejects this
| as a workable tactic, because transparency, even real, full
| transparency, just becomes noise that people filter out when
| making decisions. He argues that if you want good outcomes you
| need legislation other than forcing transparency.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| I don't think I disagree with the conclusion but my point is
| that we don't have real transparency and a lot of these
| transparency laws actually obscure information to confuse the
| consumer. So I guess the issue I'm taking here is that these
| laws he is attacking aren't real transparency.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| The flip way to argue that is that one way to get good
| legislation is that some level of transparency is in place so
| that people can make informed opinions on what is good.
| jfengel wrote:
| "Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever
| period."
|
| You don't keep server logs? Cool and all, but it sounds like
| you'll have a hard time debugging if something ever goes wonky.
| ikiris wrote:
| that's probably translated to the following is the problem:
| "Privacy policy: we're just gonna lie about it because our
| lawyers don't think there's consequences"
| lgas wrote:
| Or "we're just gonna lie about it because we don't think
| there's consequences so we didn't even ask our lawyers".
| cardanome wrote:
| If your server logs contain personal information then you are
| doing something horribly wrong and I hope you don't operate in
| the EU.
|
| Don't log sensitive data. You don't need that for debugging.
| lq9AJ8yrfs wrote:
| But this is the same problem!
|
| The GDPR and such define PII so broadly that more or less
| everything in web server logs is included in the definition.
|
| Not sensitive PII, but still PII that the individual has
| rights and interests over.
|
| That is more or less on purpose, and they do have a point.
|
| Rogue debugging on the other hand is not what they are
| worried about vs using the data in web logs for targeting,
| profiling, etc.
|
| If you could sell your web logs, would you? Vs how much would
| someone pay reddit or github for theirs? And would you be ok
| with that if your browse history was in there?
| robin_reala wrote:
| To be clear, the GDPR never uses the term Personally
| Identifying Information. It uses PD or Personal Data: this
| can be identifying on its own, but it's more likely that
| some aggregate of multiple pieces of PD become identifying
| only when taken together.
| teddyh wrote:
| No mention of the GDPR.
| norseboar wrote:
| I think the argument is interesting, but the specific example of
| prop 65 doesn't really work on a few levels. The argument in the
| post is that Prop 65's warnings are legitimate in some sense, but
| only apply in specific contexts.
|
| However, Prop 65 is much broader than that. To qualify, a
| chemical just needs to show up on one of maybe half a dozen lists
| that show the chemical has some association w/ cancer, but all
| these show is that in some study, at some quantity, the
| association existed. The amount that was linked to cancer could
| be far beyond what is ever present in a consumer good, and the
| links could have only been shown in non-humans.
|
| The lists aren't the ones gov't agencies like the FDA use to
| regulate product safety, they're lists far upstream of that that
| research institutions use to inform further study. The typical
| starting point is a mouse study with a huge dosage. It's not a
| useless study, but it's not meant to inform what a human
| should/should not consume, it's just the start of an
| investigation.
|
| I don't think this actually has any bearing on the substance of
| the broader argument, but Prop 65 is not the best example.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| prop65 have the same level of coordinated opposition and
| information corruption as the food pyramid or cigarettes damage
| had for most of the time.
|
| industry coluded to make it seems useless and industry spoon
| fed you the narrative you repeated. the list is very
| informative and meant to force the "invisible hand of the
| market" (its a pun, relax) to pay for better studies if they
| truly believe it is not harmful but studies are inconclusive.
| industry just decided to band and spend on making the signs
| useless.
| norseboar wrote:
| > the list is very informative and meant to force the
| "invisible hand of the market" (its a pun, relax) to pay for
| better studies if they truly believe it is not harmful but
| studies are inconclusive
|
| To make sure I understand right: you're saying a good way to
| run things is: publish a list of a bunch of things that could
| be true or false, and then if industry cares enough, they
| should spend time/money debunking it?
|
| I think that would be an extremely slow/conservative way to
| run just about anything, and is not the way we handle
| basically any claim. I can see an argument for "don't do
| something until you prove it's safe", useful in some very
| high-risk situations, but "warn that all kinds of commonplace
| things could cause cancer until somebody proves it doesn't"
| is misleading, not just conservative.
|
| And it doesn't even work -- lots of places _have_ spent time
| /money debunking e.g. negative claims about aspartame, but
| claims about how unsafe it is persist. And it all comes back
| to dosage. There is no good evidence that aspartame, at the
| levels found in a normal soda, cause any issues for humans,
| but this gets drowned out by studies either showing effects
| from massive doses on rodents, or indirect effects (e.g. it
| makes you hungrier, so if you eat more refined sugar as a
| result of that hunger, then yes it's bad for you, just like
| more refined sugar is almost always bad for you).
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| you are still misguided that the list is utterly useless. i
| cannot open your eyes for you.
|
| go for first hand experiences. you are still repeating
| others you don't know (and have been told told are
| authorities)
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