Mason Wheeler 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: App Developers Suing Facebook Suffer Redaction Failure, Expose Discussions About Pay-For-Play API Access

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 30 Nov, 2018 @ 07:24am

    Google: Don't be evil.

    Facebook: Don't bother even pretending we're not being evil.

  • On the post: But Her Emails: Ivanka Trump Also Used A Private Email Account For Official Government Business

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2018 @ 03:32pm

    Re:

    Would you bet your life that grade schoolers know this stuff? There are two high school students in my living room who've been educated within the public school system, and I can bet you they don't understand the electoral college.
    Why not? I came out of (public) high school with a solid understanding of it, and it wasn't all that long ago. (I don't have kids of my own yet, for example.)
    Nor have we been able to change voting systems to majority counts
    Please look up the concept of Chesterton's Fence before saying such things.
    nor have we been able to change FPTP or add in campaign financing reform
    These, I'll grant, are actual legitimate problems, but what do they have to do with the Electoral College? (Hint: nada.)
    US democracy is not fractured, it's shattered and the average American believes it mostly works or is at worst a little broken.
    o_0 Do you own stock in a tinfoil company or something? Wow...

  • On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2018 @ 03:24pm

    Re: Re:

    And that's where we would have a place for a legitimate medical insurance system. That's what insurance is for: covering unforeseeable catastrophes.

    Medical "insurance" as we know it in the USA bears no resemblance to real insurance, though. They cover routine healthcare and do everything possible--often going to truly disgusting extremes--to avoid having to pay for actual catastrophes. Elizabeth Warren was quite right to compare the system to an umbrella that melts in the rain.

    No matter which angle you look at it from, it's a thoroughly corrupt system that needs to be done away with.

  • On the post: Our Bipolar Free-Speech Disorder And How To Fix It (Part 2)

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2018 @ 02:45pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: You have a point, but...

    That's a good point. It's not always easy for AI researchers to determine why an algorithm reached the decision it did, because algorithms don't "think" the way we do.

    That would be a good research project for this field. When another human being makes a decision we find strange, we can ask them to explain themselves, and they lay out their line of reasoning for us. (Assuming they're feeling cooperative, of course.) Having an AI that's capable of doing the same thing would be a major step forward.

  • On the post: Our Bipolar Free-Speech Disorder And How To Fix It (Part 2)

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2018 @ 02:10pm

    Re: Re: You have a point, but...

    trade secret (or at the very least, business confidentiality precautions, even if not backed by trade secret law) seems to be the least bad solution to the issue of not leaving the algorithmic crown jewels out for anyone to grab and (ab)use.
    This statement only makes sense if you accept the premise that this "issue" is a problem in need of a solution. I don't accept that, for three reasons:
    1. Keeping algorithms secret is causing real, non-hypothetical problems today in the real world. (cf. Facebook.)
    2. The hypothetical problems that might be caused by these secret algorithms becoming public are outweighed by the security interest of Kerckhoff's Principle, ie. that any legitimate security analysis must assume that all secret algorithms are already known to the adversary, and only the key remains confidential. Therefore, in matters of security, secrecy harms and hinders the good guys (who are unable to analyze secret works) far more than the bad guys.
    3. The hypothetical problems that might be caused by these secret algorithms becoming public, making the system trivial to copy, are highly overstated. As an experienced professional software developer, even without any access to secret algorithms, it would take me a few months tops to create and launch a website that does all the same basic functionality as Facebook or YouTube. That wouldn't make me a serious competitor, though, as the value of the site lies in its user base far more than its codebase. (This is why Reddit is likely the only Reddit-like site you're familiar with, despite them publishing their Reddit server code as open source. They understand this principle.)
    What compelling reason is there for keeping algorithms secret that outweighs these reasons not to?

  • On the post: Our Bipolar Free-Speech Disorder And How To Fix It (Part 2)

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2018 @ 12:30pm

    The reasons some aspects of the platforms' algorithmic decision-making may be generally reduced to two primary arguments. First, the platforms' particular choices about algorithmically selecting and serving content, based on user data, may reasonably classed as trade secrets

    There is nothing reasonable about trade secrets. There are only two reasons for a "trade secret" to exist:

    1. The knowledge is useful enough to give the company an edge in the market. For centuries now, we have recognized that any such knowledge is worth preserving, particularly because it's all too easy for it to be lost if something unexpectedly goes wrong. And for all of the promise of modern information technology, that is still a real problem; the only difference today is that it requires a server to abruptly die instead of a craftsman. This is the problem that patents were invented to solve. For all the problems that patents can cause, they're less bad than trade secrets, because requiring useful information to be published means that it can be preserved. Therefore, there is no legitimate reason for such information to be covered by trade secrets, both because it has a more valuable protection under patent law and because it legitimizes trade secrets, allowing for them to provide cover for the second type:
    2. The secret knowledge is irresponsible, malicious, or otherwise harmful to other individuals or to society in general. We see this all the time, when companies from chemical manufacturers to oil extractors to food and beverage producers to voting machine suppliers to social networks refuse to disclose vital details of how their products work when credible accusations are raised (often in court) that they are causing real harm. But because we recognize trade secret protections for the first type, all the company has to do is claim that their secrets of this type are the first type and all too often they are shielded from scrutiny. This is a thing that should never happen.

    Given that the first type of protection has no legitimacy, as the relevant societal goals would be better served by the patent system, and that the second type of protection is actively harmful to society, legal protection for trade secrets should be abolished altogether.

  • On the post: FBI Faked Up A FedEx Website To Track Down A Scam Artist

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2018 @ 09:55am

    Trust no one.

    Yeah, this is generally good advice for criminals. Good to see the FBI is staying a step ahead of them.

  • On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 190: Should We Break Up Big Tech?

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Nov, 2018 @ 04:58pm

    My take:

    Matt is clearly someone who has done a lot of study and nuanced thinking on the subject. He's got a good understanding of the issues involved. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but he's on the right track most of the time.

    Jeff felt more like a caricature than a real person, a living, breathing example of Poe's Law. Seriously, if I wanted to write a strawman debate character of a Libertarian troll arguing in bad faith, I would have him do exactly what Jeff did:

    • try to reframe everything in terms of economics, reframe the economics in terms of the greatest benefit to the most wealthy and powerful, and assert with no evidence that this state of affairs benefits everyone else
    • asserting that there is actually no evidence of the well-understood harm being discussed, then, when called on it, present a standard of evidence that is literally impossible to meet (as one of the other panelists pointed out, thankfully)
    • gaslight opponents by asserting, after they tear your shoddy assertions apart, that they have proven your point for you
    • interrupt and talk over the top of opponents who are making valid points

    For that last one especially, he should have been unceremoniously tossed out by the moderator about 75% of the way through. But his entire shtick from beginning to end was straight out of the bog-standard Libertarian troll playbook; I could predict the majority of what he said because I've seen it so many times. And it's really getting old.

    And Hal... was there too. And he said some things.

    My take on this: I was happy to hear someone mention the "too big to fail" problem, because it ties into something that's been running around in my mind for a while now. We've seen several Techdirt articles (and podcasts) talking about moderation at scale, and how it's literally impossible for platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to successfully moderate their content.

    Every time, I'm reminded of Bernie Sanders' famous statement that "too big to fail is too big to exist." Might I suggest, in this context, the slightly less controversial proposition that too big to succeed is too big to exist?

  • On the post: We Interrupt All The Hating On Technology To Remind Everyone We Just Landed On Mars

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Nov, 2018 @ 01:14pm

    That's pretty cool. So when are we going to send Matt Damon over?

  • On the post: New GDPR Ruling In France Could Dramatically Re-shape Online Advertising

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Nov, 2018 @ 07:43am

    That ruling is not just a big problem for Vectaury -- it's hard to see how it could possibly confirm consent for the 67.6 million people whose data it holds. It's also a problem for the online advertising industry

    ...and awesome for the rest of us. About time the GDPR does something right!

  • On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 09:31am

    Re:

    Why? Do they have the right to know whether or not you're taking medication that was prescribed to you? And how is this any different?

    Their job is to pay for the treatments that you need. Whether or not you take proper advantage of them is irrelevant.

  • On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 09:29am

    Re:

    This is all well and good for people tech-savvy enough to know about such things and how to implement them, but what about the other 98% of the populace?

  • On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 09:27am

    Re:

    Perception? It is.
    It is now. Step 1 was decades ago.

  • On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 07:47am

    “The doctors and providers are not in control of medicine anymore,” said Harry Lawrence, owner of Advanced Oxy-Med Services, a New York company that provides CPAP supplies. “It’s strictly the insurance companies. They call the shots."

    This is what I've been saying for years. You know what you call the guy who pays all the bills? "Boss."

    Insurance companies have been running a very dangerous scam for decades now, since the Nixon administration, to get into the position they're in today.

    1. Create the perception that health care is too expensive.
    2. Make it very easy to get people on health insurance by offering it, not to them, but to their employer as a benefit for employees.
    3. Once you reach a critical percentage of coverage, to the point that you're the major payer, use this leverage to make health care providers offer terms that are hostile to people not using your insurance. Higher prices, network restrictions, etc.
    4. Cry crocodile tears when a law is passed giving you a government-enforced monopoly by requiring all citizens to purchase health insurance, while secretly laughing all the way to the bank.
    5. Now that the competition (which is not other health insurance; it's people paying for healthcare without any insurance) is gone, you have essentially unlimited power. You get to play god, deciding who lives and who dies by denying treatments at a whim.

    It's important to remember, health insurance is not a healthcare product; it's a financial product, produced and sold to us by Wall Street, and step 5 is where we are today. Their control over the details of our health is more scary than any of the other abuses they've perpetrated.

    When campaigning for the ACA, President Obama talked about how we would end up with something like 30 million less uninsured people. Like so many things, he had this exactly backwards; what we need is not 30 million less uninsured people, but 300 million more. We need a health care system where people can afford their own health out-of-pocket, which is largely what we would have if it were not for Wall Street monopolists actively driving prices up.

  • On the post: But Her Emails: Ivanka Trump Also Used A Private Email Account For Official Government Business

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2018 @ 01:35pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Oh come on...

    Per Morgan Stanley, peak spending age is 35-54. The people aging into this demographic during the Obama Administration were Gen Xers -- who are smaller in number than both the older (Boomer) and younger (Millennial) generation. So right off the bat, your claim of a sudden surge in people in the peak spending demographic is suspect.
    We had that boom during the late 90s and throughout most of the 2000s. But there's a second wave of the same Boomer generation to it that Morgan Stanley's site didn't mention: while the average person's peak spending age is around 50, for the wealthiest it's closer to 60. And with so much of the total wealth being concentrated in the hands of the top 1%--the majority of whom are Baby Boomers--the expected result is... well... exactly what we've been seeing for the last few years. But now as that peak begins to pass, things are looking a bit rocky ahead.
    Any way you slice it, it's ridiculous for Trump to claim credit for the current economy, as the trend lines are the same as they were before he took office. Wherever you place the credit for the economy in 2016 (and whatever role Obama may have had, he certainly wasn't solely responsible), it doesn't belong with Trump.
    I never said it did. In fact I said pretty much the exact opposite: that no President deserves the credit because it's the result of demographic forces that were set into motion decades before any of them even went into politics.

  • On the post: But Her Emails: Ivanka Trump Also Used A Private Email Account For Official Government Business

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2018 @ 11:47am

    Re: Re: Re: Oh come on...

    The economic wave was mainly created by people several decades ago having lots of kids, who therefore ended up reaching their statistical peak consumer spending age all at once. Who the current President was when this happened has very little to do with it.

  • On the post: In A Speech Any Autocrat Would Love, French President Macron Insists The Internet Must Be Regulated

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2018 @ 08:03am

    Re: Re:

    What strawman? President Hosni Mubarak, who the Egyptian protests eventually forced out of office, was also a democratically elected leader. (At least for certain definitions of "democratic election," the standards of which have not really improved in the intervening years.) Let's look at it in context:

    This appeal to "values" was a recurring reference that underpinned his speech. Thanks to the Internet, Macron said, we saw an upsurge in democracy (i.e. Tahrir Square). Now, however, he complained, the Internet is being deployed by fringe elements to work against those democratic values.
    Macron is saying that the Internet helped catalyze an increase in democracy, which is good not in and of itself, but specifically because of the "democratic values" that come with it, and using Tahrir Square as an example of this. So when I point out that the results have not, in fact, involved an increase in democratic values, how is that a strawman?

  • On the post: Why Europe Will Never Build Its Own Digital Giants

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2018 @ 07:41am

    Re: What makes Silicone Valley Silicone Valley?

    "Silicon." Silicone, with an e on the end, is a type of rubber-gel-plastic-ish material that is not used in the microchips from which Silicon Valley gets its name.

  • On the post: But Her Emails: Ivanka Trump Also Used A Private Email Account For Official Government Business

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2018 @ 07:29am

    Re: Oh come on...

    Can't we have a little hope that we've passed the half way mark?
    Unlikely. Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama all got a second term despite each of them having clearly demonstrated by that point that they were blatantly unfit for one. Why should Trump be any different?

  • On the post: Corel Manages To Accuse A Totally Legit Customer Of Piracy

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2018 @ 01:38pm

    Wait, what?

    Corel is still around?!?

    The last time I heard anything about them, it was 2000 and I read an article that mentioned how no one was using Corel products anymore!

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