This was a bit tough to read, and I know this is not a point you were trying to make or focus on with this article, but I have a hard time taking the "well-meaning engineer" too seriously who claims to attempt to protect people's privacy, while working for an ad-agency, whose whole business is based on renting their users' whole digital identities/data/personal information/whathaveyou to whoever is willing to pay. I can only assume you felt this dichotomy while writing this. Especially as you mention the absolution of personal guilt so early on in the article.
A related version of this phenomenon applies to privacy: if you're working on a corporate privacy team, it's pretty unlikely that anyone would ever approach you asking if we can collect less data or store it for a shorter period.
The requests nudge the organization in one direction, and their incremental nature often makes it hard to draw a line: after all, a retention period of 10 days is not hugely different from 5, and 15 days is not that different from 10.
This was a bit tough to read, and I know this is not a point you were trying to make or focus on with this article, but I have a hard time taking the "well-meaning engineer" too seriously who claims to attempt to protect people's privacy, while working for an ad-agency, whose whole business is based on renting their users' whole digital identities/data/personal information/whathaveyou to whoever is willing to pay. I can only assume you felt this dichotomy while writing this. Especially as you mention the absolution of personal guilt so early on in the article.
Any plans to move to an alternative newsletter platform? I'm trying to get rid of my Substack account...
A related version of this phenomenon applies to privacy: if you're working on a corporate privacy team, it's pretty unlikely that anyone would ever approach you asking if we can collect less data or store it for a shorter period.
The requests nudge the organization in one direction, and their incremental nature often makes it hard to draw a line: after all, a retention period of 10 days is not hugely different from 5, and 15 days is not that different from 10.