I'm no fan of crypto but re it losing 10% of its value in a single day, I think the S&P did that too, right? Just noting that. But crypto is still more volatile overall, I think it's still safe to say.
I may be wrong but I didn't think Matt Yglesias was saying that you can find out someone's age and race by seeing what they look like when you pass them on the street. When I read that I thought what he meant was that you can contract with data brokers and get massive amounts of data on people that they've collected from various businesses, with age/race/sex being the least of it. Of course I didn't write the article so only Matt can say what he actually meant.
So it could be an argument of, ok the Census might have a privacy loophole but that privacy is long gone. I suppose the Census could counter that this is a problem Congress should fix but still they shouldn't be leaking privacy. This is sad because the value of doing the kinds of analysis that now will break was really big, but there's also always a benefit to losing privacy alongside the cost of losing privacy.
It's a good point, and gets at the enduring debate over what crypto *is.* Currency losing 10% of its value overnight isn't great, but it's far less concerning if it's an investment.
On Matt's post, that's totally fair that that basic demographic information (and much more) is already available through lightly regulated brokers, even if it does seem like it's one thing for it to be available for a fee and another for it to be freely available via Census. More than that, though, and I have no dog in the fight, but it seems a provocative argument to make that there should be pushback on this government's rare attempt to impose some sort of privacy expectations on the information it controls using the same reasoning about limiting the utility of data that tech companies make.
Great newsletter as always!
I'm no fan of crypto but re it losing 10% of its value in a single day, I think the S&P did that too, right? Just noting that. But crypto is still more volatile overall, I think it's still safe to say.
I may be wrong but I didn't think Matt Yglesias was saying that you can find out someone's age and race by seeing what they look like when you pass them on the street. When I read that I thought what he meant was that you can contract with data brokers and get massive amounts of data on people that they've collected from various businesses, with age/race/sex being the least of it. Of course I didn't write the article so only Matt can say what he actually meant.
So it could be an argument of, ok the Census might have a privacy loophole but that privacy is long gone. I suppose the Census could counter that this is a problem Congress should fix but still they shouldn't be leaking privacy. This is sad because the value of doing the kinds of analysis that now will break was really big, but there's also always a benefit to losing privacy alongside the cost of losing privacy.
It's a good point, and gets at the enduring debate over what crypto *is.* Currency losing 10% of its value overnight isn't great, but it's far less concerning if it's an investment.
On Matt's post, that's totally fair that that basic demographic information (and much more) is already available through lightly regulated brokers, even if it does seem like it's one thing for it to be available for a fee and another for it to be freely available via Census. More than that, though, and I have no dog in the fight, but it seems a provocative argument to make that there should be pushback on this government's rare attempt to impose some sort of privacy expectations on the information it controls using the same reasoning about limiting the utility of data that tech companies make.