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How to fight the surveillance economy

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Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#11

Post by Retric »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #8

The surveillance economy is a direct result of advertising becoming the default business model for Internet companies. At its root, advertising is attempting to predict an individual's preferences and subtlety nudge their preferences toward specific buying behaviors. With more granular and pervasive data inputs, you can arguably do better predictions and thus better targeting. The only counter to this is either: 1: p…

It’s much worse than that. Companies you pay significant amounts of money to like ISP’s also reolized selling your data made them just slightly more money so now all large companies do so.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#12

Post by amelius »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #8

The surveillance economy is a direct result of advertising becoming the default business model for Internet companies. At its root, advertising is attempting to predict an individual's preferences and subtlety nudge their preferences toward specific buying behaviors. With more granular and pervasive data inputs, you can arguably do better predictions and thus better targeting. The only counter to this is either: 1: p…

> The surveillance economy is a direct result of advertising becoming the default business model for Internet companies.

This is sad because advertising is a poor monetization scheme. For instance, let's say you make $0.10 per user through ads. Now let's say you want to increase the price to $2.00 per user. Then oops, you can't, because ads don't allow you to make that much for any given user. So depending on your preferred price-point, which may be variable, you may have to switch monetization schemes, which is terrible.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#13

Post by AlexandrB »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #8

The surveillance economy is a direct result of advertising becoming the default business model for Internet companies. At its root, advertising is attempting to predict an individual's preferences and subtlety nudge their preferences toward specific buying behaviors. With more granular and pervasive data inputs, you can arguably do better predictions and thus better targeting. The only counter to this is either: 1: p…

You forgot:

3. Legislation that enforces some notion of privacy rights.

Similar arguments of economic necessity can be made for alcohol, tobacco, and gambling providers. All of these products are regulated in terms of how they can be manufactured, marketed, and sold because they have large negative externalities that impact their users. I don't see why surveillance for the purposes of advertising is any different.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#14

Post by exhilaration »

pmlnr wrote: post #10

> How to fight the surveillance economy (medium.com) Step 0: publish on your own platform without trackers, not on medium.

From TFA:

Install Privacy Badger by EFF that uncovers and blocks scripts on websites that track you; this Medium page has 2 active trackers that would have been blocked if you did - Google Analytics and Parse.ly

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#15

Post by AlexandrB »

bogle wrote: post #3

> Look for businesses that accept anonymous payment options and don’t force everyone to share personal information with a third-party payment provider. What anonymous payment options are there (other than many cryptocurrencies)? I do remember the days of sending cash through the post but I don't think that's what the author is suggesting.

> I do remember the days of sending cash through the post but I don't think that's what the author is suggesting.

That may be exactly what he's suggesting. The VPN provider he works for (IVPN) allows payment by mail by cash.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#17

Post by pmlnr »

exhilaration wrote: post #14
pmlnr wrote: post #10

> How to fight the surveillance economy (medium.com) Step 0: publish on your own platform without trackers, not on medium.

From TFA: Install Privacy Badger by EFF that uncovers and blocks scripts on websites that track you; this Medium page has 2 active trackers that would have been blocked if you did - Google Analytics and Parse.ly

That is the wrong attitude. Yes, I know how to shield myself; nobody else in my family does.

There's nothing wrong pushing links to the article to platforms like HN, Reddit, etc, but the source shouldn't be medium. If you write a piece like this, it deserves to go on a platform without trackers; otherwise it's a bit hard to take it seriously.

I'm aware that medium.com might bring in a broader audience and that it's simple to "publish without starting a blog", but so is doing an HTML export from a text editor these days. It's also similar to adding "why quit Facebook" on Facebook itself - it doesn't work.

The article itself is decent though.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#19

Post by rootusrootus »

I suspect this is an inseparable part of the wide open Internet we love to talk about. Changing revenue to something more direct and less invasive is an extremely difficult task. I wonder if we will see the return of big walled gardens (e.g. Prodigy, Compuserve, etc from the old days) with all-you-can eat subscriptions to content within.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#20

Post by nabnob »

>Searching for and writing about topics online deemed inappropriate are known to authorities within a second thanks to cooperating companies.

This is already happening. I used to mock conservatives and free-speech advocates who claimed that Twitter, Reddit, Facebook etc. were censoring speech unecessarily. I'm pretty far to the left, and obviously I think racist and sexist harassment are bad things...however, these platforms have automated any features that allow users to report "problematic" posts or comments, which makes it VERY easy for people to abuse and mass-report anything they disagree with.

Why would I trust a corporation to correctly determine whether a comment is abusive, or just an opposing point of view?

What does it mean when corporations are in charge of determining what speech is offensive, and effectively control the "acceptable" range of discourse? In the UK a man was investigated by the police for retweeting an offensive limerick - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated...

I don't really agree with what he retweeted, but it still seems kind of ridiculous to investigate someone for a tweet that isn't threatening or violent.

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