I sometimes wonder whether this isn't getting much of the problem backward. If your personalized data collected is valuable for hacking your brain—getting you to buy or do things you afterwards wish you had not bought or done—then keeping someone, somewhere from collecting it is going to be difficult. Don't we also need defenses against seeing things from people who do not wish to inform and educate us? In short, isn't AdBlock a bigger piece of the answer?: Zeynep Tufekci: We Already Know How to Protect Ourselves From Facebook: "Personalized data collection would be allowed only through opt-in mechanisms that were clear, concise and transparent...

...The same would be true of any individualized targeting of users by companies or political campaigns—it should be clear, transparent and truly consensual.... People would have access, if requested, to all the data a company has collected on them—including all forms of computational inference (how the company uses your data to make guesses about your tastes and preferences, your personal and medical history, your political allegiances and so forth). Third, the use of any data collected would be limited to specifically enumerated purposes, for a designed period of time—and then would expire.... The aggregate use of data should be regulated. Merely saying that individuals own their data isn’t enough: Companies can and will persuade people to part with their data in ways that may seem to make sense at the individual level but that work at the aggregate level to create public harms.... Facebook may complain that these changes to data collection and use would destroy the company. But while these changes would certainly challenge the business model of many players in the digital economy, giant companies like Facebook would be in the best position to adapt and forge ahead. If anything, we should all be thinking of ways to reintroduce competition into the digital economy.... Right now, Silicon Valley is stuck in a (very profitable) rut. To force it to change would not only make us safer but also foster innovation...

#shouldread

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