Legislating Loses: a pathway to making privacy invasion unprofitable

-- By GabrielLopez - 25 Oct 2024

presumptions

1

We live in a world where a sufficient number of people could make the government change policies.

2

Congress is somehow not lobbied, i.e legally bribed, out of passing a bill that has majority public support.

Introduction

Companies, by their nature, desire to make money above all else and likewise loath to lose money. However, government regulation rarely acknowledges this and rarely uses it to benefit its citizens. Governments pass countless meaningless regulations to placate the population by showing the citizenry that they are taking action. However, I propose that a straightforward piece of legislation could strike a major blow to corporations' abilities to abuse the privacy rights of their users in a way that hundreds of prior legislations have not. The proposal is to have the government regulate companies by forcing them to pay their users all of the money that the corporation makes off of their information, and importantly that they do this without being allowed to deduct any of the expenses they incur in going about the process of stealing their users information or of marketing that data to information buyers. The goal of such legislation is not for the companies to pay their users for the information that was unwillingly taken and sold, often without the users' awareness, but instead to make the selling of information a negative income stream.

Intended effects

The intent of this type of legislation is not to create negative profits because it would be irrational to believe corporations would continue to throw money away; the intent is instead the atrophying of the system of data tracking. By making it costly to do evil and cash-neutral to do good, companies will do good despite their inclinations. This would weaken corporations' tendrils of control over people by cutting the beast off from its nourishment. This is not so idealistic a proposal as to believe that this would permanently stop companies from engaging in data brokering activities. However, the intent is that this would cut the income stream off for a few years while they formulate a new way to circumvent this legislation.

Ideal outcomes

The ideal outcome is the burgeoning of free software as people finally get a taste of what online freedom is. Without data mining and brokering, people might find the internet more enjoyable; they are not constantly bombarded by ads whenever they mention the ad's topic. They might even look for ways to protect themselves further online in order to see if additional insulation from malevolent companies and governments could further improve how they experience the internet. In the most idealistic world, the bulk of the population will have switched over to the more privacy alternatives to the point where by the time the major corporations find ways to maneuver their way around the legislation, they find that people have lost their appetite to have their data taken in exchange for nothing. Some may go back, but they would likely do so with eyes open and demand that if companies are going to use them, at least they be financially compensated for the value they provide. So, in an ideal world, by the time companies figure out how to start stealing our data so that they can sell us to the lowest bidder, many people will refuse to go back, and the many that do go back will at least have the expectation that they are going to receive some profits from their data, though obviously not the best outcome, so even those that choose to plug back in are no longer nearly as profitable as they once were. The hope is that this sort of environment would be much more hostile to surveillance and data theft, with a sizable, if not majority, slice of the population refusing to plug back into the system, leaving it a crippled shadow of its former self.

Realistic outcomes

Sadly the more realistic outcome is a muted version of the ideal. Many people will sadly not care one way or the other because they don't really notice a change; those people are doomed to be replugged into the system with no resistance. The money-driven people that would replug in exchange for financial gains in the ideal scenario would likely still go back but for even fewer gains, which would eventually be whittled down to nothing. The positive of the realistic outcome is that millions of rebellious kids and teens will experience freedom online for the first time, and that may be enough to kindle hope for humanity's future fight for freedom online. The second positive outcome is the influx of users to more safe and private alternatives to mainstream apps and websites. It's possible that enough people stay using software that cares about human freedom that the technology will move from the innovator to the early adopters stage which would be a massive victory for online privacy rights.

Conclusion

Thus, the promotion of such legislation would be in humanity's best interest. While it does not solve the problem, it starves the parasites of nutrition and buys time for the agents of human freedom to act with increased flexibility and freedom to bring a true alternative to the rest of the public, which does not understand the technology. Just as the desire for profits have been instrumental in moving companies in the direction of exploiting their users' data, the fear of endless losses can serve to curb the same behavior as the companies, like simple animals, will do what brings them pleasure and will avoid that which causes them pain. This plan is, in essence, to pavlovianly train companies to fear using their user's data to make money.

You're right that a confiscatory liability regime, like a 100% tax rate or a criminal prohibition is likely to reduce somewhat the activity at which the suppressive legal treatment is directed. You are also implying correctly that such a scheme essentially inverting the present immunity subsidy provided to the data-mining industries.

Your comment about free software makes no sense. Please clarify what that has to with your subject.

But the most important route to improvement is to challenge your premise. What is the point of recommending policy that no one actually supports, that has no political relevance or possibility of enactment, for which you cannot muster a single reference to any other thinker or any examples of successful employment of an equivalent policy approach in the real world?

The informed reader is therefore likely therefore to disregard the idea altogether unless you address the obvious objections. Because you do not relate your idea to any other analysis or descriptive research, the uninformed reader remains uninformed. Effort invested in learning and commitment to serious dialogue with others' ideas will yield substantial improvement, for which there is much need.

---

You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:

• #Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, GabrielLopez
• #Set DENYTOPICVIEW = TWikiGuest

Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list.