Vested interest doesn't preclude objective discussion, it just makes it more difficult and more likely to be one-sided. In this case OP argues that the companies most financially lucrative position is to use the data in a way that benefits both the company and society. That stands as a strong argument against the parent comments, regardless of the underlying motivations.
I did so to be more fair. It is common practice for media companies to profit from user data (through "marketing" partnerships), but after reading my post "arguably" was too explicit. You should have the opportunity to define the terms of the discussion, seeing that it's about you.
People whose livelihood currently comes from businesses whose primary source of income is in selling people's data don't want to even think about the idea that doing something else might be a better idea.
There are a lot of people in tech (and, quite likely, on HN) who work for companies with such a profile. (Just for instance, everyone working for Google, Facebook, etc.) I doubt it's a majority, which is why the comment appears to have returned to a positive score, but there's certainly a strong contingent that could very well feel threatened by the idea that we might, as a society, have to abandon profiting off other people's data as a business model.
That's a bit of an oversimplification of my point. Profit is not a blanket justification for everything. However, when considering the legitimate interests of a company, it's important to look at the services they are offering (and what pricing they have for those service), as well as their overall business model.
WhatsApp saying 'we need this information for business intelligence purposes so we can grow our core business' is an argument that they have a legitimate interest in processing that data, and should be considered during their balancing test.
Signal, on the other hand, would struggle to rely on this argument, as their core business is to provide a service for free, funded by donations.
> if a company had better data and analyzed it more completely, they could [...]
They could do a better job at doing whatever it is that solely-for-profit companies do!
Which may include "provide a better user experience" but may also include other activities such as "sell the data of their customers to third parties for profit" or "make ads for unnecessary products even more accurately targeted" or "more effectively scrape the contact books of their customers to provide better sales leads" or "use individual data to influence custom pricing models to offer higher prices or decline service to some potential customers who are statistically less likely to be attractive customers" or "more accurately predict where individuals associated with government regulation might be trying to constrain the company's business activities" ...
I don’t actually think this is complicated and reading a comment is not the same thing as scraping the internet and you obviously know that.
A few factors that come to mind would be:
- scale
- informed consent which there was none in this case
- how you are going to use that data. For example using everybody others work so the worlds richest company can make more money from it while giving back nothing in return is a bullshit move.
why can't companies be honest that they want to gather data so they could get higher valuation and sell that data in some cases for profit instead of making such shameless statements?
> The continued investment implies that the market has spoken: Your data has value.
That's a dangerous assumption to make, even irresponsible post-2008.
It's also a fallacy which gets used by scammers often.
For example, some in the spam industry relied on that fallacy to sell malvertising schemes to rubes. Because somebody must be making money off spam, right? But the scam is selling the scheme/software to enough spammers to extract a nice living before each of them predictably jumps ship. So the answer could be, "no, they aren't making money," or, "maybe, but you won't be," and the incentive to sell the systems is still there.
Data may have value, but continued investment in it is certainly not enough on its own to elucidate what that value is.
It's the common "your data will be used to improve the model that we also offer for sale to your competitors" clause. It's difficult for business people to get on board with the idea that their internal data might benefit competitors.
Yeah I mean this misses the main argument I'm making.
I have vast amounts of firsthand evidence from randomized controlled trials that non-financial data can be used to create value. This is enough evidence for anyone in the industry.
Presumably the commenter doesn't have access to this evidence. Instead he has to rely on other heuristics, like the weaker argument that companies spend trillions on data and analytics.
Companies sometimes waste money, and maybe microservices are an example of this. But companies collectively spend 3-4 orders of magnitude more money on "all data that does not have USD units" than on microservices, so the commenter should take that as strong evidence that data can be used to create value.
Same reason many corporations make a pretty penny off easily accessible public data? Slick presentation, rich tools to use the data with, and integration into existing work-flow?
The comment was more a gesture at how all this public/semi-public/private/extremely private data can end up being used. Or indeed how it has been used or pitched to be used. When you have NSA affiliates like Palantir mucking about with firms like Hunton & Williams. Teaming up to do attack work on generally anyone who opposes the persons who make up the facade that is US Chamber of Commerce, you have a shipwreck in progress.
How much you are targeted by these entities is a matter of how much of a nail you are to their hammer.
1. People don't want satellite data they want their problem to be solved
So a company like Planet shouldn't (just) get satellite data they should solve problems.
2. Companies can't do 2 things at once well
So Planet actually has to choose between solving problems or just getting satellite data
3. Companies like Arturo have good focus and solve the problem of climate risk for insurance
So Arturo should stay focused on that, but where do they get the data from? Planet right? So Planet does have a set of customers for its data?
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Edit: I re-read the article and maybe I'm just confused on the wording. Is he saying that raw data is valuable and worthwhile for satellite companies to sell but they should not do anything to the data before try to sell it?
You're taking a much narrower view than what I was going for in my comment. I never mentioned companies selling data and I never mentioned ad revenue either.
Data on its own is not that valuable, but it's a crucial commodity that when monetized generates value that I'd say are more valuable than oil. Companies are using data to optimize supply chains, reducing spending, generating value. Others are using data to recommend you products that you're more likely to buy, increasing profit, generating value. High quality data is the ultimate commodity, the insights derived from it can lead to much more value than oil, that's the main point of my comment.
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