Against Transparency

(pluralistic.net)

51 points | by NotInOurNames 3 hours ago

3 comments

  • 9283409232 1 hour ago
    I don't know if I would even call this clickbait but this is not an argument against transparency. It's an argument against poor regulations. I would argue Prop 65 is the opposite of transparency because just about everything causes cancer so people have learned to ignore the warning. It was a law that was passed in a time when we didn't have as much information as we do now and it should be updated and made more specific.

    > You know what would be better than a privacy policy? A privacy law.

    I agree but I wouldn't call privacy policies transparent. They are made of vague legal speak like "we may or may not share your information with advertisers and partners." There are good arguments in here but they are framed against the wrong target.

    • idle_zealot 1 hour ago
      The framing being used is that what we currently do is "pro-transparency." We make laws to "inform" consumers and then trust that the market will sort the rest out. Cory rejects this as a workable tactic, because transparency, even real, full transparency, just becomes noise that people filter out when making decisions. He argues that if you want good outcomes you need legislation other than forcing transparency.
      • 9283409232 1 hour ago
        I don't think I disagree with the conclusion but my point is that we don't have real transparency and a lot of these transparency laws actually obscure information to confuse the consumer. So I guess the issue I'm taking here is that these laws he is attacking aren't real transparency.
  • jfengel 1 hour ago
    "Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period."

    You don't keep server logs? Cool and all, but it sounds like you'll have a hard time debugging if something ever goes wonky.

  • teddyh 1 hour ago
    No mention of the GDPR.