161–170 of 404 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are free to enable Do-Not-Track and then sue a company for not respecting it, which will create precedent that companies must default to "reject all" if this header is present, if you win.
Seems sensible, which makes me wonder why it hasn't already happened
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between placing a sports shoes ad in front of a gym, and getting to know the history and habits of every person that ever entered that gym, and showing each a different ad. I mean, 30 years ago, we were horrified by the extent to which Stasi spied on their own people. Now, we'd call them amateurs.
People were horrified because of what they did with the data. This is why it is different when there is a person listening, as their interests get involved. If it is just something telling me the shoes I looked at last week are on discount, instead of some random ad, who cares? I used to get a long distance phone bill in the mail with the list of every number I called so I could verify the charges. Was it wrong for M…
Where it gets controversial is retention time and reuse: ten years from now, there’s no billing justification but you might not want President Donner to demand they turn over the list of everyone who called a political rival. Similarly, you might not care if they have that data but still object to them sharing it with marketing partners (they called LL Bean, you can advertise your outdoors wear to them!) or making it available to other companies who can use it to look up your interests when you are on the phone or applying to something. This can be deeply personal: your car insurance company would definitely pay to know who calls alcohol addiction treatment numbers, an employer of a certain vein might be interested in calls to adult services, etc. Once that data is out, there’s no way to un-breach it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There _were_ tons of tech jobs. Much harder to jump ship nowadays since layoffs have flood the market with high skilled job seekers and borrowing money is no longer free for tech firms. Life is complicated, employees can be just as much locked in to their jobs at Google as most people are to their products.
There are still tons of jobs. They might not pay as well, but "I need to provide for my kids" might mean you take a crappy IT job that pays 60k, not that you build global surveillance/propaganda systems to be used against them and their peers. This isn't the depression. And up until recently, there were tons of really good jobs. What's the excuse there? If you have kids, you're presumably a few years into your career…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between placing a sports shoes ad in front of a gym, and getting to know the history and habits of every person that ever entered that gym, and showing each a different ad. I mean, 30 years ago, we were horrified by the extent to which Stasi spied on their own people. Now, we'd call them amateurs.
People were horrified because of what they did with the data. This is why it is different when there is a person listening, as their interests get involved. If it is just something telling me the shoes I looked at last week are on discount, instead of some random ad, who cares? I used to get a long distance phone bill in the mail with the list of every number I called so I could verify the charges. Was it wrong for M…
The extent of the data collected and systemic consolidation between different sources is the problem, because we've seen again and again any data collection is dangerous regardless of the original intent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are still tons of jobs. They might not pay as well, but "I need to provide for my kids" might mean you take a crappy IT job that pays 60k, not that you build global surveillance/propaganda systems to be used against them and their peers. This isn't the depression. And up until recently, there were tons of really good jobs. What's the excuse there? If you have kids, you're presumably a few years into your career…
Forgetting about pay, are those jobs intellectually stimulating? Do straight conventional E commerce compared to testing infrastructure for video conferencing software? A lot of the appeal of a FAANG is the interesting work you can do at one. The only thing better would be a less secure startup working on something really novel.
Useful would be a chronology of when:
* Individuals learned/knew about the rule violations.
* Individuals were arguably rewarded.
* Individuals were disciplined.
That might give a sense of how bad the infection is, and whether their immune system is on top of it.
This reads like a tragic story. Once you've collected enough data on every internet user out there to group them into different advertising cohorts, the remaining ungrouped users, by process of elimination (due to privacy or targeted advertising laws), are children; and now they can be targeted just as easily.
Heaven forbid someone being shown ads for things that interest him. All this hand-wringing about privacy seems to me to be producing a lot of noise for minimal practical benefit. I don't see harms in ad targeting.
Children cannot make good decisions (generally) and they often have poor impulse control. Building the habit of spending money on random sparkly shit they don't need ensure that, as adults, they will be good consumers. And by that I mean materialistic and poorer than they have to be.
It's no surprise that these ads play into the most intrinsic human emotions for manipulation. They target social status, perception of self, pleasure. I see it as no different than sparkling lights on a slot machine. A way to manipulate the mind and build a money-burning addiction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are commercials during saturday morning cartoons not ads targeted at children? When I was growing up at least, it was all for candy, toys, and sugary cereal, and often had kids or cartoon characters featured in the commercial.
Absolutely, pretending like this is some Google/Meta only thing. Newspapers filled their for kids sections with advertising targeted at children. Comic books featured scammy ads targeted at kids.
This reads like a tragic story. Once you've collected enough data on every internet user out there to group them into different advertising cohorts, the remaining ungrouped users, by process of elimination (due to privacy or targeted advertising laws), are children; and now they can be targeted just as easily.
A tragic story would be one where folks in positions of power in these organizations saw these crises coming from a million miles away, tried to avoid disaster, and failed. I don't think this is a tragic story. I think this is a rather boring and formulaic plot we're seeing over and over: the story of late-stage capitalism and the application of value-extraction to human social structures resulting in comically terri…
"Oops, sorry your brother cut his leg and you had to speed to the hospital, but you better get a second job if you wanna keep your car."
Fuck this shit. Fuck all of it. And fuck all the status quo warriors sitting on the sidelines bleating about "it's just the way it is" because the axe hasn't swung for them yet. You're safe now because the market has more vulnerable people to grind up first, but rest assured, as it churns through them, your time will come too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate ads, but this is not a winning argument. Instead of winning people over to the sympathetic cause (nobody really LIKES ads besides google and meta employees) you alienate people
I would hazard a guess that no one likes ads except the likes of google and meta SHAREHOLDERS).