
Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data - privong
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-prime-day/amazon-offers-10-to-prime-day-shoppers-who-hand-over-their-data-idUSKCN1UB164
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r3bl
Just a casual reminder that a portion of Amazon workers are on a strike during
the Prime Days.

Support them by not visiting any Amazon property for the next two days. No
Amazon purchases, no Audible, no Goodreads, no Twitch. AWS is kinda
unavoidable, but the rest is not. We can do without them for two days, and
show our support for the workers that are protesting inhumane conditions.

~~~
inetknght
> _AWS is kinda unavoidable, but the rest is not._

Even AWS is avoidable. The cloud hosting market is competitive if you'd only
look around.

~~~
r3bl
It's unavoidable in the short term. Way too many websites use AWS for a
consumer to boycott them, and if you're using it within a company, you can't
switch away easily on a short notice.

But I agree, if you work for a company that relies on AWS, now is the perfect
time to re-examine that decision. They were the first ones to fulfill a niche,
but there's a bunch of competition now.

~~~
hedora
Someone could create an ad-blocking list for AWS IP ranges, for the purpose of
such a boycott. (It is actually easier than boycotting most other commodity
suppliers.)

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zwaps
I think it is a step forward to pay users for data. Of course, amazon still
collects everything it can anyway, for free. But in principle, this is good.
But two things.

1\. What is the correct price? Amazon is doing this to better discriminate
customers on offerings, price and quality. It's essentially the sophisticated
version of what econ 101 calls "siphoning off the consumer surplus by price
discrimination". At this stage, it is highly doubtful that the fixed 10 bucks
actually represents the true value that the consumer's data.

2\. Externalities. Especially considering that amazon can classify you by
other means, people that are like you getting these 10 bucks means that amazon
increases its discriminatory power toward you - whether you have gotten the
money or not. This is a negative externality - one that the market simply can
not solve because we fundamentally lack information and this behavior
essentially induces a prisoners dilemma among consumers. Amazon is going to
know everything anyway, so I might as well take the 10 bucks.

~~~
peeters
I don't find it a step forward at all. It's a move toward pricing out the
privacy-conscious. Right now, auto insurers in Canada will give you a premium
reduction if you let them spy on you as you drive. But what happens when that
becomes the norm? People end up paying a premium to not be spied on.
Eventually privacy becomes unaffordable.

~~~
geofft
Privacy becomes worth what the market will bear. If that's unaffordable,
that's just because it's valuable.

There's all sorts of other premiums on the exercise of your rights in a
private context. It's very hard to get a job in information sectors that lets
you retain copyright of your creative work, or in general a job that lets you
exercise your freedom of speech without potentially risking your job. If you
have physical handicaps, it's more expensive to get a house and a car that are
accessible (because there are fewer opinions on the market), you can't
necessarily use public transit, and your choice of jobs is also quite limited.
Medication and treatment for chronic conditions, whether physical or mental,
often exceeds what your insurance will pay. Having a child is quite expensive.
If someone has wronged you, depending on the issue, getting a lawyer may be
very pricy.

If we think that the market should not set a price for certain desirable basic
things, it seems like the fault is on society for allowing and encouraging the
market to do so in general, not on the market participants for taking rational
advantage of it in particular cases. Personally, I'm of the opinion that
everyone should get privacy for free, but I'm also of the opinion that
everyone should get health care for free.

~~~
blub
In societies which enforce human rights, privacy is upheld through laws, not
left to the market.

Leaving it to the market leads to horror scenarios like the one we have to
live through right now: the USA's banana republic privacy laws are hurting all
of us.

------
ourmandave
This go around, "Hey, it's not like it's a total body scan."

Next year, "I did a total body scan at the Amazon Outlet and Care Center and
got a free year of Amazon Prime."

Next next year, "The Amazon chip implant was totally painless and I got an
account credit of 100 Bezos Bucks."

Next decade, "Alabama is the only state I'm not allowed to marry Alexa."

~~~
majinuub
"Bezos Bucks" I find this hilarious and disturbingly real at the same time

~~~
hedora
[http://backtothefuturemuseum.com/it/back-to-the-future-
ii/10...](http://backtothefuturemuseum.com/it/back-to-the-future-
ii/10-dollari-di-biff)

------
kylesellas
This is honestly frustrating to see whenever massive corporations are
responsible for creating a deal in which users will be given away data in
order to receive a small compensation. Data, especially personal data should
not be a means in which anyone can make any sort of financial compensation
from. personal data is stolen every day and used against individuals - and by
creating a means in which more people will give you their data, the larger
target you have from individuals who are seeking to steal others data.

~~~
nl
_Data, especially personal data should not be a means in which anyone can make
any sort of financial compensation from._

Why? That seems a pretty extreme position.

~~~
electrograv
Yeah, I thought this was a popular idea around here: _”We should have to
explicitly opt-in to data collection, and when we do we should be compensated
for our data!”_ Then Amazon actually does it and people are angry?

If anything, this is a great move in the right direction _for_ both privacy
and fair compensation: It’s opt-in (you’re opted out by default), AND you get
monetary compensation!

What more could you want? More money? Yeah, but that could actually start to
happen if a competitive market of such things grew (though I doubt that will
happen so long as it’s legal to collect data without compensation or
permission; for that we probably need regulation).

Regardless, $10 is far better than the $0 from others who take (and sell) your
data without even asking first.

IMO the creepy and dangerous privacy violations come from the always-on
tracking systems pervasive throughout the web from Google, Facebook, and
others. With those, not only are they on by default without your permission,
but you can’t opt out, and you receive no compensation!

~~~
jkaplowitz
Google actually does allow significant opting out, including for Google
Analytics.

I do have problems with their defaults in many of these areas (in my main
Google account I have disabled much of the tracking) and also with how certain
features (e.g. Google Assistant) tie more of the functionality than necessary
to extra permissions with dark pattern nags to grant them all. But the opt-
outs are generally there.

(Disclosure: I used to work for Google, but I haven't in over 4 years, and I'm
not speaking for them here.)

~~~
electrograv
You may be right that Google and others technically offer _some_ tracking opt-
out capability (mostly because they were required to by GDPR), but it doesn’t
seem to work, because _I still regularly receive targeted ads (relating to
recent web activity):_

 _... Despite having painstakingly turned off every available tracking switch
from every service I’ve ever signed up to._

 _... Despite no longer using any services from Google, Facebook, and many
others (except when I must via a link from someone else)._

 _... Despite using privacy oriented browsers with all privacy features turned
on._

There are so many problems with the current “opt out” model:

1\. They do not make it easy to find all these switches. (And it seems
intentional, though I can’t prove it.) In addition to there being no global
“off” switch, they nest countless switches behind deep hierarchical navigation
graphs, where it is extremely difficult for a human to reach every node
without missing some.

2\. Even when you find the switch, it’s not always clear which choice is the
“most off” position, and some switches do not have a “fully off” position.

3\. Many switches use extortion to convince you to keep them on: For example,
sometimes you’ll be shut entirely out of a service for turning off a tracking
switch with dubious explanations as to why they can’t operate the service
without it.

4\. Many switches will automatically and silently turn back on if you so much
as visit the wrong link to their service. Sometimes this happens silently, and
sometimes it happens via confusing “dark pattern” prompts.

5\. Google isn’t the only one. You have to repeat this whole process for every
other service you use (if they even have the switches available).

6\. Despite all this, you’ll still be tracked by trackers that don’t need or
want you to have an account with them.

The last item can perhaps be summed up by the fact that I still get very
targeted ads for things I’ve been searching for on DuckDuckGo even despite all
these efforts. Clearly trackers are still embedded into various endpoint web
pages and are figuring out what I’m doing despite it all.

It’s an interesting experiment to try yourself: try to actually not be tracked
via a regular or even fairly privacy oriented browser.

As far as I can tell, aside from getting into something like Tor, it really
can’t be done: If companies can track you, they will. And they can. So they
do.

~~~
jkaplowitz
I agree with most of what you wrote, yeah. It's a real problem, and the second
sentence of my previous comment was meant to affirm that.

~~~
electrograv
Yeah I don’t think we disagree. I just wanted to list out just how
difficult/impossible I’ve found it to be to break free of the tracking
ecosystem.

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0xDEFC0DE
At least they're transparent about it and you're getting paid for your data.

~~~
kylesellas
Thats true but I still think it is ridiculous how loosely data is given

~~~
Permit
Yes, but you should acknowledge that you don't get to make that decision for
me.

~~~
kylesellas
I am not, just shared my perspective on the matter

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cameronehrlich
You get to choose, and they are actually offering to pay you... I thought this
is what we wanted people...

------
TorKlingberg
I still question the idea that "peoples data" is very valuable. I think Amazon
is paying $10 for the opportunity to pop up "Hey, buy this on Amazon instead!"
ads when you browse other sites.

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markkanof
What are the parameters around this? Can you install the assistant make your
purchase and then uninstall it, or does it have to stay installed for some
specified period of time?

~~~
askl
Yes, you can uninstall it after you received your 10$ off. But the average
user will probably just leave it installed.

------
gourou
> The deal is for new installations of the Amazon Assistant, a comparison-
> shopping tool that customers can add to their web browsers. It fetches
> Amazon’s price for products that users see on Walmart.com, Target.com and
> elsewhere.

Shoptimate extension has been doing that for 9 years without selling your
data.

[http://www.shoptimate.fr/about/privacy/](http://www.shoptimate.fr/about/privacy/)

------
bostik
What a sneaky wording.

> _fetches Amazon’s price for products that users see on Walmart.com,
> Target.com and elsewhere._

To me that reads: "we will turn your computer to a node in our scraping
botnet". I would guess the internal documents they have will refer to this as
market research, but the fact remains that this sounds like a botnet under
construction.

~~~
user17843
It doesn't sound like scraping. What they do is they fetch the prices for
their own products when the users browses a competitor. The prices of their
competitors' products are already in the open, they won't need them. What they
need is the browsing history of their customers in order for whaterver they
want to better understand about the shopping process.

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tsumnia
Since this is causing such an uproar over privacy, instead I'd like to pose
some ethical questions:

\- Would you be willing to receive a basic living wage for sharing your
information?

\- Do you think some people's information is valued at more or less than your
own and why?

\- Would you be willing to receive payment for sharing your information that
is valued at what the market dictates? Why?

\- Based on the previous question, does your opinion change if the payment was
enough to be a living wage (though still varying based on market demands)?

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rolltiide
What is missing, compared to other platforms, is that there is no revocable
consent to prevent and deter third parties from using the collected data in
this transaction, no dynamic market based pricing of your data, and no
immutable record of the revoked consent or violation on the revoked consent

would love to see Amazon push toward those goals

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ryanmercer
Sounds like a deal for me "he visits us, reddit - where he uses his real name,
hacker news -where he uses his real name and YouTube where he uses his real
name, he's incredibly boring"

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ggg3
prime-day-boycott: the day all tech companies realized amazon had them in
their pockets with AWS

the day everyone woke up and realize the lies of multi-cloud. Everyone's
architecture is naked, and tied to one particular provider.

if you can't flip a button and serve from other provider for the strike, you
will also not be able to change when aws crashes, get slow or too expensive.
Or what is more likely, slow unless you pay the aws-prime subscription ;)

