from the next-up-is-the-unicorns-pooping-skittles-act dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Search engine and consumer privacy advocate DuckDuckGo has announced the "Do-Not-Track Act of 2019," a piece of draft legislation that would legally require sites to honor users' tracking preferences.
[...]If the act picks up steam and passes into law, sites would be required to cease certain user tracking methods, which means less data available to inform marketing and advertising campaigns.
The impact could also cascade into platforms that leverage consumer data, possibly making them less effective. For example, one of the advantages of advertising on a platform like Google or Facebook is the ability to target audiences. If a user enables DNT, the ads displayed to them when on browsing[sic] those websites won't be informed by their external browsing history.
[Ed Note: By proposed they mean "That's why we're announcing draft legislation that can serve as a starting point for legislators in America and beyond. "]
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:22AM (21 children)
is a "privacy advocate" because it's the main selling point of their business model, not because they believe in privacy.
What that means is, they would love to be able to rape the shit out of people's personal data and make out like a bandit like Google does, but they can't because their niche market - that they feel is a growing market - is people who can't stand being tracked and profiled.
Meaning they toe a fine line between exploiting people's personal data anyway and not looking like they do.
Meaning they're barely more trustworthy than open data-rapists such as Google. At least, they deserve to be under even more scrutiny than Google does.
Just keep that in mind before you start applauding...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:48AM (15 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#History [wikipedia.org]
https://help.duckduckgo.com/company/advertising-and-affiliates/ [duckduckgo.com]
Doesn't really match with the site's history. It started out self-funded and the advertising it does have is not personalized.
Who are these people who want to rape privacy at DDG? Or is everything that is not currently privacy-raping considered to be a ticking time bomb by you?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:58AM (13 children)
Where's there money to be made, there's temptation - and dataraping is where the money is. BIG money.
DDG might have started out with the best of intentions, and probably does still have mostly good intentions in 2019. But at the end of the day, they're a for-profit with investors who want to maximize their profits, and a board of director whose sole official job is to maximize the investors' return. They'll eventually relent and turn evil, like the other formerly "do no evil" players. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @12:49PM (6 children)
The problem is capitalism, this can be easily proved:
A. Employees get their money from wages, so the employer pays through wages.
B. Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Under capitalism the first term of (B) in the brackets is negligible and can be rounded to zero. This can only be solved by increasing taxes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:36PM (5 children)
Disposable income = (wages + universalBasicIncome) - (taxes + costOfLiving + sjwExpensesDuesFees)
As wages approach zero, universalBasicIncome can rise to more than cover the 2nd bracketed term.
What the government gets in taxes pays for an expansive government plus universalBasicIncome.
Therefore: taxes > universalBasicIncome
At the same time, to keep Disposable income positive (and not negative), . . .
Therefore: taxes < universalBasicIncome
Some people say the math cannot possibly work. They simply have not experimented with UBI at a large enough scale. What could go wrong?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:42PM (3 children)
I stopped reading when I saw "sjwExpensesDuesFees"
Were you trying to make a point?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:56PM (2 children)
I don't think he was trying to make a point. He made a point.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 08 2019, @03:45PM
Thank you.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday May 09 2019, @08:03AM
He is using 'taxes' in a deceptive way.
In the the second bracketed term in the first equation it refers to personal income tax, as this is for an individual only.
In the second equation he uses the term 'taxes' to refer to all government revenue, as this is summed across the population.
Places like Norway and Alaska show that governments can in fact invest money and pay a UBI from dividends.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @04:23PM
There is nothing wrong with negative disposable income in general. As long as it is less negative than other investments people will still get loans. Government just needs to make sure interest rates on savings are negative enough to stimulate lending.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:57PM (1 child)
It didn't happen until it does happen, though.
As such, mudslinging them now for a future that may not come** is just that: mudslinging.
** "a lot of things can happen in a year. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And, who knows? Maybe the horse will sing."
Rings a bell? [wikibooks.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by patrick on Thursday May 09 2019, @03:36AM
The CEO & founder of DuckDuckGo is Gabriel Weinberg [wikipedia.org], who created the Names Database [wikipedia.org], where registrants put in their personal information and then gave the website their friends' emails to refer them to the site. He then sold all of that personal information to Classmates.com for $10 million.
I use DuckDuckGo as my main search engine. But there is past precedent to give us pause.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:25PM (1 child)
Maybe DuckDuckGo can make their work easier by developing a new dataraping drug?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:38PM
. . . for web browsers.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:57PM
So it would have been more correct if you had said that they might - in the future - toe a fine line.... etc. There is nothing to indicate that they a doing so at present unless you have more information than we currently have. If you have, then please share...
If we follow your logic, SN could be toeing a fine line between exploiting personal data and not looking as if we do. Now in the case of SN, I have rather more information to convince me that we are NOT doing that, nor are we intending to do so in the future. And if we did I would expect the current staff, including myself, to walk away. Not everyone is out to exploit his/her fellow man.
DDG appear to be making sufficient profit to do what they are doing and not exploiting anyone in the process. As for the future, my crystal ball needs new batteries so I'll wait and see what they do.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 08 2019, @05:04PM
All people are evuuuuul, but your original post is a paranoid fever dream filled with unprovable and incorrect statements.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday May 09 2019, @03:46AM
What about the fact that DuckDuckGo's founder Gabriel Weinberg previously founded the Names Database, whose sole purpose was collecting user data and selling that data for profit?
It doesn't prove anything, but it's enough for me to give DDG a wide berth. If nothing else, it supports GP's claim that DDG cares only about profit above all else. Gabriel thought selling user data was lucrative yesterday, he thinks privacy is lucrative today, what's to say he doesn't sell out tomorrow?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:32PM (2 children)
Well, DDG says they don't do XYX. But they don't disclose the actual format of the data streams they sell to Yahoo et. al. So it may be true they don't track using their data. But that doesn't mean their data isn't used to track.
Second, "do not track" was a bad standard to begin with. The HTTP header extensions spec would have allowed for negotiation of content terms prior to actual display of content. So there is a correct way to do this. "Do not track" isn't, nor will it ever be the correct way. Legislating based on it is a terrible idea . If DDG wants privacy, it certainly cheaper to write the code and the RFC to do this correctly, than it is to persue legislation to push a bad standard. Further, do not track does not account for the real time traffic analysis that ISP's are doing, which are far more intrusive than single website tracking.
Really OSI layer 5 needs to be transposed between OSI layer 3, and layer 4, and the content terms and contract negotiation needs to happen at that layer, independently and preceding ALL transmission of content. This is not an HTTP problem. This is a whole Internet problem.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:18PM (1 child)
If you can support the maintenance of an independent browser, by all means. Otherwise, with all the 3 major browsers dependent (directly or, FF, indirectly) on data raping behaviour, the RFC will be superfluous from the start, nobody will implement it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:40PM
From the server side an apache module, and that can be written in damned near anything. From the client side, headers can be modified by plugins so it doesn't even need to be embedded code, though that would be better.
"If you can support the maintenance of an independent browser, by all means".
There are dozens of FOSS browsers out there right now with their own maintenance staff already. Probably you wouldn't even have to write the patch, just offer some funding to one of them for supporting the standard. Once the prototype is working on at least two browsers, (all it takes to go from draft to RFC) then you have a de facto standard.
There is a correct way to do this. Mandating "do not track" is like mandating a that "do not enter" should be tattooed on a hookers ass. The browsers are fundamentally designed to leak data. That is the only reason they are free.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 08 2019, @05:23PM (1 child)
Those two positions are not mutually exclusive. It is possible for them to believe in privacy and also start a privacy business.
You should present some evidence for your claim that they don't actually care about privacy instead of just stating it as a fact.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday May 09 2019, @03:44AM
DuckDuckGo's founder Gabriel Weinberg previously founded the Names Database, whose sole purpose was collecting user data and selling that data for profit.
Is it possible Gabriel Weinberg had a revelation and now believes in privacy? Perhaps.
But if I were him, I would have shouted this from the rooftops. In the interest of transparency, I would have disclosed that I previously gathered and sold user data for profit, but now I truly believe in privacy and will be completely transparent with how DuckDuckGo handles user data.
Has DuckDuckGo reported about this damning connection? Nope. In fact, unless you know exactly what to search for, you probably wouldn't even find this connection between DDG, Gabriel Weinberg, and the Names Database. I suspect that Gabriel Weinberg sent friendly takedown notices to any articles reporting on this connection.
Is any of this clear evidence? No, but I don't trust DDG at all.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @05:09PM (2 children)
we'll finally have privacy when the state designs our websites for us. all hail the state!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday May 08 2019, @09:41PM (1 child)
The state has already access to any detail about you life it wants. It's part of the job of providing its services to everyone.
How can you consider that a whataboutist excuse to allow others to get access to that info for private profit ?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @08:07PM
"services" lmao!