
Telecom Lobbyists Have Stalled 70 State-Level Bills - LinuxBender
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3ky5wj/telecom-lobbyists-have-stalled-70-state-level-bills-that-would-protect-consumer-privacy
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munchbunny
I think one very likely cause for telecoms being vehemently against privacy
legislation is that both AT&T and Verizon are trying very hard to enter the
adtech market. They are hoping that first party customer data combined with
more traditional third party cookie data will give them a competitive edge,
but it'll only happen if they are allowed to use all of that data in the first
place.

I used to work in ad tech, and this kind of stuff was responsible for my
steady disillusionment with advertising as an industry. While the argument
could be made that marketing/advertising can be benign, it's quite obvious
(once you know where to look) that it creates all sorts of perverse societal
incentives that work against individual citizens' interests.

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Latteland
In California and Washington state, they have a lot of initiatives. I think an
initiative might be a better way to get pro-consumer changes. We did already
pass a net neutrality bill in Washington.

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gregimba
And some of those initiatives are horribly written by people who have no
expertise whatsoever writing laws. WA is a great example of this with some of
the most recent Gun Control policies would actually violate WA state's
constitution.

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Latteland
Can you elaborate on the problems with the gun control initative and what
you'd change to fix it?

