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Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

#21

Post by FussyZeus »

ams6110 wrote: post #18
harshreality wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you see ads, they have subconscious effects even if your conscious mind ignores them. Then there's the curation problem of sites like reddit and facebook. People curating information streams, or developing algorithms to curate information, think they're doing the right thing by eliminating bad content, but by doing so they introduce bias into the information stream, and that bias might be just as pernicious.

If you see ads, they have subconscious effects even if your conscious mind ignores them. Yes, so what? This has been the nature of advertising since long before the internet was involved.

As have intellectual echo chambers. Everyone says they're open to opposing views but very few people want their opinions challenged. Everyone really wants a hugbox, Facebook just figured out how to give everyone on the planet a hugbox.

Re: Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

#22

Post by TeMPOraL »

harshreality wrote: post #16
FussyZeus wrote: post #2

> The business incentives keep the surveillance ticking over, Choudhary explained. "Surveilling and predicting human behaviour is the new economy," she said. "It also means more effective tyranny, an increasingly inescapable prison for the human race." I agree with him in principle but in practice this is simply not working. People at large have been getting better and better at outright ignoring every ad they see, t…

If you see ads, they have subconscious effects even if your conscious mind ignores them. Then there's the curation problem of sites like reddit and facebook. People curating information streams, or developing algorithms to curate information, think they're doing the right thing by eliminating bad content, but by doing so they introduce bias into the information stream, and that bias might be just as pernicious.

Curation bias is the flip side of the very low signal to noise ratio and general information overload we face today. I don't see how you can solve one without hurting the other. Picking stories at random isn't a solution either, because those stories serve another important purpose (sometimes more important than the actual content) - they are social objects, shared things people can talk about. Culture is lots of people experiencing the same stuff, so that they can relate to it in conversations.

Re: Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

#23

Post by tremon »

ddebernardy wrote: post #11

This unfortunately doesn't seem realistic: > Moglen proposed deploying "freedom boxes" at every street corner—cheap hardware running free software, deployed everywhere, that encrypt everything, anonymise everything, and blind the service providers to our activity. b/c the last mile is the priciest part of a telco's network. Unless the telcos are forced to do it, it has zero odds of happening. Also, let's not forget p…

Also, let's not forget privacy as we know it is a distinctly modern idea.

Well, yes. But that's not because the phenomenon is new, but because detailed personal logging is new. Privacy used to be a natural right: no one could possibly know what you did last summer unless you told them or they were there with you. It only started to be an issue when we started following people around and preserving that data.

Re: Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

#24

Post by joesmo »

ddebernardy wrote: post #11

This unfortunately doesn't seem realistic: > Moglen proposed deploying "freedom boxes" at every street corner—cheap hardware running free software, deployed everywhere, that encrypt everything, anonymise everything, and blind the service providers to our activity. b/c the last mile is the priciest part of a telco's network. Unless the telcos are forced to do it, it has zero odds of happening. Also, let's not forget p…

If privacy is a distinctly modern idea invented in the 1890's what was the purpose of window curtains before then? Certainly they couldn't have been there to protect an idea that's probably older than language and likely has actual biological basis. I assume also that humans only started to have sex in private in the 1890s according to your theory as it wouldn't have been even possible to conceive of privacy before the idea of privacy existed?

The idea that privacy is something new is absolutely absurd and laughable.

Re: Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

#25

Post by logn »

FussyZeus wrote: post #14
logn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter if people ignore ads? These are not broadcast ads like radio or television. They analyze behavior and encourage an architecture that exactly suits the needs of government surveillance. And I'm not confident users will win the ad blocking war. There are easy ways to permanently defeat ad blockers, but the industry hasn't embraced them yet because the current system works well enough. E.g., ad code can b…

That's true but (the way I read it anyway) the author is contending that advertisements themselves would be used to shape public opinion which, while true, I think the effects are dwindling because people are becoming more aware of that. Additionally, I wouldn't say behavioral tracking is implicitly always nefarious. Speaking as an app developer the analytics we get from users is 100% anonymous and not used for anyth…

I think the idea is that a small number of corporations will have a complete knowledge of the lives and psychology of their users, be able to influence their behavior even without display ads, and be able to predict all of their behavior. Additionally, the government will piggyback on all of this technology too.

I don't think any of this is inherently nefarious. Hopefully with policy reforms and additional privacy preserving technologies, we will avert the future Moglen warns of.

Re: Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

#27

Post by SixSigma »

joesmo wrote: post #24
ddebernardy wrote: post #11

This unfortunately doesn't seem realistic: > Moglen proposed deploying "freedom boxes" at every street corner—cheap hardware running free software, deployed everywhere, that encrypt everything, anonymise everything, and blind the service providers to our activity. b/c the last mile is the priciest part of a telco's network. Unless the telcos are forced to do it, it has zero odds of happening. Also, let's not forget p…

If privacy is a distinctly modern idea invented in the 1890's what was the purpose of window curtains before then? Certainly they couldn't have been there to protect an idea that's probably older than language and likely has actual biological basis. I assume also that humans only started to have sex in private in the 1890s according to your theory as it wouldn't have been even possible to conceive of privacy before t…

> what was the purpose of window curtains before then?

Draught exclusion and insulation from convection.

Re: Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

#28

Post by abakker »

ams6110 wrote: post #17

I'm not so sure things are as dire as he thinks. Most of the people I know are growing more and more irritated by Facebook and other social media. Many have stopped using it and deleted their profiles. And these are not "tech" people but ordinary adults and teens. I think people are quite perceptive when a service changes from being truly useful, as Facebook was in its early days, to being an intrusive pain in the as…

I always wonder when I see this anecdote that people are leaving Facebook, closing profiles etc. I've never been a very active Facebook user, but I also don't see myself ever closing my account. On the whole, I don't use much of the feature set but it is still useful every now and then.

is there a reason to close the account, rather than just log off when you're not using it? I feel like AB+ and Ghostery do a fine job keeping the tracking down, and the service itself is pretty benign when used casually. Am I missing something?

Re: Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

#29

Post by pnathan »

ddebernardy wrote: post #11

This unfortunately doesn't seem realistic: > Moglen proposed deploying "freedom boxes" at every street corner—cheap hardware running free software, deployed everywhere, that encrypt everything, anonymise everything, and blind the service providers to our activity. b/c the last mile is the priciest part of a telco's network. Unless the telcos are forced to do it, it has zero odds of happening. Also, let's not forget p…

> . Unless the telcos are forced to do it, it has zero odds of happening.

I think you are assuming the telcos will do it. Why not individuals? Why not small companies? Back in the 90s there were a ton of small ISPs?

It doesn't all have to be ComcastWarnerGoogleMegacorp...

Re: Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming “a perfect despotism”

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

abakker wrote: post #28
ams6110 wrote: post #17

I'm not so sure things are as dire as he thinks. Most of the people I know are growing more and more irritated by Facebook and other social media. Many have stopped using it and deleted their profiles. And these are not "tech" people but ordinary adults and teens. I think people are quite perceptive when a service changes from being truly useful, as Facebook was in its early days, to being an intrusive pain in the as…

I always wonder when I see this anecdote that people are leaving Facebook, closing profiles etc. I've never been a very active Facebook user, but I also don't see myself ever closing my account. On the whole, I don't use much of the feature set but it is still useful every now and then. is there a reason to close the account, rather than just log off when you're not using it? I feel like AB+ and Ghostery do a fine jo…

> is there a reason to close the account, rather than just log off when you're not using it?

Probably not. Treat it like LinkedIn: Log in on those occasional times you need to use it.

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