This is a good observation, but I don't think the conclusion is that you should give up. It means that successfully controlling the data through good personal hygiene is infeasible and we need to use legislative power to curb abuse. We cannot rely on private companies to just do the right thing. It is possible to maintain our privacy if we are willing to use force of law.
If you think you can legislate the world away from big data and data mining through legislation you are terribly naive. At most it will punish a few surface level players like FB while the massive industry continues to flourish at every single major consumer company with a modern marketing dept. Not to mention the many billion dollar companies you've never heard of who trade in this data, all the consumer financial companies, the government itself (IRS and security agencies), etc etc.
This rabbit is not going back in the hat. We need better tools which respect users, behaviour change via a new common sense, and decentralization. Not flashy legal theatrics that is out of date well before its written in law.
If you think you can legislate the world away from big data and data mining through legislation you are terribly naive. At most it will punish a few surface level players
If you think you can legislate the world of crime away through criminal law you are terribly naive. At most it will punish a few criminals here or there while the massive crime industry continues to flourish.
Just because something bad is hard to regulate doesn’t mean you just give up. Besides, saying decentralization is the solution is even more naive, because centralized systems are more convenient and people prefer convenience to privacy.
Sure, centralized services are popular, but there's nothing unrealistic about decentralized/federated ones, it's not a pipe dream like the blockchain craze. The main difference in end-user convenience is the difference between "@username" and "@username:server.net".
you think its naive to change the law but "behavior change" is a viable alternative?? the reason the op is claiming we need legislation is precisely because there is no incentive to change behavior.
im not even an EU citizen and already ive benefited from GDPR
The gov't already has monopolies on force and law. And we can use law to limit the gov't's collection of data as well. The power to vote may not feel like much, but it's quite a lot more power than most people have over private companies.
