For years we’ve talked about how the fact that no one really understands
privacy, leads to very bad attempts at regulating privacy in ways that do
more harm than good. They often don’t do anything that actually protects
privacy — and instead screw up lots of other important things, from
competition to free speech. In fact, in some ways, there’s a big conflict
between open internet systems and privacy. There are ways to get around
that — usually by moving the data from centralized silos out towards the
ends of the network — but that’s rarely happening in practice. I mean,
going back over thirteen years ago, we were writing about the inherent
conflict between Facebook’s (then) open social graph and privacy. Yet, at
the time, Facebook was cheered on for opening up its social graph. It was
creating a more “open” internet, an internet that others could build
upon. …
