Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry • Hacker News Board

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#21

Post by idle_zealot » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 11:47 PM UTC

kristjank wrote: post #2

The violations that the average human has been unknowingly a victim of, courtesy of the advertising industry, are in my estimation so insurmountably numerous that I automatically consider someone working in advertising ontologically evil. More so than, say, someone working on face recognition at Lockheed Martin.

Frankly, advertising as a business sounds evil on the face of it. It's fundamentally a way to turn money into ideas in people's heads. The fact that in order to accomplish this dubious task some of the world's best-paid professionals are pioneering privacy violations and psychological manipulation tactics only adds to the shit pile.

To be clear: creating media for the purposes of spreading an idea is not inherently bad. What's bad is having an industry built around planting ideas in human minds, regardless of the validity or broad utility of those ideas.

And to head off "but then how will people learn about ?" People buy marketing material, coupon books, attend conferences for the things they care about, and if necessary research options when they need something. A market does not need the feature of shoving information about available products and services in everyone's face to function well. And if you're someone who likes seeing ads, great, open up the yellow pages or digital equivalent and look at all the ads you want. How will ad-supported services like mass social-media sites fund themselves? Not my problem, maybe they don't and they shit down. What a shame.

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#22

Post by adiabatichottub » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 11:49 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #18

Halfwhit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If enough of us piss into the fire would it make a difference?

That’s the idea, and I’ve seen speak of it in comments in places like these, but I’m not aware of there being a specific term for it. I call it privacy by obfuscation but that’s kind of boring. It’s easy to start experimenting with to see how invasive it is. Try changing your birthday to under 18 or over 35 if you’re under 35 and see how drastic your ad experience changes across anything you interact with on the web,…

I've thought about this, and I'm almost certain I've seen some basic tools to do similar. Call it "semantic chaffing". Maybe one example could be for every search query you make three random queries are generated. Random results are followed through their tracking links. Now it's much less clear to a dumb algorithm what your interests might be. Maybe a human or well-trained LLM could pick up the thread, but now it takes considerably more resources. It's a form of asymmetric warfare.

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#23

Post by portaouflop » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 11:59 PM UTC

idle_zealot wrote: post #21

kristjank wrote: post #2

The violations that the average human has been unknowingly a victim of, courtesy of the advertising industry, are in my estimation so insurmountably numerous that I automatically consider someone working in advertising ontologically evil. More so than, say, someone working on face recognition at Lockheed Martin.

Frankly, advertising as a business sounds evil on the face of it. It's fundamentally a way to turn money into ideas in people's heads. The fact that in order to accomplish this dubious task some of the world's best-paid professionals are pioneering privacy violations and psychological manipulation tactics only adds to the shit pile. To be clear: creating media for the purposes of spreading an idea is not inherently b…

If you put it that way software as a business sounds evil on the face of it (and probably mostly is) - I guess it’s so intertwined because most software companies are just advertising companies with extra steps.

But at least Ads i can avoid - the fucking software eating everything I can’t avoid unless I become a hermit.

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#24

Post by griomnib » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 12:00 AM UTC

EFF has been nowhere on these issues for the past two decades, and it is disingenuous to pretend they oppose it.

EFF have done good work vis-a-vis government surveillance, but EFF has always been a libertarian project to promote and protect tech power by weakening government oversight of the net.

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#25

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 12:04 AM UTC

tap-snap-or-nap wrote: post #20

Vampiero wrote: post #6

But how can the poor websites sustain themselves

Organized P2P networks can/should be used enable hosting

> Organized P2P networks can/should be used enable hosting

This is financial engineering. Someone still needs to pay for the metal and electricity.

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#26

Post by portaouflop » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 12:07 AM UTC

binary132 wrote: post #14

Vampiero wrote: post #6

But how can the poor websites sustain themselves

You joke but it’s actually shocking how often you’ll hear the refrain repeated that without ubiquitous advertising we could not possibly have a free public internet.

Why is it shocking? It seems to be true - I for one am not ready to pay for most of the online services I use

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#27

Post by portaouflop » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 12:08 AM UTC

Halfwhit wrote: post #12

JohnMakin wrote: post #3

I've been experimenting with behavioral tracking on a bunch of platforms for a while now, but it's very difficult research - if you come across something interesting, replication is very difficult if not impossible, or sometimes the underlying paradigm will change entirely and force you to start from square 1. My motivation is that I would love, and personally pay a ridiculous amount of money for, a service that obfu…

If enough of us piss into the fire would it make a difference?

I think most of the data they collect is pretty bad so it’s more like pissing in an ocean of piss.

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#28

Post by thewanderer1983 » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 12:14 AM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #18

Halfwhit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If enough of us piss into the fire would it make a difference?

That’s the idea, and I’ve seen speak of it in comments in places like these, but I’m not aware of there being a specific term for it. I call it privacy by obfuscation but that’s kind of boring. It’s easy to start experimenting with to see how invasive it is. Try changing your birthday to under 18 or over 35 if you’re under 35 and see how drastic your ad experience changes across anything you interact with on the web,…

I agree in a world of data surveillance, techniques that obfuscate, like you have mentioned are ideal. The problem with this form of obfuscation is it also impacts other industries (legitimate functions) including areas of national security. Therefore I imagine it will be met with resistance, if any useful tools become widespread in use.

For example, faking traffic jam data for google maps with phones. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-04/man-creates-fake-traf...

Faking wifi and location data to unlock airpods pro in India. https://www.reddit.com/r/AirpodsPro/comments/1gqscig/two_guy...

DataPools is a Wi-Fi geolocation spoofing project that virtually relocates your phone to the latitudes and longitudes of Silicon Valley’s elite pools. https://adam.harvey.studio/datapools/

These are just a couple of fun examples, obviously you could augment these with LLM/DL tools and other anti-censorship (mixer, DCnets etc ), bot(nets) tools to create multiple identities that post in other languages, create fake photos of your in various countries, to make it hard to follow.

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#29

Post by MrVandemar » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 12:19 AM UTC

adiabatichottub wrote: post #22

JohnMakin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the idea, and I’ve seen speak of it in comments in places like these, but I’m not aware of there being a specific term for it. I call it privacy by obfuscation but that’s kind of boring. It’s easy to start experimenting with to see how invasive it is. Try changing your birthday to under 18 or over 35 if you’re under 35 and see how drastic your ad experience changes across anything you interact with on the web,…

I've thought about this, and I'm almost certain I've seen some basic tools to do similar. Call it "semantic chaffing". Maybe one example could be for every search query you make three random queries are generated. Random results are followed through their tracking links. Now it's much less clear to a dumb algorithm what your interests might be. Maybe a human or well-trained LLM could pick up the thread, but now it ta…

Probably need something that periodically adds and removes fonts as well, at least once per day, probably more often. That's one element of fingerprinting.

Re: Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

#30

Post by add-sub-mul-div » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 12:19 AM UTC

kristjank wrote: post #2

The violations that the average human has been unknowingly a victim of, courtesy of the advertising industry, are in my estimation so insurmountably numerous that I automatically consider someone working in advertising ontologically evil. More so than, say, someone working on face recognition at Lockheed Martin.

This is nonsense. We all have no choice but to patron many businesses in our lives. We're adults and we understand the information coming from the first party about how great it is is biased. It is still helpful to hear certain facts. Like, a new pizza place happens to exist in town now. The commercial isn't hypnotizing me into going there, I have free will and can form an opinion with information from different sources, weighting them appropriately.

Commercials are often annoying, sure. I like cable with a DVR because I can skip 100% of commercials and the stream can't make them unskippable. But there's no sense in overreacting to the general concept of advertising.

When I go on a date and a woman tells me about herself I understand she may be emphasizing the good and downplaying the bad. It does not make her evil. It's normal for anyone to do.