@Alon @phillmv @pluralistic i think a way to think about all this is private rights of action are very rigid and limit govt flexibility, but they are also very certain. in a world with perfect govt, there’d be little use for them. in lots of eg environmental and planning contexts, they do mischief. 1/

@Alon @phillmv @pluralistic but in contexts where the issue is likely underenforcement by the plutocratic state, and where costs of enforcement despite an inability of the state to balance or make tradeoffs against other interests are low, private rights of action are very useful. 2/

@Alon @phillmv @pluralistic if we had a capable administrative state in the US reliably willing to exert state power in favor of a balanced notion of the public interest over plutocratic interests, i’d agree private rights of action should be minimized to very clear, old-fashioned torts. but we don’t in fact have that. 3/

@Alon @phillmv @pluralistic if we wanted a balanced approach to surveillance-based advertising, under which dedicated professionals trade-off the virtues of targeting against the costs of surveillance and sought careful balances, then one shouldn’t favor a private right of action. 4/

@Alon @phillmv @pluralistic but the actual circumstance is the United States’ administration state is substantially hobbled by deference to plutocratoc interest, and there is very little public interest to balance against the harms of ad-tech-driven commercial surveillance. 5/

@Alon @phillmv @pluralistic so it seems to me that, despite the (very real!) flaws of private rights of action in the general case, they are well suited to this application. we intend to bluntly impair our collective capacity to surveil, and ensure existing infrastructure is disemployed. things that have been (mostly) unintended consequences in a planning and development context are the intended consequences here. /fin