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0 pointsCaptainZapp3y ago0 comments

Ok, you own a store. A customer enters your store and buys a widget. Since you're smart and want to know everything you record the sale and add it to your database.

Only that's not where it stops.

After the customer leaves the store one of you minions follows him to every other store he ever enters to record what he buys, or even looks at

That's why your analogy falls completely flat.

Nobody would complain if it only concerns your store and your sales. But people violently dislike you snooping on everything that your customer does.

Worse! He doesn't even have to be a customer of yours. You snoop anyway, even into his most private affairs.

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mellavora3y ago

Worse! You report this information to government authorities, who monitor this and may decide at a future time that the things you were shopping for today mark you as a bad or suspicious person.

Worse! You also share this information with credit bureaus, meaning the data is available to potential employers. Thus limiting your job options.

Looked at a hookah once because you were curious? Sorry, no pot-heads in my company!

dr_dshiv3y ago

I don’t see the connection of this to the topic. Not trying to be obtuse. Are you saying it’s a slippery slope between targeted advertisements and 1984?

In my store analogy, I’m trying to make discourse on this topic less black and white. To recognize that data collection is not some inherent evil. And sure, to point out that a store that tries to peep in your bedroom window should be called to task.

snapcaster3y ago

But your store analogy is stacking the deck in favor of your point. As the people responding to you pointed out, it falls apart when you consider all the larger implications of pervasive data collection. Would you defend the Stasi with the same language? I dont know why you're _trying_ to make this point and gaslight the people who are rightfully very concerned about the concentration of power this data collection results in

Dylan168073y ago

> that tries to peep in your bedroom window

That's not really the argument your opponent has.

It's that pervasive data collection, even if it's 'only' outside your house, is quite bad.

> I’m trying to make discourse on this topic less black and white.

Then you need to rethink your framing, because right now you're trying to split it into "store tracks transactions by itself and uses that data itself" and "tries to peep in your bedroom window".

Everyone else is talking about shades of gray too. But they're pointing out that 90% of the store-tracking shades have significant negative consequences.

Nextgrid3y ago

The problem is that the government can compel ad targeting providers (and anyone in the advertising/marketing/data brokering industries) to reveal data about someone.

Those industries have essentially built a worldwide spying system that would make the NSA jealous without them even having to pay a dime and capitalism guarantees those systems will keep being maintained forever.

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