How to fight the surveillance economy • Hacker News Board

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#41

Post by DisruptiveDave » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

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.

...and the insatiable content consumption of today's consumer."

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#42

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

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…

I wonder how much of the surveillance economy stems from the fact that millennials don't really have any extra money to spend. They can't pay for things like the Boomers could, so you have to make money from them in other ways by trying to secretly convince them to buy things with what money they do have. If younger people had money maybe they could pay for quality newspapers and websites. But all the wealth has been pushed upwards. So it is ads everywhere and people paying with their privacy loss and attention instead.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#43

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

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…

> Surveillance capitalism is a natural result of our form of consumption driven economy.

But the two don't have to go together at all. You can have an ad-driven economy without engaging in widespread spying.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#44

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #6

Or instead make the information public/transparent as possible. To level the playing field. Yes there are going to be many issue arise from this, so it's these issue that need to be fixed instead of trying to fight to make information private. >They know more about us than we know about ourselves or than we know about them Right so we need to fight for knowing more information about them as much as they know about us…

> Right so we need to fight for knowing more information about them as much as they know about us

I don't see how that actually solves the problem.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#45

Post by temp-dude-87844 » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #42

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…

I wonder how much of the surveillance economy stems from the fact that millennials don't really have any extra money to spend. They can't pay for things like the Boomers could, so you have to make money from them in other ways by trying to secretly convince them to buy things with what money they do have. If younger people had money maybe they could pay for quality newspapers and websites. But all the wealth has been…

In past comments I've written about the symptoms and observed effects of wealth concentration, but I don't think wealth concentration explains this. It's a bad fit.

Instead, I believe abundance of supply does. In the past, there were simply fewer things to subscribe to, so a median family would pay for the local newspaper and cable -- and generations before then, just the newspaper. Rich professionals and the elite would pay for one of the premier papers, and finance paper, and an arts magazine. Fans with particular interests would pay for one or two other serials.

These days, content is everywhere, and much of it is available for free. This is impossible to compete with on price, and has been shown to be hard to compete with on quality and depth of coverage, because it chops off large portions of the market who may have paid for convenience of distribution in the past, but now they don't have to. This leaves even more pressure on those willing to pay. In this kind of situation, the classic resolution is consolidation, which is already underway.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#46

Post by lucas_membrane » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

Oppression is always structural. Organize.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#47

Post by est31 » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #12

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 pr…

Facebook seem to have been able to constantly grow their per user revenue: https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average...

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#48

Post by amelius » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #47

amelius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

Facebook seem to have been able to constantly grow their per user revenue: https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average...

But Facebook has an enormous user base. Also, this is a different kind of scaling, as the value they provide is the same as before. And they had to work hard to change their price point.

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#49

Post by KaiserPro » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

VPNs do literally nothing to protect your privacy.

if anything they make it _more_ obvious who is using your internet connection. Yes, your ISP will be less able to snoop, but you are now exchanging your ISP's complete oversight, with a VPN provider's.

Now, if you VPN is based in the EU, then you have GDPR to help you. However the burden of proof is still on you.

So what can you practically do?

1) container tabs

Each service you _have_ to sign into has its own container. This stops each service like google, facebook, ebay et al form a complete picture of you.

2) check your unique browser ID, https://panopticlick.eff.org/

3) trash your browser's profile every month.

4) on your phone, keep in private mode

Re: How to fight the surveillance economy

#50

Post by function_seven » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #42

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…

I wonder how much of the surveillance economy stems from the fact that millennials don't really have any extra money to spend. They can't pay for things like the Boomers could, so you have to make money from them in other ways by trying to secretly convince them to buy things with what money they do have. If younger people had money maybe they could pay for quality newspapers and websites. But all the wealth has been…

There's a math inequality here.

Mike the Millennial is strapped for cash, and so won't pay for content directly. Alice the Advertiser wants to convince Mike to buy her products, so she places ads with Nick the Newspaper. Nick gets money from Alice, to provide Mike with content for no cost.

But doesn't Alice expect a return on that advertising spend? Doesn't Mike ultimately pay Alice more than he would have if he had just paid Nick directly?

I know it's a hell of a lot more complicated than this, but aggregated over all advertising industry revenue, and aggregated over all content subscription revenue, it seems that the ultimate price of advertising (once it percolates down to the consumer) will always be greater than an equivalent cost of subscriptions.