#Organizing Data

[newpartnerincrime]

appreciation post for san’s big heart 🍒

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Shifting $677m from the banks to the people, every year, forever

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

"Switching costs" are one of the great underappreciated evils in our world: the more it costs you to change from one product or service to another, the worse the vendor, provider, or service you're using today can treat you without risking your business.

Businesses set out to keep switching costs as high as possible. Literally. Mark Zuckerberg's capos send him memos chortling about how Facebook's new photos feature will punish anyone who leaves for a rival service with the loss of all their family photos – meaning Zuck can torment those users for profit and they'll still stick around so long as the abuse is less bad than the loss of all their cherished memories:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

It's often hard to quantify switching costs. We can tell when they're high, say, if your landlord ties your internet service to your lease (splitting the profits with a shitty ISP that overcharges and underdelivers), the switching cost of getting a new internet provider is the cost of moving house. We can tell when they're low, too: you can switch from one podcatcher program to another just by exporting your list of subscriptions from the old one and importing it into the new one:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

But sometimes, economists can get a rough idea of the dollar value of high switching costs. For example, a group of economists working for the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau calculated that the hassle of changing banks is costing Americans at least $677m per year (see page 526):

https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_personal-financial-data-rights-final-rule_2024-10.pdf

The CFPB economists used a very conservative methodology, so the number is likely higher, but let's stick with that figure for now. The switching costs of changing banks – determining which bank has the best deal for you, then transfering over your account histories, cards, payees, and automated bill payments – are costing everyday Americans more than half a billion dollars, every year.

Now, the CFPB wasn't gathering this data just to make you mad. They wanted to do something about all this money – to find a way to lower switching costs, and, in so doing, transfer all that money from bank shareholders and executives to the American public.

And that's just what they did. A newly finalized Personal Financial Data Rights rule will allow you to authorize third parties – other banks, comparison shopping sites, brokers, anyone who offers you a better deal, or help you find one – to request your account data from your bank. Your bank will be required to provide that data.

I loved this rule when they first proposed it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/10/getting-things-done/#deliverism

And I like the final rule even better. They've really nailed this one, even down to the fine-grained details where interop wonks like me get very deep into the weeds. For example, a thorny problem with interop rules like this one is "who gets to decide how the interoperability works?" Where will the data-formats come from? How will we know they're fit for purpose?

This is a super-hard problem. If we put the monopolies whose power we're trying to undermine in charge of this, they can easily cheat by delivering data in uselessly obfuscated formats. For example, when I used California's privacy law to force Mailchimp to provide list of all the mailing lists I've been signed up for without my permission, they sent me thousands of folders containing more than 5,900 spreadsheets listing their internal serial numbers for the lists I'm on, with no way to find out what these lists are called or how to get off of them:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/22/degoogled/#kafka-as-a-service

So if we're not going to let the companies decide on data formats, who should be in charge of this? One possibility is to require the use of a standard, but again, which standard? We can ask a standards body to make a new standard, which they're often very good at, but not when the stakes are high like this. Standards bodies are very weak institutions that large companies are very good at capturing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Here's how the CFPB solved this: they listed out the characteristics of a good standards body, listed out the data types that the standard would have to encompass, and then told banks that so long as they used a standard from a good standards body that covered all the data-types, they'd be in the clear.

Once the rule is in effect, you'll be able to go to a comparison shopping site and authorize it to go to your bank for your transaction history, and then tell you which bank – out of all the banks in America – will pay you the most for your deposits and charge you the least for your debts. Then, after you open a new account, you can authorize the new bank to go back to your old bank and get all your data: payees, scheduled payments, payment history, all of it. Switching banks will be as easy as switching mobile phone carriers – just a few clicks and a few minutes' work to get your old number working on a phone with a new provider.

This will save Americans at least $677 million, every year. Which is to say, it will cost the banks at least $670 million every year.

Naturally, America's largest banks are suing to block the rule:

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/cfpbs-open-banking-rule-faces-suit-from-bank-policy-institute

Of course, the banks claim that they're only suing to protect you, and the $677m annual transfer from their investors to the public has nothing to do with it. The banks claim to be worried about bank-fraud, which is a real thing that we should be worried about. They say that an interoperability rule could make it easier for scammers to get at your data and even transfer your account to a sleazy fly-by-night operation without your consent. This is also true!

It is obviously true that a bad interop rule would be bad. But it doesn't follow that every interop rule is bad, or that it's impossible to make a good one. The CFPB has made a very good one.

For starters, you can't just authorize anyone to get your data. Eligible third parties have to meet stringent criteria and vetting. These third parties are only allowed to ask for the narrowest slice of your data needed to perform the task you've set for them. They aren't allowed to use that data for anything else, and as soon as they've finished, they must delete your data. You can also revoke their access to your data at any time, for any reason, with one click – none of this "call a customer service rep and wait on hold" nonsense.

What's more, if your bank has any doubts about a request for your data, they are empowered to (temporarily) refuse to provide it, until they confirm with you that everything is on the up-and-up.

I wrote about the lawsuit this week for @eff@mastodon.social's Deeplinks blog:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/no-matter-what-bank-says-its-your-money-your-data-and-your-choice

In that article, I point out the tedious, obvious ruses of securitywashing and privacywashing, where a company insists that its most abusive, exploitative, invasive conduct can't be challenged because that would expose their customers to security and privacy risks. This is such bullshit.

It's bullshit when printer companies say they can't let you use third party ink – for your own good:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/hp-ceo-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-fights-viruses/

It's bullshit when car companies say they can't let you use third party mechanics – for your own good:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

It's bullshit when Apple says they can't let you use third party app stores – for your own good:

https://www.eff.org/document/letter-bruce-schneier-senate-judiciary-regarding-app-store-security

It's bullshit when Facebook says you can't independently monitor the paid disinformation in your feed – for your own good:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck

And it's bullshit when the banks say you can't change to a bank that charges you less, and pays you more – for your own good.

CFPB boss Rohit Chopra is part of a cohort of Biden enforcers who've hit upon a devastatingly effective tactic for fighting corporate power: they read the law and found out what they're allowed to do, and then did it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

The CFPB was created in 2010 with the passage of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which specifically empowers the CFPB to make this kind of data-sharing rule. Back when the CFPA was in Congress, the banks howled about this rule, whining that they were being forced to share their data with their competitors.

But your account data isn't your bank's data. It's your data. And the CFPB is gonna let you have it, and they're gonna save you and your fellow Americans at least $677m/year – forever.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/01/bankshot/#personal-financial-data-rights

[minidisaster93]

I love almost every single poppy playtime character, Doey is definitely top three.

I subsequently am also terrified by most of the characters and once again Doey is in the top three

[mostly-natm]

Lore keeps a baby (out of spite).

[sophiebaek]

Benophie Calendar - 2024

Benophie Season (s4) documentation so far!

Some dates may not be exact but dug around the best I could! Will be adding as production and press go along.

Special thanks to @vengerb3rg for brainstorming and fact checking xx

[friendofcars]

my manuscript got accepted 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉💃🏻🕺🏻💃🏻🕺🏻💃🏻🕺🏻💃🏻🕺🏻🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈🎊🎊🎊🎊🎊🎊🎊

[hanaretabasho]

summer uniform mayu, posing for morishige's camera💕☀️

version without scanline effect / phone UI under cut | twitter

[isa-moon-man]

[ovaruling]

on the subject of individual actions, they do matter, which is why men flip out when the measured birth rate stagnates/doesn’t increase or drops. they worry and they get upset and they cry and they scream and they publish articles about how men are in a crisis and it’s all our fault because we are making selfish individual choices that don’t benefit their collective. it adds up. you may not think your individual impact is much, but men as a group, especially men in high places, usually pay a whole lot more attention to the individual choices of women than you might think. and they react. that’s all i’m saying

[jedijenkins]

the librarians fandom truly is more active on tumblr which is a double edged sword bc these days big media companies look at certain social media and content sites to see if they should renew a show based on how much ppl are talking abt the show on those platforms & tumblr is NOT ONE OF THEM. to the rest of pop culture and media, tumblr is essentially a black hole where things go but don't come back out and can't be easily observed. other sites like twitter(x), youtube, facebook, instagram, tiktok are literally designed for large media corporations to be able to syphon data from them.

while im not saying I like it or that it's a good thing, the fact of the matter is if you want a show renewed you should be talking about it by name on those sites, not just tumblr. this was only just being implemented when the first show was cancelled, but now it's one of the main way media corporations decide these things. so the idea of people mainly posting about the librarians: the next chapter on here stresses me out greatly, if i'm honest. this is why ive been working so hard to get people on those other platforms to watch and talk about the librarians. i know you may hate these other platforms but if you could find it in you to at least copy and paste/screenshot the things you say on here onto other platforms yourself it would go a lot farther than you might think

[icewindandboringhorror]

indeed my exact process once every 8 months or so

[thesilly-goose]

i think everyone needs someone like data in their lives (doesn’t understand u at all but wants to very badly and is there for u anyway)

[transformativeworks]

More from the 16th Anniversary Survey

is that where y'all go for Fandom News and Information?

[tempesttamers]

Communication is so important to Javi, like Storm PAR jokingly calls him a helicopter dad because he has this almost-constant need to know where every person is at every moment in time (and maybe because he dabbled with helicopters in the military). Like every truck and most other pieces of their equipment have their own trackers connected to an app on their phones. And then before they separate for the night they have a brief meeting to go over the game plan for the next day, and then he’ll send a follow up text before going to bed that summarizes that discussion.

Javi also made sure that every member of his crew had wireless ear pieces to ensure that they stayed in constant communication with one another. It didn’t matter if you were in the same vehicle as someone else, it was a rule that every person must have their own in case anyone was separated. This meant when they inevitably leave the confines of their vehicles to deploy the radar equipment (or to seek shelter) they could still communicate.

[mostly-natm]

Brothers. 🙄💛✨

Since my last post, I have been thinking about the dynamic that Dadi should have with Data and Geordi’s families! And I have decided that a character who is a combination of Data and Geordi would be quite responsible by nature, so he would definitely accept everyone in their families as his own!

That brings us to the art. I interpret Data as being quite patient with Lore, while staying suspicious and keeping his wits about him, because he values having a brother at all. I think adding Geordi’s feelings to the mix would add tension to their relationship, and result in Dadi having much less patience for Lore than Data does. He would take more of a self-preservation approach to the relationship than Data would, and would therefore be even more estranged from Lore. Ultimately, he views Lore as his very, very flawed brother who needs to get his shit together before they can spend more than a few minutes in the same room together! Similar things can be said about his relationship with Dr. Soong.

You can read more about Dadi here!

[the-great-games]

My fears regarding TikTok go beyond the blatant propaganda, narrative control, and censorship. I am concerned about the algorithm and the potential it has to be weaponized. It is so specific and accurate to find what niches, beliefs, and subcultures people are a part of that it could be used to identify people/groups the government want to target. The US didn’t want China to have the data because they wanted the data.

For instance, if they wanted to target crafty, left-handed, eldest siblings, who like [insert specific sports team here] all they would have to do is pull on the threads of the algorithm to have the accounts and information of people who were sorted into these specific boxes.