I meant capabilities allowed for and accomplishable without digital help, which may have been unclear.
> If you think about genetic predispositions to certain illnesses, and technologically enabled screening for that after conception as a precursor abortion, then you can see how people will disagree with your statement here.
If it was easily discernible without the internet whether the person had that genetic marker, legislating away the ability to determine it with the internet is destined to fail. The key here is whether the digital age makes it easier to expand and correlate on something already achievable through using your eyes interacting with someone.
For example, I don't believe we can usefully legislate away a company's ability to use information gleaned from the customer during your interaction with them for their own purposes. That's the equivalent of asking a fast food server to wear a blindfold. It will be worked around, because it's ridiculously limiting for little benefit. I think we CAN usefull legislate what passive information companies are allowed to share with outside entities, or require they track additional information that makes it easy for them to respond to requests for removal (such as timestamps for all information that carry through to linked info, so we can require removal specific past info and correlations derived from it).
I think something trivial like store employees prompting customers at the till to buy pornographic media that they looked at for too long on the shelf/online, would be legislated against easily.
"I see you've been looking at this porno. Would you like lube with that?".
Displaying overt ads of a specific type at a specific time, probably. Displaying general ads at a general or specific time, possibly. Using that information to do advanced analysis of customers, or do custom tailored time-sensitive (it's payday!) sales, of select inventory they are likely to be interested in? Curtailing them in that manner may be harder to get companies to swallow and live with, and harder for the public to get worked up over. Loopholes would be found, or rules would be ignored, etc.
It's sort of analogous to the friendly neighborhood general store owner Bob knowing his customer Carl is into fishing, getting an expensive but interesting lure, and noting to Carl right after his payday that he has this interesting item Carl might be interested in... I don't see legislation preventing Amazon from doing the same going anywhere.
Sharing that data with outside companies, or restricting it to specific portions of a company with many businesses might be a good candidate for legislation, and also the ability to request specific purchases and associated data or all purchase data for you prior to X be removed.
> If you think about genetic predispositions to certain illnesses, and technologically enabled screening for that after conception as a precursor abortion, then you can see how people will disagree with your statement here.
If it was easily discernible without the internet whether the person had that genetic marker, legislating away the ability to determine it with the internet is destined to fail. The key here is whether the digital age makes it easier to expand and correlate on something already achievable through using your eyes interacting with someone.
For example, I don't believe we can usefully legislate away a company's ability to use information gleaned from the customer during your interaction with them for their own purposes. That's the equivalent of asking a fast food server to wear a blindfold. It will be worked around, because it's ridiculously limiting for little benefit. I think we CAN usefull legislate what passive information companies are allowed to share with outside entities, or require they track additional information that makes it easy for them to respond to requests for removal (such as timestamps for all information that carry through to linked info, so we can require removal specific past info and correlations derived from it).