So everybody's complaining about the second part of the title, I'm gonna complain about the first. Metadata is a very broad and general term, and metadata is not bad. Here I thought I'm gonna read an article about why I shouldn't be storing metadata in my applications. Instead I get a video explaining how data is collected about me on the internet, mostly via social websites, and how this data can be used not according to my personal interests. That's a very specific case of metadata, and I don't even think the "meta" prefix is important here.
Agree. The non technical folk have latched on to a specific use of the word "metadata" completely ignorant of the broader use. They should just say "data" but "'metadata" somehow makes it scarier?!
The non technical meanings are "metadata" and "content".
The use of "metadata" word is designed to make it sound less scary - it's a word that politicians use when they want to reassure people.
"We don't want the content! We just want the metadata - how long a call lasted for, for example".
It's a good thing that people are a bit scared about metadata. It's the metadata attacks that make tor hard. It's the metadata attacks that make end-to-end encryption weakers.
Companies collect a lot of data. They should be thinking carefully about how much they actually need, and how harmful it is to their users if it gets slurped.
