A Future Without Manipulation
The core issue with data privacy is the enforcement mechanism.  Yes, there are huge demands for limits on the business world&#x27;s use of private data.<p>But at the end of the day, any company that has your name&#x2F;address&#x2F;credit card number because you bought something from them is going to <i>know</i>.  A lot. It&#x27;s unlikely that any data inside said company isn&#x27;t going to be de facto visible to them for whatever purposes that company so desires.<p>I find the effort to try to stop the inflow of data to these second parties Sisyphean.  It&#x27;s also ironic that it directly contrasts to the new widespread regime permeating all of financial services, &quot;know your customer.&quot;<p>What would be far more effective, and helpful for ensuring user privacy however, are restrictions on <i>transferring</i> that data between second parties, and third parties.  Legally binding &quot;no transferring user&#x2F;customer data to third parties, ever,&quot; restrictions would so easy.<p>Simple, enforceable (because the very fact it ends up in a third party creates a paper trail) and a huge improvement.<p>Take HIPAA and apply it to all data.<p>Most of the problems in this space don&#x27;t come from the company who originally collected the data misbehaving. They come from that data being passed through third parties like a game of pass the parcel.<p>Re recommendation algorithms, the rules should be very simple.  All publicly deployed recommendation algorithms should be public knowledge.<p>Recommendation algorithms hold <i>far</i> too much power and influence in our society to remain as secretive corporate IP.