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Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

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Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#31

Post by JohnFen »

jamiequint wrote: post #25
nonameiguess wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem like a fair representation. The quote there isn't saying you should expect totally free services. It's saying you have the right to expect not to be tracked . Advertising up until 20 years ago relied entirely upon context and behavioral and engagement studies were conducted on an opt-in basis on Nielsen families and focus groups composed either of volunteers or people being compensated for participa…

You do not, and should not, have a right not to be tracked. You should have a right to know if a given company wants to track you, and to decide if you want to still do business with them as a result. Similarly, they should have the right to know if you are going to block/evade tracking and be able to decide if they still want to do business with you as a result. This is how a free market works.

> You should have a right to know if a given company wants to track you, and to decide if you want to still do business with them as a result.

Theoretically true, but what happens when all sites engage in spying? We're nearly there right now.

You could argue that I still have the choice to avoid using online services entirely. Which is what I do (outside of a small handful of exceptions, such as HN -- and even then, I have to actively put a lot of effort into defending myself).

But, this strikes me as being wrong on so many levels, starting with the fact that it seriously reduces the utility of the web and certain swaths of the internet.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#32

Post by ZeroGravitas »

School-Cotton wrote: post #6
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or in theory at least, well regulated small businesses in a competitive market.

That’s only assuming a large enough fraction of possible customers care.

That probably applies to the free software option too and may be unavoidable. Reducing the number of people who have to care and how much they have to care are both achievable goals though and snallwr businesses working with some free software is a workable synergy to some degree.

Many of the free software success stories involve a bunch of compeitors trying to dethrone a monopolist. Since the other conpanies are already excluded from being the king, they work together to avoid veing totally crushed. Regulation could encourage this too.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#33

Post by emodendroket »

> This is the worst possible situation for the advertisers, because it can reveal that tracking users offers no ROI. In fact, the overwhelming majority of ads are already being ignored, and they're basically fighting for scraps.

Well, it could, but what if it showed the opposite?

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#34

Post by poidos »

It gets grosser by the day.

This is something that is endemic not just to ad-tech companies, but regular brick and mortar stores as well: it isn't enough to just be consuming, to actually be producing value for the business: they must monetize as many seconds of our attention as possible!

If I'm buying gas, I'm being served ads via the little screen. If I'm at the grocery store, there's ads plastered onto my cart. Buy something online? I get ads for unrelated products emailed to me in the weeks after, even if I didn't agree to be marketed to (I never do.)

It makes me feel like I'm going crazy, sometimes. And what's worse is it feels like there isn't an end in sight.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#35

Post by epicide »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #10
yur3i__ wrote: post #2

I think the only analogy that works now is "if you aren't in control, you're the product", ala free software and self hosting

>free software Well maybe, if this whole sorry ediface wasn't built on top of free software.

Not OP, but I assume they meant "free as in speech, not as in beer". AKA FOSS.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#36

Post by scrose »

jamiequint wrote: post #25
nonameiguess wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem like a fair representation. The quote there isn't saying you should expect totally free services. It's saying you have the right to expect not to be tracked . Advertising up until 20 years ago relied entirely upon context and behavioral and engagement studies were conducted on an opt-in basis on Nielsen families and focus groups composed either of volunteers or people being compensated for participa…

You do not, and should not, have a right not to be tracked. You should have a right to know if a given company wants to track you, and to decide if you want to still do business with them as a result. Similarly, they should have the right to know if you are going to block/evade tracking and be able to decide if they still want to do business with you as a result. This is how a free market works.

How does this work if you’ve never done business with the company or ever intend to?

If I get a random email from a company with a tracking pixel, am I ‘doing business’ with them?

If a friend shares my name and number with an app, am I doing business with them?

If a friend posts a photo of me on a social media service I don’t use, do they send out a PI to track me down and let me know they’re going to be running facial recognition tech on the photo which could build an album of me?

This is more the Wild West than a free market.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#37

Post by JohnFen »

raxxorrax wrote: post #17
pdpi wrote: post #9

The next to last paragraph bothers me: On Hackernews, they think it's "entitlement" to think that you can use free email and search engines and expect not to be tracked. The main problem with this line of thinking is that even if you had the option to pay for your email and for your search engine, some G**gle executive somewhere would mention during a meeting that they could add an extra $X million of revenue if they…

If you are strict with this argument, there would also be no free internet sites to visit. I don't need to use any of Googles services to be tracked by Google, although Facebook is probably the largest offender here. In social networks, friends of mine have shared my contact information without me even knowing it. So other people might pay with your data. And I believe the text is correct. You would pay and be tracke…

> If you are strict with this argument, there would also be no free internet sites to visit.

This is demonstrably untrue, as demonstrated by the fact that there were tons of useful free sites before advertising was even realistically possible, and there are still quite a lot of useful free sites now.

Also, I take issue with calling ad-supported things "free". They aren't free at all -- you're just paying with a different form of currency.

> websites could be financed through advertising that doesn't rely on tracking.

This would remove roughly 95% of my problems with the modern web and online services.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#38

Post by emodendroket »

neither_color wrote: post #21
corpdrone2021 wrote: post #13

I realized this when Microsoft started reading the emails and attachments in my office 365 account, and having Cortana "helpfully" suggest various to-do items from them. The degree to which this seems to be the case has me convinced that the only way I will actually have any control of my data is if it's on a hard drive in my physical possession. And frankly I don't have time to maintain my own IT infrastructure.

I was mortified by Cortana auto-extracting todos from private emails but my father in his late 50’s said it was neat and very useful for him. So it goes.

I have always found it pretty helpful when Gmail would add reminders and calendar events by scanning emails so I can see it.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#39

Post by jamiequint »

My primary problem with this article is that the author assumes that consumers get no value from ads. While the author may not personally like ads, it is undeniable that thousands to tens of thousands of consumer brands (the same ones who are now suffering with iOS 14.5 changes) now exist as a result of Facebook’s distribution. These brands mostly would have failed in a pre-FB-ads world. The idea that there is zero consumer value from Facebook ads or ads in general is absurd. There is a real cost to disabling tracking and blocking ads, it’s just often not borne immediately, or in a directly measurable way.

Also, while I understand the general aversion to tracking. If one believes that any advertiser cares about tracking their behavior individualy - rather than in aggregate - they are suffering from delusions of grandeur.

Re: Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product

#40

Post by rideontime »

jamiequint wrote: post #39

My primary problem with this article is that the author assumes that consumers get no value from ads. While the author may not personally like ads, it is undeniable that thousands to tens of thousands of consumer brands (the same ones who are now suffering with iOS 14.5 changes) now exist as a result of Facebook’s distribution. These brands mostly would have failed in a pre-FB-ads world. The idea that there is zero c…

Did you miss yesterday's post about the gay priest being outed by his advertising data? It's not just advertisers that have access to that data.
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