Due to (i) a laissez faire public attitude, esp. in the US, that "if this was a serious problem, someone would have done something about it", (ii) a pervasive misunderstanding of how important information privacy is to democracy and society and (iii) regulatory capture by big tech it, will be a long time before there is a regulatory solution (esp. in the US). As for historical parallels, they're not promising. It was decades after the excesses by the "robber barons" and their unfettered capitalism in the late 1800s before the US government built institutions and laws to push back by creating consumer protection (child labor laws, the food and drug administration, the social security administration, etc.) As an alternative to waiting for government, some of us are exploring a combination of contract law and a personal "identity agent" (an app running on your devices that includes a personal datastore). This agent makes your data available to a service provider's apps and sites under "human information license" that states a set of reasonable, non-exploitative terms. This approach requires voluntary participation on the part of the service provider. There may be sufficient incentives for some kinds of providers to participate, but admittedly it's an uphill climb. WRT the contract notion, what I envision is similar to JLINC's information sharing contract (https://sisa.jlinc.org/v1/3b39160c2b9ae7b2ef81c3311c7924f1c4...)
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Well said, one question is what’s a realistic way to fold in the legal/regulatory dimension given we’re talking with technologists and not lawyers.
I wonder if there any historical parallels to inform us, and what would that look like here?
Due to (i) a laissez faire public attitude, esp. in the US, that "if this was a serious problem, someone would have done something about it", (ii) a pervasive misunderstanding of how important information privacy is to democracy and society and (iii) regulatory capture by big tech it, will be a long time before there is a regulatory solution (esp. in the US). As for historical parallels, they're not promising. It was decades after the excesses by the "robber barons" and their unfettered capitalism in the late 1800s before the US government built institutions and laws to push back by creating consumer protection (child labor laws, the food and drug administration, the social security administration, etc.) As an alternative to waiting for government, some of us are exploring a combination of contract law and a personal "identity agent" (an app running on your devices that includes a personal datastore). This agent makes your data available to a service provider's apps and sites under "human information license" that states a set of reasonable, non-exploitative terms. This approach requires voluntary participation on the part of the service provider. There may be sufficient incentives for some kinds of providers to participate, but admittedly it's an uphill climb. WRT the contract notion, what I envision is similar to JLINC's information sharing contract (https://sisa.jlinc.org/v1/3b39160c2b9ae7b2ef81c3311c7924f1c4...)