zlacker

You can frame it as tracking; but the fact is that the aggregation of data about people happens almost without intent. In order to provide services, you need unique id— and people want to be sharing and posting information. Facebook might be oriented around personalized ads, but even Friendster was based on an enormous amount of shared personal data. When we use tools like Facebook and Instagram and others, we want to provide our data. When I use chatGPT, I want to provide my data.

I think there are very good economic reasons why companies don’t dox their customers. They treat data cautiously even in the absence of regulation— since it would be a loss of business value to lose customer trust.

When we call for “privacy” — what does it mean when we want to share our data? Ok, one might say that you don’t want 3rd party sites tracking etc etc. That’s fine. You don’t want data sold. That’s fine. But if we make a big fuss about privacy in a world where we want to share so much personal information, I think we cloud the issues. We want a lot more than privacy, obviously, when we are so willing to give it up. I want those other desires made more clear and not lumped in as privacy. I think the GDPR just trains people to click “accept.”

Do you see my concern?