Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I would say they're technically not data brokers because they collect data directly from an agreed upon relationship with a consumer, and they do not sell the data itself but rather productize it for advertisers.



> they collect data directly from an agreed upon relationship with a consumer

Facebook builds shadow profiles. Those involve no direct relationship with the surveilled.


But there's no evidence that the information they gather on non-users is shared with third parties, even in indirect ways like the ad-targeting information. (I don't necessarily reject the term "shadow profile", but it's important to remember that it's an activist term; there's no reason to expect that they have similar formats or uses to the non-shadow profiles.)


Presumably they get the data for the shadow profiler from tracking scripts and stuff that run in your browser, so technically that’s a relationship you accepted when you ran their script and allowed it to phone home.


Even if that was true,

> they do not sell the data itself

Selling seems like an important part of brokering




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: