back to article No way? Big Tech's 'lucrative surveillance' of everyone is terrible for privacy, freedom

Buried beneath the endless feeds and attention-grabbing videos of the modern internet is a network of data harvesting and sale that's perhaps far more vast than most people realize, and it desperately needs regulation.  That's the conclusion the FTC made after spending nearly four years poring over internal data from nine …

  1. cyberdemon Silver badge
    Holmes

    The post is required, and must contain letters.

    But in this case the icon suffices

  2. mickaroo

    Where's The News?

    Nuff said?

  3. Groo The Wanderer

    So I guess the nugget of news is that after four years of hand-wringing, butt-polishing, and bending over, the FTC managed to regurgitate a report that says what everyone knew long before the report was even commissioned: American big tech is out of hand and we are headed straight for the worst of 1984 and Brave New World combined... heavy on the paranoia, drugs, perpetual war, and surveillance.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      This is all perfectly fine as it's surveillence by fine upstanding American corporations. If you're not happy with it then you must be some kind of communist who wants government surveillance.

      1. SundogUK Silver badge

        Totalitarian states collect data and murder people;

        Corporations collect data and... sell you stuff.

        1. Anna Nymous Bronze badge
          Big Brother

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_says_no

          They don't just sell you stuff. They also sell you, to anyone who's willing to fork over a couple of bucks, because that's how cheap you are.

          In almost all of the cases where you're the thing that's being sold, it's not to grant you things. It's to deprive you of things: your money, your opportunity, your future. This sold data is treated as the Truth, and so when a system makes a determination about you (say, your mortgage rate [or even whether or not you get a mortgage for the place you want to live in], or how much you'll pay for insurance, or how much that flight will cost you, whether you get health insurance, etc), based on this data which is almost always incorrect, incomplete, wrong, irrelevant, ... then you will be told "NO", and also that "there is no appeal, but we have a bag of sand for you which you can go and punch".

          You may not have been murdered (which I recognize is pretty bad and terminal), but your future will have been solidly and negatively impacted by it. So congratulations, you get to live a long life as a won't-have.

  4. Mark Exclamation

    Did the author of this report get a degree in "Stating the Bleedin' Obvious"?

  5. DS999 Silver badge

    Google's defense to the press

    About this was "we have a privacy policy".

    If your privacy policy is basically "we can do anything we want with everything we collect on you", which I'm sure it is after you go through the endless pages of legalese with all the exceptions for what I'm sure is a promising first page or so, that's a pretty weak defense.

    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Google's defense to the press

      If your privacy policy is basically "we can do anything we want with everything we collect on you"

      It's like ISO9001 - you are *required* to have policies about how you make stuff, but none of those policies have to be about doing it properly. You could have a policy of "final stage is to bathe it in virgins' blood" and, as long as you do, and document that you do, ISO 9001 is satisfied.

      You are *supposed* to do process improvement but that's not something you can fail on (or it didn't used to be).

  6. Paratrooping Parrot
    Facepalm

    What will the outcome be?

    Will they just get slaps on the wrist? Or will the government even bother trying to get huge fines, which would take over 10 years of court battles, by which time the companies will have invested money put aside and gained more money from.

    1. veti Silver badge

      Re: What will the outcome be?

      To administer even a slap on the wrist, first you need to point to a law or at least a rule that's been broken.

      The whole problem in America is, there are no rules against this stuff. (There is, of a sort, in the EU, but it's inadequate - the companies involved have long since figured out how to work around it, and it hasn't been updated.)

      1. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

        Re: What will the outcome be?

        The whole problem in America is, there are no rules against this stuff.

        And it seems likely there won't ever be, because "Freedom".

        America has always leaned towards "Anything and everything must be allowed. It's up to individuals to protect themselves. It's not for government to interfere".

        Europeans on the other hand lean into "Governments are there to protect the people, and especially so where it is not practical for people to protect themselves".

        America views Europe as a collective of evil communists and they won't tolerate "that kind of sick nonsense". They would rather have the Wild West where it's every man for themselves.

        Same reason they'd rather have endless mass shooting sprees than gun control. It's why they appear to be a truly fucked-up nation from a European perspective.

        1. Groo The Wanderer

          Re: What will the outcome be?

          Canada shares the European perspective on the US; we have much more in common with Europe politically and socially than we do with our neighbours to the south.

          1. Phil Koenig Bronze badge

            Re: What will the outcome be?

            Canada shares the European perspective on the US

            To a degree, but in recent years (like the UK) it seems to be adopting more and more of the stupid things we do down here in Yankeeland.

  7. EricB123 Silver badge

    A Small Price to Pay for the good of Olicharcs

    "While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people's privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms."

    OMG. That sounds so anti-business!

    1. hoola Silver badge

      Re: A Small Price to Pay for the good of Olicharcs

      Business as usual then.

      The situation has been going on for so long and the amount of data already collected so vast that we are way beyond the point of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

      The horse has been gone so long it has died of old age. This is exactly what these corporations wanted and equally what millions have been happy to just give their data to without a thought. It is two sided but as usual the naivety, ignorance, stupidity (there are subtle differences) of those who have supplied that pool of data allows the corporations collecting the data an unending source of material.

      1. A Long Fellow

        Re: A Small Price to Pay for the good of Olicharcs

        I often hear a (rational / cynical?) defeatist response to privacy concerns: "they already know everything..." But if the data didn't have value; if the profiles weren't useful for something to somebody, why keep amassing the bytes?

        I think most people evolve; they change. Ideally, they grow. And unless corporate surveillance continues its intrusions, it can't keep up. So I take the approach that it's never, ever too late to invite the intruders to fuck right off.

        Further note: To the best of my understanding, the _last_ think I want to do is _correct_ any data anybody has stored about me. I want to poison it all to the point where separating truth from fiction simply isn't worth the effort.

    2. Evil Scot Silver badge
      Pirate

      Re: A Small Price to Pay for the good of Olicharcs

      When will business wake up to the "snake oil" that is big data.

      Their customers have already woken up to the truth and block ads ^W tracking.

      If you outsource your advertising to snake oil salesmen is it really piracy to block tracking?

      1. Anna Nymous Bronze badge
        Unhappy

        Re: A Small Price to Pay for the good of Olicharcs

        > When will business wake up to the "snake oil" that is big data.

        "Data is the new oil" should be interpreted in the context of "Exxon Valdez" and "Climate Change".

    3. WageSlave5678

      Re: A Small Price to Pay for the good of Olicharcs

      "Your lack of privacy protection is a sacrifice We are willing to make ... "

  8. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    FAIL

    "X has made tremendous strides in protecting users’ safety"

    Oh, so it has started talking about it in internal meetings, then ?

    Twitter had better security - at least Twitter tried to week out the toxic.

    The only "trmendous strides" X has taken was to bring the toxic back in spades.

  9. tiggity Silver badge

    Discord

    Slightly echoing the article.

    I actually use Discord (unlike a lot of "social media", which I avoid as much as possible) for chats on a couple of gaming channels relating to online games I play.

    There are no ads (a reason I can tolerate using it - it's all based on enough people paying for certain things (all optional, it is totally possible to use Discord without ever paying anything, which is the case for most users))

    So would definitely be interested to know what data harvesting / abuse they are doing*

  10. cantankerous swineherd

    "At the time of the study, Discord did not run a formal digital advertising service"

    so discord used to have an informal digital advertising service which has now been formalized. amirite?

    1. Captain Hogwash Silver badge

      They probably just sell everything to data brokers.

  11. aelfheld

    Incentives

    On the balance, when it comes to intrusive surveillance, I rather favour Big Tech than government. Big Tech has some incentive to keep your information under their control. Government? Not so much. If memory serves, the biggest exposures of private data have come from government databases being pilfered.

  12. prh99

    Congress is too corrupt to do anything about it. Law enforcement loves it cause they get to bypass those peaky warrant requirements. Congress had the chance, but decided to just restrict data brokers from selling to China etc instead.

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