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The Internet With A Human Face

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Re: The Internet With A Human Face

#31

Post by ronaldx »

I'm now more hard-line than this on data privacy:

I have come to believe that businesses should not be legally allowed to store any consumer data unless it's obvious to the consumer that it's absolutely required for the primary function of the service, and they should only be allowed to store data for that one function, with an exception if the consumer explicitly and voluntarily opts-in for each additional function.

Large internet companies have been collecting swathes of data with the claim that they are secretly using it to improve people's lives. But it seems to me that A/B testing has failed to improve anyone's life.

Example: I use search engines to search for something I'm looking for.

I do not benefit from being shown 'targeted' ads, nor from the search engine identifying the most populist answers which it uses to spoon-feed me later rather than serve what I asked for, nor from the search engine identifying which particular arrangement of pixels will leave me personally more addicted.

Businesses are welcome to use my data in ways which are in my interest, but they should not get to decide which of these uses are in my interest.

Re: The Internet With A Human Face

#32

Post by corford »

Fantastic as always. Every time I read one of Maciej's talks or essays I get a little closer to throwing in the towel and pursuing a more meaningful existence. It's going to happen one day and I can't wait to read the post that forces it.

Re: The Internet With A Human Face

#33

Post by krakensden »

gammarator wrote: post #22

The thesis the talk pivots around is this one, in my reading: "Investor storytime only works if you can argue that advertising in the future is going to be effective and lucrative in ways it just isn't today. If the investors stop believing this, the money will dry up."

It's worth noting that web advertising is still small potatoes compared to more traditional channels- and the traditional channels make it astonishingly difficult to measure effectiveness. There's an awful lot of money in selling Coca-Cola, and Pinboard & Facebook haven't scratched the surface.

Re: The Internet With A Human Face

#35

Post by gone35 »

This festive map shows seismic hazard in Northern California, where pretty much all the large Internet companies are based, along with a zillion startups. The ones that aren't here have their headquarters in an even deadlier zone up in Cascadia. (...)

So even if you don't agree with my politics, maybe you'll agree with my geology. Let's not build a vast, distributed global network only to put everything in one place!

That slide[1] hits close to home. I'm painfully aware of how hard (and almost pointless/powerless) it is to reason about long-term geological risks, esp compared to less catastrophic and more (short-term) predictable hazards like hurricanes, tornadoes or blizzards; but from time to time I idly question the wisdom, from a civilizational point of view, of having so many concentrated, incredibly talented people living directly atop one of the most dangerous fault regions on earth[2].

But again, it's pointless to think about it as an individual, so better get back to work and keep living day by day, I guess. Wovon man nicht sprechen kann...

[1] https://static.pinboard.in/bt14/bt14.069.jpg

[2] http://peer.berkeley.edu/pdf/Senate_testimonial-8-07.pdf

Re: The Internet With A Human Face

#36

Post by lemming »

alecdbrooks wrote: post #10
L_Rahman wrote: post #2

Still reading the talk, but as an aside wanted to point out that the way the transcript is formatted with the words alongside the slides is probably the best way I've seen a talk presented in text form on the internet.

He's uploaded talks in this format before. Thoreau 2.0 [0] is a particularly good one. [0]: https://static.pinboard.in/xoxo_talk_thoreau.htm Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eky5uKILXtM

I also like "Our Comrade the electron": https://static.pinboard.in/webstock_2014.htm

I'm generally not a writing geek, but Maciej is one of the (very) few people whose writing makes me wildly jealous.

Re: The Internet With A Human Face

#37

Post by dang »

nl wrote: post #25

It's too bad that Maciej Ceglowski (the author) is banned on HN, over some infraction I never understood.

It was before I worked on HN, so I don't know what happened either, but I share your hope that Maciej comes back!

Re: The Internet With A Human Face

#38

Post by coldtea »

munro wrote: post #19
coldtea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let the free market converse its way towards a compromise. There's no "free market" that's an ideology (a made-up idea of how the world is that obscures one's thinking). With government: I have more money than you, and I have friends in Washington. I'll use it to push things my way. (And lest somebody suggest: "sure, the problem is government", here's the government less version:) Without government: I have more mo…

> There's no "free market" that's an ideology (a made-up idea of how the world is that obscures one's thinking). Everything is a made up idea that obscures one's thinking. I think I have to drive on roads, but really nothing is stopping me. I could get through traffic faster if I just started driving on the shoulder, but the problem is if everyone did that it would be chaos, and would be worse overall. Systems have t…

Well, the "have to drive on the road" is a "law" or an imperative not an ideology. People know it's a made up convention so that we don't hit each other or depestrians.

People talking about free market, on the other hand, think of it as a real, concrete thing, and even further, that it has this and that properties. Thinking thusly about a made-up thing can have dire consequences -- like when hallucinating on drugs and jumping from a building to avoid a huge snake.

Re: The Internet With A Human Face

#39

Post by dkarapetyan »

corford wrote: post #32

Fantastic as always. Every time I read one of Maciej's talks or essays I get a little closer to throwing in the towel and pursuing a more meaningful existence. It's going to happen one day and I can't wait to read the post that forces it.

That post will never come. You have to do it starting now. There is no right time and if you keep waiting for it then it will never happen.

Re: The Internet With A Human Face

#40

Post by Zigurd »

krakensden wrote: post #33
gammarator wrote: post #22

The thesis the talk pivots around is this one, in my reading: "Investor storytime only works if you can argue that advertising in the future is going to be effective and lucrative in ways it just isn't today. If the investors stop believing this, the money will dry up."

It's worth noting that web advertising is still small potatoes compared to more traditional channels- and the traditional channels make it astonishingly difficult to measure effectiveness. There's an awful lot of money in selling Coca-Cola, and Pinboard & Facebook haven't scratched the surface.

It is a minority of the total, but it is getting up to about 20-25% of the total. Some of that market, like ads on public transportation, billboards, flyers, kiosks, etc. is not accessible to Web media, so the share of the accessible market is a bit higher. It's not as if the ceiling remains out of sight.

Your comment about traditional ad measures of effectiveness being dodgy probably means pricing will decline when effectiveness can be accurately measured, so that means Internet ads have a still higher share of the theoretical maximum.

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