I still don't see anyone addressing the elephant in the room: corporate, extensive personal data harvesting must stop.
If this is Facebook's business model, Facebook must go.
No one would allow the kind of pervasive intrusion put in practice by Facebook (and others) by the part of governing bodies, the police or the military. So why are we still allowing marketing companies to do it? Why are willing to let credit, insurance and health companies access our data in order to know us better than ourselves? When is this the price of a "better user experience"? It is disingenuous to say that people simply "agreed to this". No one can expect the average user to fully comprehend the inner workings of the modern web, and to what extent their data is being used, or even to keep up with changing terms of use for every single service.
Some, like Tim Cook, are starting to address the issue but not as directly as one would expect.
The funny thing is FB would be wildly successful without all the nonsense, just make a bit less profit. But this insane obsession with money is what drives companies to act against their ultimate self interest, it is classical short term thinking over long term thinking.
Why are you saying "Facebook must go" rather than "people must stop using Facebook"? The difference between Facebook and the police, military or governing bodies is that those bodies are government bodies created by governmental acts whereas Facebook is a private company that people freely choose to interact with.
People who care about the extensive personal data harvesting are free to stop using Facebook. You say "No one can expect the average user to fully comprehend the inner workings of the modern web" but there is no shortage of people summarizing the salient details for them, and those who hear the summary and choose not to use Facebook are free to do so.
I don't like Facebook and use it rarely. I'm glad they exist so I can check up on my friends.
What you are proposing amounts to increased government control over what kinds of services can be offered in the marketplace. I think you should be more afraid of government control of private interactions. In the US and Europe it's already far too intrusive.
>Why are you saying "Facebook must go" rather than "people must stop using Facebook"?
I say that like I would say "shady credit pushers must go", although I also think people shouldn't resort to such services. Facebook provides a service free of charge but the contract isn't clear: there are consequences that must remain obscure in order to the whole thing work.
I believe it's pretty clear that Facebook depends on people inadvertently permitting systemic surveillance.
> Facebook is a private company that people freely choose to interact with.
Like many other companies that are, unlike Facebook, heavily regulated in their primary activity.
>People who care about the extensive personal data harvesting are free to stop using Facebook.
But Facebook has been collecting data of people outside of Facebook as well. In any case, people have elected representatives to protect them from harm in the meanders of technology concepts they cannot grasp.
> there is no shortage of people summarizing the salient details for them
That is hardly a substitute for regulation. Take the example of the agrobusiness: no one expects lay people to ponder the cost-benefit of many drugs and antibiotics present in food they "freely" choose to eat.
> I think you should be more afraid of government control of private interactions.
I'm not sure about that. Currently I am equally afraid of both.
>In the US and Europe it's already far too intrusive.
I agree. Unfortunately, Europe is becoming nothing more but a meta-corporation. Lobbying being legal in Brussels, common people have no way of matching corporate influence.
That is true, although the whole process has been quite fragmented. I suspect that in many cases (hopefully, not all) the motive behind those inquiries is taxation.
And at the same time, Europe is rolling out eCall, which will make it mandatory for all new vehicles starting next April to have a dedicated system for emergency calls that logs GPS data and that has access to speaker and mic.
Car owners can, in alternative to the basic factory install, choose proprietary systems that may or may not share data with 3rd parties.
Addressing public concerns about privacy, the EU told us not to be concerned, because in EU's opinion this is completely safe.
So imho the EU's position on this is schizophrenic at best.
Legislating the problem away won't work in the long run. The fix we need to the internet and web is technical. Too many people want the data. It's too valuable.
If a credit company doesn't know who you are they will not loan you even one dollar. If an insurance company doesn't know who you are they will charge you the maximum to account for the risk. If a health company doesn't know your data they can't accurately diagnose trends in your health. Still want to play this game?
If a credit card company or health company relies on a social media entity to decide whether to give you credit or to be able to accurately diagnose your health then they have other problems.
None of that needs Facebook.
Still want to play this game?
Credit card companies were extending people credit and doctors were making accurate diagnoses long before the internet came along, they are definitely not a necessity for the functioning of society in ways that really matter.
Yes, I can say that with certainty. Anything a credit card company will do when they have access to aggregate data is done to benefit the credit card company, not the customers. And anything healthcare providers can do when it comes to making diagnoses is either on an individual basis, in which case access to my social media data would not matter or it is part of a study in which case there should be proper controls.
If you wish to argue that there are direct benefits to consumers from either giving credit card companies or health care providers access to your social media data then the the onus is on you to prove this.
That's not how I read OP's comment. I interpreted it as people should not be aggregating data to make decisions about you without your informed consent. Credit companies should be using only the data I provide them in questionnaire form to make decisions; health insurers should only be using my health record to make decisions. They should not be using my social media profile, purchasing history, location data, conversations, pictures, associations etc which I agree with.
Your thesis is that without credit, insurance or health data collection those entities will not be able to function.
The world is a lot larger than just the United States and in other places banks, insurance companies and healthcare providers function just fine even if they do not have the data gathering capabilities that are considered 'normal' in the United States.
So there's what I think of 'that', data collection is not a pre-requisite for any of this.
Easy access to credit the way it runs in the US isn't universal, and most places it is are currently dealing with the same data collection issues.
Partitioning the data and more heavily regulating the credit industry may be part of a solution.
Where do healthcare providers function well with less data than those in the US? I'm not experienced enough with the healthcare industry and nationalization of healthcare data to know, so if you have examples I'd really appreciate it.
The US is about as bad as it gets when it comes to healthcare. Good examples for healthcare run in a way that it does not break the bank and provides a high level of care are Canada and France, other Western European countries to greater or lesser degree depending on how much privatization has been going on.
Seems to me like we're where we are now precisely becuase we've learned what can be done with all that data, and we don't like it.
Your whole argument is based on a misdirected premise anyway. In fact credit reporting and health care are very heavily regulated industries in terms of how that data is stored and what can be done with it. Facebook saw no such regulation, and look where we are.
This is just untrue. In the absence of more specific data, companies with risk-based pricing will price at a rough median within whatever ranges they can establish so that everyone pays the same while still being somewhat profitable for the insurer. They were doing this for hundreds of years before Facebook came along.
More data allows price discrimination so that some people pay more than others, which we tend to think of as good when its based on things like age in life insurance, but which we tend to think of as bad when its based on things like race in life insurance. These companies have repeatedly shown they are unable to self-limit themselves to only considering things we think of as good, and price discrimination is almost never beneficial for consumers in practice, so its worth having a conversation about whether they should be able to consider data like that at all.
> If a health company doesn't know your data they can't accurately diagnose trends in your health.
The only health companies that diagnose are providers. They have been explicitely REJECTING patient-generated data for the longest time because of concerns about poor data. Are your blood-pressure cuff, scale, thermometers, etc. calibrated and regularly tested? Did you take the measures properly? Etc. Now some of that caution is excessive and we're starting to see bridges where patient-generated data is being considered.
But by and large, providers don't want crappy data. Even claims data sent to insurance companies are known to be fudged/imprecise/incorrect and aren't relied on for clinical decision. Even for population health that data is bad (some PH vendors still tried to rely on it but that turned out to be a bad idea).
So Facebook data has zero value to most providers.
> The only health companies that diagnose are providers. They have been explicitely REJECTING patient-generated data for the longest time because of concerns about poor data.
Patient-generated data, both objective and subjective, is frequently relied on by providers for diagnosis (and always has been); where available, provider-collected data is preferred and more heavily weighted in the event of direct contradiction, but providers simply have no practical choice but to rely on patient-generated data.
> Even claims data sent to insurance companies are known to be fudged/imprecise/incorrect and aren't relied on for clinical decision.
Well, yeah, since the provider making the clinical decision provides that data after the fact, of course they aren't going to rely on it. Even if it was perfectly accurate, they would use their own source data from which data would later be extracted selectively to support claims.
Patient-generated data that's been obtained by a clinician interviewing a patient is one thing. I'm referring to patients generating their own data and uploading it into the EHR of their provider.
> Well, yeah, since the provider making the clinical decision provides that data after the fact, of course they aren't going to rely on it.
That hasn't stopped some population health vendors to try to sell products that use claims data to build PH assessment tools. And yes that works about as well as you'd expect. :)
Facebook data is not necessary real, or updated. Me as an example, I have a facebook account which have a fake birthday and never updated my profile data after high school. I still add new friends and communicate on facebook, but I don't interest to add new demographic information in my profile.
What it means is insurance company or credit company does not explicit state how do they use my data to evaluate my price on certain insurance or credit to mortgage. If I applied for mortgage. By some random parameters in the model, I may be deemed not credible to have a mortgage. And I don't even have real profile data except my name, photos, and posts.
On the other side, if some insider knows what parameter contribute success mortgage, they can game the model by adding fake information to the facebook profile, or even sell this information for profit.
Facebook by no mean represent real identity, although it usually does. I don't think it is fair to use facebook information without consent from customer.
I am interested that if facebook states that using facebook will affect your credit history, how many people will still willing to use it?
If this is Facebook's business model, Facebook must go.
No one would allow the kind of pervasive intrusion put in practice by Facebook (and others) by the part of governing bodies, the police or the military. So why are we still allowing marketing companies to do it? Why are willing to let credit, insurance and health companies access our data in order to know us better than ourselves? When is this the price of a "better user experience"? It is disingenuous to say that people simply "agreed to this". No one can expect the average user to fully comprehend the inner workings of the modern web, and to what extent their data is being used, or even to keep up with changing terms of use for every single service.
Some, like Tim Cook, are starting to address the issue but not as directly as one would expect.