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andsoitis • today at 2:52 PM • 5 replies • view on HN

> if most people saw precisely what data is collected on them and how it is used (and how often it is part of data breaches from these identity resolution platforms and third parties), I think they'd care more.

What are the chances of an individual being negatively affected in a serious way?

Intuitively, I expect it to be so negligible that it isn't worth losing sleep over.


Replies

giantg2 • today at 3:09 PM

I would say the chances of a negative impact is on par with the chances of negative impacts on most of the hottest debate topics such as guns and abortion. Identity theft, swatting/doxxing, and stalking can have serious impacts and are not that uncommon. They're just uncommon enough that most people don't care until it happens to them.

cowlevel • today at 3:43 PM

Still low, but people do register creepiness when they directly see the creepiness, even if nothing resulted from it yet.

trinsic2 • today at 3:21 PM

This is one of those things that is hard to quantify. Although I'm sure someone has. It negatively impacts society overall, very slowly over time. It has the effect of eroding private life in subtle way that it's barely noticeable until we find ourselves in a surveillance state where corruption is everywhere. Let me know if that sounds familiar to you.

I did a presentation on surveillance capitalism awhile back[0]

[0]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/presentations/overcoming-survei...

mrguyorama • today at 4:01 PM

It's more profitable for LG to sell your data to advertisers than to build and sell the TV itself

The negative effect is the exact sky high prices that Americans keep complaining about. The point of all that advertising data is to nudge you towards accepting higher prices or buying things you otherwise wouldn't.

Every dollar of revenue in the advertising industry is money taken from consumers and spent on unproductive waste to get you to spend more money instead of anything like making a product better or investing in capacity or researching and developing new products.

Google makes money by making you spend more money. Facebook makes money by making you spend more money.

throw0101c • today at 3:51 PM

> What are the chances of an individual being negatively affected in a serious way?

Perhaps if said individual is a politician and a television is compromised to record what happens in their home (or even bedroom).

Or perhaps compromise televisions in hotel rooms (politician or not).