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OK, so if I record a particular driver being an asshole on the street and then put this recording on Youtube as an individual, I would be wrong?


In Germany at least you could get into serious trouble. Dashcams are a grey area in German law. The consensus seems to be currently that they're okay for personal use, but making the video public certainly puts you at risk of a lawsuit.


If you create a database of license plates (profiles) of all cars on the road along with their whereabouts and behavior at any given time, and then sell this information to the highest bidder.... you would be a bit wrong.


Absolutely, since it would amount to trial by media, where a person is found guilty / slandered as an asshole with no avenue to defend his position / state his case.

What if he was driving like an asshole because he was speeding to the hospital or similar reasons?


Exactly. The crux of prejudice is that it makes people form an opinion before they have facts a.k.a. context. A lot of things are not what they seem at first and because people respond to well to "Occam's Razor," they choose the laziest explanation and penalize people they don't know.

A real-life example: my friend was dating a woman whose brother got in an accident. After receiving painkillers, he became addicted to them (an old story at this point). As he weened himself off of them, taking responsibility, my friend would drive him to get methadone a few times a week. A system that uses information from this one would label my friend an addict because he was so often seen driving to or parked at the rehab clinic. When in fact, my friend was a charitable, stand-up guy helping out a soon-to-be family member recover and become a stronger, productive member of society.


Just like credit scores. Their models aren't perfect, but the threshold for useful (for their benefit) is much lower, and profitable lower still. Since you're the product being sold and they're OK with many defects, and given that there are no financial consequences for you getting rolled up in a bad / inaccurate / predatory model, they don't care and aren't incentivized to fix it (and in fact in many cases are incentivized financially to keep it broken, since "hits" like that can be a selling point).


Yes




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