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Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

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Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#111
Shoshana Zuboff's book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" [1] at times glances over some important technicalities but its eloboration on the social impact and consequences I found to be spot on.

Here an excerpt from Chapter 3 "IV. The Discovery of Behavioral Surplus":

"[...]Google would no longer be a passive recipient of accidental data that it could recycle for the benefit of its users. The targeted advertising patent sheds light on the path of discovery that Google traveled from its advocacy-oriented founding toward the elaboration of behavioral surveillance as a full-blown logic of accumulation. The invention itself exposes the reasoning through which the behavioral value reinvestment cycle was subjugated to the service of a new commercial calculation. Behavioral data, whose value had previously been “used up” on improving the quality of Search for users, now became the pivotal—and exclusive to Google—raw material for the construction of a dynamic online advertising marketplace. Google would now secure more behavioral data than it needed to serve its users. That surplus, a behavioral surplus, was the game-changing, zero-cost asset that was diverted from service improvement toward a genuine and highly lucrative market exchange. These capabilities were and remain inscrutable to all but an exclusive data priesthood among whom Google is the übermensch. They operate in obscurity, indifferent to social norms or individual claims to self-determining decision rights. These moves established the foundational mechanisms of surveillance capitalism. The state of exception declared by Google’s founders transformed the youthful Dr. Jekyll into a ruthless, muscular Mr. Hyde determined to hunt his prey anywhere, anytime, irrespective of others’ self-determining aims. The new Google ignored claims to self-determination and acknowledged no a priori limits on what it could find and take. It dismissed the moral and legal content of individual decision rights and recast the situation as one of technological opportunism and unilateral power. This new Google assures its actual customers that it will do whatever it takes to transform the natural obscurity of human desire into scientific fact. This Google is the superpower that establishes its own values and pursues its own purposes above and beyond the social contracts to which others are bound."

[1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/age-of-surveillance-capitalis...

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"vote with your wallet" is a useless aphorism when it comes to implementing systemic change. In order to stop Google from abusing its dominance, billions of people would have to simultaneously choose not to use the best (?) and most popular set of products. Free market activism doesn't work for consumers.

To quote a meme... "por que no los dos?" I have been using DuckDuckGo since I don't even remember how long now - pretty much immediately after I heard of it - what made the "switch" easy was the ability to search google (and a slew of other search engines and websites) from the ddg interface using the bang notation. So I have been mainly using ddg the past few years, but when I'm "sure" I would get more relevant resu…

The problem is that me switching away from Google products isn't going to change their behaviour at all, and I'm disincentivised from doing so because on an individual level, the benefits to using Google products outweighs the cost I bear from their actions. And even if I decide to bear thr cost of switching away as a largely symbolic act of protest, it doesn't change Google's behaviour at all. Problems at a societal or institutional level require solutions at the same level. There are things you can do individually (contrary to the parent's claim) to achieve systemic change but they're things like helping Google employees to strike or unionise, or building a movement around advocating for the breakup of Google. These are individual actions with the intent of building collective action.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#113
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies pay insane money for ads, because they bring clients who really-really will buy what they sell. That simple solution will lead to drop in the evil giant's ad profits from which it actually lives

It depends. I think, but I could be wrong, that if there is no alternative to the contextual ads the market will adapt and the price for them will not drop (a lot), compared to the old and now banned profiling ones, because these new ones would still be the best possible solution for companies which want to publicize themselves.

The amount of money you can gain from context ads is limited - you have so much space on the website and it will be forever reserved by the companies with the most money(monopolies) who will pay exactly the amount those ads bring to them, no more, no less. Non-profiled context ads reached their limit. No growth - no need for development

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#115

As a web developer, the AMP story is notable. On many HN comment-threads people complained that AMP pages were in fact a lot slower than the alternatives they could do, and undesirable in other ways too, and AMP didn't seem to be achieving Google's stated goals for it. Either Google has ulterior malicious motives, people posited; or perhaps is just inertially stuck enforcing something that didn't work out how they in…

For instancce, here's an example of a HN thread from two years ago, on an article on "fighting back" against AMP (!), in which the top comment:

> I worked on amp for a leading newspaper, and everyone who says that amp is about "making the web faster on mobile" is either very naive or doing marketing for google.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21712733

I guess that user was... right? There's a reply disputing it, in part, although even the replyer seemed to accept that Google had ulterior motives, they just weren't willing to accept that Google would actually make the web slower and lie about it to achieve their ulterior motives...

> Of course AMP has other motives than simply making the web faster for mobile, but it also does make the web faster for mobile

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#117
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you avoid google classroom when the school demands you use google classroom? This is the same principles as the Microsoft monopoly of the 90s and 00s, and that at least gives me hope

You bring your concerns to your local school board. Google is just a vendor - the district can choose whatever vendors they wish. The problem is that the other vendors aren't all that great. If you really want to take Google down a peg, you need to build better products than they do. Or go offer assistance to their existing competitors.

> If you really want to take Google down a peg, you need to build better products than they do.

This is a meme that really needs to die. If something is harmful, we don't have to wait for a "better" alternative to regulate it. Unleaded gasoline was objectively worse at powering cars, and some people at the time even whined about it, but they were wrong. If regulating Google and Facebook means we have to live with marginally clunkier online tools, so be it.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#118

Saying society is screwed because ads are more expensive seems like quite a stretch to me. Looking at the NYTimes stock as an example it seems that they are doing pretty well these days (although some might argue their quality has gone down)

In the original context I read the statement "either google is screwed or society is screwed" as referring to the lawsuit, not Google's behavior.

That is, to project some of my own opinions: If something like this is not enough to cause major consequences for a big company like google, there is little hope that anything will.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#119
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is true, in fact it really is opposite. Google has to entice people into voluntary exchange, yes the power is imbalanced but it is possible to remove yourself from google, thousands have. You can not remove yourself from government, if you try they will kill you. Google will not kill you if you stop using their services if I disconnect from my city utilities, if I stop paying taxes, if I grow an unapprov…

> yes the power is imbalanced but it is possible to remove yourself from google, thousands have. And I was once among them. Except actually, using Google's “services” is mandatory if I want to obtain such luxuries as food and shelter in the area where I currently reside. I was required to shell out for an Android smartphone; me paying Google money (albeit indirectly) was mandatory. > You can not remove yourself from…

>>Except actually, using Google's “services” is mandatory if I want to obtain such luxuries as food and shelter in the area where I currently reside

What Hell-Hole do you live in?

>>What hell-hole do you live in‽

the US

>>In my country, the government doesn't have the authority to kill anyone

I highly doubt that is true.

>>And where is disconnecting from your city utilities illegal –

I am not aware of any city in any industrialized nation that does not require all buildings that have occupancy permits to be connected to their city water, sewer systems as a condition of that occupancy permit. Thus disconnecting from said utility is illegal. Going further most US Cities require not only water / sewer connections but also Electric (and Gas if no electric heat) and Trash Services.

Failure to maintain those services results in fines, then from fines you get liens, then foreclosure, then eviction, at the point of eviction is where men with guns show up... Resit them, and you die.

>>At least with the government, I get a vote.

Which only carries the cause in the case of the tie, there has never been a tie....

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bring your concerns to your local school board. Google is just a vendor - the district can choose whatever vendors they wish. The problem is that the other vendors aren't all that great. If you really want to take Google down a peg, you need to build better products than they do. Or go offer assistance to their existing competitors.

> If you really want to take Google down a peg, you need to build better products than they do. This is a meme that really needs to die. If something is harmful, we don't have to wait for a "better" alternative to regulate it. Unleaded gasoline was objectively worse at powering cars, and some people at the time even whined about it, but they were wrong. If regulating Google and Facebook means we have to live with mar…

That isn't a meme, that is truth.

I think your real concern is the definition of "better". In your example of gasoline, public health is more important that power, so "better" gas is measured by health.

So we are both right - products need to be "better", but at the same time, by all means schedule time with your local boards to explain to them why these concerns mean that other products are "better", even if clunky.

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