Discussion · BT Free Social

Just realized something. Nutrition labels were put on food to help educate folks as yo what they're eating. It helped normal people understand basic nutrition values in their food. This was one step to educating the public.

I just realized I want an Internet Privacy Label. When I go to sign up for a service you have to list out in detail every single way you sell my data and who to. I don't want legalese. I want a LIST.

Maybe once people see the long list they'll start taking this more seriously?

Anyone know if anything like this exists or is in the works?

Michael Knudsen

@mk@bsd.network · 3 months ago

@ozoned I've had this idea for a while, and in my mind it should work something like the food labels we have here.

Contrary to you, I want absolutely no details. I just want "sells your data y/n" because if they get to dilute it with numbers like they do today.

Then it would be much more desirable to have a zero instead of 1 or 100.

ozoned

@ozoned · 3 months ago

@mk@bsd.network Yes. That was my original though, the whole label, but I've evolved the idea a bit. I'm kicking around an idea that uses like a seal of quality. Just bought internetprivacylabel top level domains, org, net, com. And creating a FediBadge badge where someone can put it next to a sign up and see it has a quality label saying they don't sell any of your data. And then you can click the label and it shows verification on FediBadge. And then maybe even more information about that specific vendor/badge. So you can known with a seal whether it's instantly trustworthy, vs all of the garbage we have now.

IDK if this would pan out, it would require us to do independent verification, it would require large sites to join and do this, it requires building trust. All things I've never done. But I'm trying to figure out ANYTHING I can attempt to help make this worker better than today.

Michael Knudsen

@mk@bsd.network · 3 months ago

@ozoned I think something like this is unlikely to work on a grassroots level because it requires two things:

1) Resources to check and verify claims
2) A mandate to enforce consequences

I once had ideas that I wanted to run by EU MEPs.

However, what I do think could be done on a grassroots level is demonstrating how this should be done such that this could be clearly presented to people in the political system in a way that makes it similar to what they already know from food.

My background is from Bluetooth where icons were introduced to demonstrate interoperability, and basically this was my idea: Present the users with icons that indicate legal properties of the underlying agreements.

ozoned

@ozoned · 3 months ago

@mk@bsd.network I agree with your points. But this would be similar to something like Better Business Bureau in the US. I believe it's an independent company that just has traction. While not all businesses are a part of it, they have become a go to for reports.

Something like this would at first just be email. This can be automated. Create an account every like 6 months. If that email address shows up on a mailing list, you know it's been sold and because it's an identifiable email address to the website, we know who sold it.

Because the badges would be handled by something like BadgeFed, we could remove their badge.

I agree though, an actual governmental body doing this, would be ideal and I'd be totally fine using this as an example. Nothing I'm advocating for I plan on being the sole owner of it forever. Even my show. I do it to see if it can work, to learn, and hopefully someday, hand off to someone to do better.

Justin Macleod

@JustinMac84@mastodon.social · 3 months ago

@ozoned Are you in the US? I'm in the UK, so x EU. When I visit a site, I get an elaborate consent dialogue for most sites, it comes up if you click manage settings, that says what the data will be used for, sort of, and how many vendors will use it in that way. If you don't get such a dialogue, use a VPN whose server is based in the EU or UK.

ozoned

@ozoned · 3 months ago

@JustinMac84@mastodon.social oh yes. I've seen though. I am in the US, but I've seen them yes. I think that's way too difficult. I'm thinking not only just something like that, but also a quality seal of approval kind of thing. Like Nintendo used to do. You see the seal, you know you don't have to worry. IDK if it'll work, but I think a seal like that, once people can recognize it, could be helpful. It'd also take people putting that on their site next to signups as well though.

Parker Morse

@flashesofpanic@ruby.social · 3 months ago

@ozoned I think you’re on to something. The current (American) nutrition labels were created to highlight the key points after producers of packaged foods obfuscated the existing labels; I might argue current “privacy policies” are similarly obfuscated, made to dodge responsibility rather than inform.

Adriano

@adriano@lile.cl · 3 months ago

@ozoned "We and our 29384592837895723 partners value your privacy" is the beginning of such a statement.

ozoned

@ozoned · 3 months ago

@adriano@lile.cl Yeah. They need to be forced to show it. And folks need to know there's often a choice. That's why I'm thinking of a badge just to show. Kind of like the "Organic" label means nothing really except their self defined standards. But this would be backed by my Non-Profit and we'd do testing to verify. IDK if any of this is technically possible or would work, but I think it's worth a shot. Just a quality seal of approval kind of thing.

Tofu Musubi

@Hawaii@mastodon.world · 3 months ago

@ozoned What youʻre describing might look something like we see in the Apple iOS app store. Descriptions of nearly every app includes a list of the informatiin gathered by the app, and how that info is used. Doesnʻt include who the info is shared with, bcs that could change every day (hello data brokers!). I look for apps that say no data is collected, and there actually are a few out there!