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Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

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Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#81

Post by noneya »

noneya wrote: post #80

My new startup is building a system like this out for retailers. It has the added benefit of helping customer service personalize a shoppers experience as well as connecting digital ad spend (ads and landing page vidits) with foot traffic in both real-time and aggreated. Prototype is built and we are currently seeking investors and developers that would like to help us flesh this out. Pm me for details or questions.

FYI. Our system can also do "minority report" based ad retargeting. Also, we have a few large retail/auto dealers ready to deploy sooner then later. We are getting there but things could be moving much quicker with a little capital for additional developers, etc.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#82

Post by busterarm »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #78
busterarm wrote: post #72

This is very hit-piece and I'm someone generally wary of Google. Titan has owned and operated all of the city's remaining phonebooths for near 20 years. And I believe the MTA bus stop and subway advertising too. This is something they've already been doing. Control Group developed those info kiosks you may have seen on subway platforms. They're good people that have got some cool tech. They even post in Who's Hiring…

>They charge their phones and browse the web there. What exactly is the problem with that?

With charging phones? Nothing.

But the reality is that one person is sat camped out with a chair in front of the thing for the entire day. Nobody else can use it. I've seen folks get in fights over these things already.

I spent part of my life homeless. I still see a major problem with how these things are being used right now. We shouldn't be encouraging people to be out on the street all day -- it doesn't solve anything.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#83

Post by rmxt »

busterarm wrote: post #82
ComodoHacker wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They charge their phones and browse the web there. What exactly is the problem with that?

With charging phones? Nothing. But the reality is that one person is sat camped out with a chair in front of the thing for the entire day. Nobody else can use it. I've seen folks get in fights over these things already. I spent part of my life homeless. I still see a major problem with how these things are being used right now. We shouldn't be encouraging people to be out on the street all day -- it doesn't solve any…

What do you propose as an alternative? Charge them 25c for an hour of use?

I find it hard to blame the homeless (as you are) for taking advantage of a free perk, when it should be the cities and companies being held accountable for returning some portion of the profit back to those whom they are profiting from. Alphabet wants the information -- do you think they would have turned down a request to say that some nominal percentage of the revenue goes back to city social service programs?

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#84

Post by busterarm »

rmxt wrote: post #83
busterarm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With charging phones? Nothing. But the reality is that one person is sat camped out with a chair in front of the thing for the entire day. Nobody else can use it. I've seen folks get in fights over these things already. I spent part of my life homeless. I still see a major problem with how these things are being used right now. We shouldn't be encouraging people to be out on the street all day -- it doesn't solve any…

What do you propose as an alternative? Charge them 25c for an hour of use? I find it hard to blame the homeless (as you are) for taking advantage of a free perk, when it should be the cities and companies being held accountable for returning some portion of the profit back to those whom they are profiting from. Alphabet wants the information -- do you think they would have turned down a request to say that some nomin…

Alphabet is paying the city money here.

The city should be kicking some of this money into infrastructure/services to help the homeless. Instead right now they're doing massive cuts and leaving people to the streets.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#85

Post by rmxt »

busterarm wrote: post #84
rmxt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you propose as an alternative? Charge them 25c for an hour of use? I find it hard to blame the homeless (as you are) for taking advantage of a free perk, when it should be the cities and companies being held accountable for returning some portion of the profit back to those whom they are profiting from. Alphabet wants the information -- do you think they would have turned down a request to say that some nomin…

Alphabet is paying the city money here. The city should be kicking some of this money into infrastructure/services to help the homeless. Instead right now they're doing massive cuts and leaving people to the streets.

I agree, and I forgot about the "half billion over 12 years" line in the article. But why throw shade at the homeless due to a failing of the city?

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#86

Post by smoyer »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #79
walterbell wrote: post #5

Alphabet's NYC kiosks also have two cameras which are recording passers-by, https://cryptome.org/2016/06/linknyc-spy-kiosks-installation... A dystopian "smart city" vision can be seen in the "Hyper Reality" video, http://hyper-reality.co that is inspired by Magic Leap's AR, in which Google is an investor.

With persistent facial recognition it gives Google a very marketable database. The key being that they can store all faces and only need to go back and search them when a customer wants to know all the dates and locations where they have seen that face.

If the displayed advertisements are based on who's passing the kiosk, some very uncomfortable situations could be created - let's say a high-profile clergyman walks by and an Ashley-Madison advertisement is shown.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#87

Post by busterarm »

rmxt wrote: post #85
busterarm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alphabet is paying the city money here. The city should be kicking some of this money into infrastructure/services to help the homeless. Instead right now they're doing massive cuts and leaving people to the streets.

I agree, and I forgot about the "half billion over 12 years" line in the article. But why throw shade at the homeless due to a failing of the city?

I'm not throwing shade at the homeless. Homeless people should not be encouraged to be out on the street all day. It causes problems for them and it causes problems for everyone else too. Speaking from both experience and research here (see above where I mention about being homeless).

Also, if the city is going to provide a service here (which it has, by outsourcing to Intersection), it needs to make it "Available to Everyone", not just "Available". Right now because people can and do camp out there all day it's the latter.

These systems have cameras and the city and Intersection absolutely should be using those cameras to rate-limit peoples' use to make it "Available to Everyone". Except the cameras are facing the wrong way.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#88

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

darkstar999 wrote: post #37
andrewtlove wrote: post #34

While I certainly understand the paranoia here (hell, I uninstalled PokemonGO due to the invasive permissions), I see the positive here far outweighing the negative. The Internet is becoming akin to fresh air or clean water—a right for all citizens, not just those with means. I don't know the percentage, but there are a huge number of New Yorkers who can't afford Internet and are missing out on the digital world we'r…

> I uninstalled PokemonGO due to the invasive permissions They are fixing that. https://support.pokemongo.nianticlabs.com/hc/en-us/articles/...

I think that went out yesterday.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#89

Post by funkdobiest »

EGreg wrote: post #52
kbenson wrote: post #39

As he spoke, the screens shifted and a new message appeared: "If You See Something, Say Something. Be Suspicious of Anything Unattended." Okay, that's kind of creepy. [Google] actually went so far last year as to shit-can its own "Don't be evil" admonition to its employees in favor of "Obey the law" No, they didn't[1]. Alphabet has a slightly more formal code of conduct[2], and it's not simply "Obey the law", it's "f…

"If you see something, say something" (spanish "Si ves algo, di algo" ) is NYC's campaign in the aftermath of terrorism, and has been going on for over a decade. Its origins are not creepy and at this point most of the city's population is used to it. You can see it especially on any MTA properties such as subways, where they worry unattended luggage may contain a bomb, so they ask people to report such.

Yes the crazy thing is I remember going to London back in 90, and at that time in the US, most major stores would request that you checked backpacks in before going into the store, to prevent theft. I walked in to Tower records in Piccadilly Circus and handed my bag, expecting they would give me a claim check, and they were freaking out. As they had been sending out the same message at that time due to the IRA bombings. So they gave me the full instruction about unattended bags and how they were more worried over terrorism than theft. Crazy how it is common here 20 years later.

Re: Transforming NYC's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda Engine'

#90

Post by ComodoHacker »

busterarm wrote: post #84
rmxt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you propose as an alternative? Charge them 25c for an hour of use? I find it hard to blame the homeless (as you are) for taking advantage of a free perk, when it should be the cities and companies being held accountable for returning some portion of the profit back to those whom they are profiting from. Alphabet wants the information -- do you think they would have turned down a request to say that some nomin…

Alphabet is paying the city money here. The city should be kicking some of this money into infrastructure/services to help the homeless. Instead right now they're doing massive cuts and leaving people to the streets.

Aren't these kiosks an infrastructure/service to help anyone, including homeless?

Imagine some homeless spends a day at the kiosk and gets a remote job that requires an hour or so a day of online presence. And he/she can _actually_ perform this job thanks to this infrastructure. A couple of months later he/she spends another day at the kiosk and finds an affordable apartment (most likely not in NY). And Voila, we have -1 homeless.

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