This is absolutely hilarious. This dude owns company that builds an array of products around identifying your users, storing as much information about them as possible, and then making that information as actionable as it can.<p>>A national privacy law would require that companies disclose how they collect your information, use your information, and offer a right-to-be-forgotten, Benioff explained. “If you want to delete your information, you could hit that button and be sure your data is gone forever.”<p>Okay, want to start by adding that button the Salesforce DMP Page? Right now, it looks like the best I can do is get an opt-out cookie that expires in 6 months [0]. I'll wait.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/sfmc/salesforce-dmp-privacy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/sfmc/sal...</a><p>Edit: I was being facetious. I know exactly why he said this and I don't expect Salesforce to do this until they legally have to. I just hope the irony wasn't lost on anyone.
I disagree with the people here who call out Benioff's hypocrisy in making this statement.<p>It's not uncommon or hypocritical for companies to be in favour of regulation that would prohibit things that they currently do. The whole point is that if Salesforce would currently start respecting privacy more than they'd be legally required to, for plain ethical reasons, but other companies don't do the same, then they have a competitive disadvantage. If the law requires them to do so, they can be more ethical while the playing field is level.<p>Of course there's still a strong and fair open discussion on how far a company should go in the "totally unethical but technically legal" arena of evil shit. But I don't see much of that discussion in this thread.<p>Companies often welcome regulation. I once read somewhere that when cigarette companies were forbidden to advertise in the EU, their profits went up. All of them were only advertising to compete with the others, it was an arms race without end. When the entire arms race got outlawed, cost shrunk but income did not change. Smokers didn't suddenly switch brand because they didn't see bad jokes about camels every commercial block.<p>I also disagree with the argument that this is a call for regulation to keep newcomers out. It's true that bigco's rooting for regulation often do this for anticompetitive reasons and it's abysmal, but I really don't see how increased privacy controls such as the GDPR (but in more places) prevents incumbents from outperforming and outmarketing the big shots. You need to come with a stronger argument about how such regulation affects Salesforce less than a tiny startup. Assuming it's decent regulation, of course - I fully agree if this ends up being a legal minefield.<p>But eg the GDPR is decent regulation that is really not that hard to abide to unless you're genuinely evil (I say this as the owner of a small EU-based startup). The world could use more of that stuff.
People might be missing the point.<p>You always start ahead in a contract negotiation when you're the one writing the first draft. It's no different here having an adtech/martech company kick off a privacy discussion; Salesforce wants the upper hand because it's easier to know the ways around the legalese when you're the one writing it.<p>The key is to say "you're right" to Benioff and then draft the law entirely without his influence.
Both the UN and the EU consider privacy a fundamental human right. We shouldn't be looking for a law, we should be looking for a Constitutional Amendment.
The CEO of a massive public company that lives on data is calling for new regulations that his company will be better equipped to deal with than competitors will? Color me shocked.
Regulatory capture would be the result of any regulation on FB.<p>I'm not convinced that Benioff is devious enough to have this ulterior motive.<p>But clearly, social networks have become the new CRM for many small-mid size businesses... and on that front FB represents a threat.
Can we have opt out for government agencies as well? I posted the other day that many county and state governments let you search their data bases for a wealth of information and you can damn well bet they sell or provide bulk access.<p>While I know it cannot be reasonably expected that "government" forget us in this manner it certainly could be forced to limit access to data that is identifiable back to an individual without their permission<p>Example of the details offered, by address or name of owner
<a href="http://www.cobbassessor.org/cobbga/search/commonsearch.aspx?mode=address" rel="nofollow">http://www.cobbassessor.org/cobbga/search/commonsearch.aspx?...</a>
> In some ways, you could say that Facebook has become the new cigarettes in our industry. That is, it's a technology that is addictive, it may not be that great for you and it might be something you don't want to go back to.<p>I watched Bernioff repeat, over and over, about how much he loved Facebook, for about 30 minutes. This was in 2010 at the Moscone center in San Francisco, right before he introduced Chatter.
This seems slightly ironic from Salesforce. I am pretty sure companies that use Salesforce will also be doing as much tracking of their users as they know how to and feeding that data into Salesforce.
I think the big problem is not privacy violations, per se, but that, with computers and the internet, one never knows what information about you is being stored and sold to others. The majority of states make it illegal to tape a conversation without consent of the other person. I support those laws. Also ones where businesses have to post they are using video surveillance. It would be great if the government or some other group would develop well defined levels of privacy with good names and icons so companies can easily describe their policies to the public. Like movie ratings. Not the best. Wish we did not need them. But works OK. I'll avoid companies that sell my location information to anyone who will pay.<p>Passing laws where people somehow own what other people and companies know about you is not a good idea. I saw your dog poop on my lawn and you did not pick it up. Can I tell my neighbors about that? What about posting on Nextdoor? Local newspaper? A tweet? If I libel or slander someone, we have laws against that. It seems to me that telling a truth you know about someone should not be at the discretion of the someone. People just need to know when they are being observed, what is being observed, and by who (or what), so they can act accordingly. Not sure how to get to that space in this smartphone world.
Could we link to the canonical url [1] instead of the tracking shortened url please?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/stories/2018/5/051618/" rel="nofollow">https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/stories/2018/5...</a>
Can they please also come up with a reasonable standard to communicate the privacy policies, i.e. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067787" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067787</a>
Although, it might a wildly unpopular opinion here, if US does not innovate in AI, someone else (and you know who) will and US will have to follow the suit. Regulations are healthy as long as they are well understood and not over-reaching.<p>Sounds like he wants to have regulation for all the aspects where their company innovate