311–320 of 352 posts
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You are just opening up yourself to abuse. Sybil attacks are one of the biggest problems in computing and tracking helps us mitigate it. A truly private internet can't handle bad actors and such will be unable to scale.
The current internet has hardly solved that problem either.
Instead of more palatable user tracking, how about we tell advertisers and internet companies: fuck off, we don't want any tracking? How about we hunt down and eliminate all features that allow cross-site information sharing? How about we treat attacks on user privacy as security problems of the web standards, à la Tor, and build technology that aggressively hides any user signature in any layer, from rotating IP and…
I wrote a long, but low effort comment where my thesis was that I think it’s ok for companies to pay for your attention, but the problem is that they are paying Google. I ended up reaching the conclusion that we should ban paying money for your attention, but I haven’t thought of better alternatives for businesses to grow or expand online yet. USPS becomes vehicle for junk mail Telco becomes vehicle for robocalls Tel…
On the contrary, users are consistently willing to pay more than advertisers when given the option.
Problem is after a while, the advertisers and middle men eyeball all that ad-free content, and decide you’ll accept just a little advertising ...
Next thing you know, you’re subscribing to ads.
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> they’re the only ones who can use FLOC It is available to everyone: cohort = await document.interestCohort(); See https://github.com/WICG/floc (Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
Great news. So how to I create my own set of cohorts?
What do you mean, create your own?
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Your reasoning is accurate; but doesn't most of what you're describing already occur _as well_? Often progress is about eliminating one large negative externality, only to discover that there are others to handle too. The 'submarine' type content you're referring to is somewhat addressed by trust networks, fact checking, link reputation, and various other techniques. One large question is whether we're ready for all…
>but doesn't most of what you're describing already occur _as well_? I believe it would happen on a far greater scale, because it would be the only way to get the message across and competition from independent ad funded publishers would cease to exist. Today, it's more difficult for a product company to justify the expense of running their own large scale publishing and influencing operation because it would have to…
I'm not necessarily advocating either to stop it, or to limit the impacts - just to make it visible. Once the power/influence structures (and the associated leverage they use) are evident, the manipulative ones will be abandoned and the authentic ones will succeed.
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I'm not stealing anything by instructing my computer not to run code against my consent. No one is entitled to my CPU time. Least of all are advertisers. Also, the store isn't freakishly stalking me and noting down all my habits whilst sharing what it has collected with its friends, or indeed anyone who will buy the data. Besides, candy is impossible to replicate in the same way that data is. Theft of physical object…
Hello there. It's an honor to meet you. I suggest you are incorrect to assert that "no one is entitled to my CPU time." I agree, however, that advertisers do not have that moral claim right.
> I suggest you are incorrect to assert that "no one is entitled to my CPU time."
Very well, please elaborate. I'm always up to delve deeper into reason and philosophy (time-permitting of course).
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One potentially negative unintended consequence: closed systems like Facebook become even more powerful than they already are. Their revenues will dwarf (even more than they do now) any other free digital platform that can't re-create a fully targeted ad product entirely in-house. Without Google AdX and the mess of disturbing cross-site tracking, I can't see why advertisers wouldn't just spend 100% of their digital b…
Assuming tracking works (I have my doubts it boosts conversion), there has to be an equilibrium price, right? That is, advertising camping gear on a camping review site (without tracking) still has some nonzero commercial value even if facebook tracking exists and works.
Take the camping example. If I sell camping equipment, I can try to reach out to blogs directly, but I will have to place hundreds of campaigns for $100 each, track and monitor them all separately, and count on each of the blogs to deliver them accurately in good positions with no fraud. Or I can just buy one massive campaign with Facebook that runs across Facebook and Instagram and targets people who are interested in camping and maybe even expressed purchase intent. That's the better option every time. The transactions costs of dealing with individual websites are prohibitive.
Google (and the other tracking companies) just distribute that same option across the open web. If you get rid of it, Facebook wins absolutely.
I like the idea, as one commenter expressed, that the open web would be better without advertising. But I think the reality of an infinitely powerful Facebook is that the open web would be a wasteland and afterthought.
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That would fall under the 1%. They get a cert or whitelisted or something such that browsers would "allow" them to request the browser to store cookies. Perhaps the type of data to be stored is also restricted in the certificate itself so the site can't deviate from the storage they've been granted. I don't know, it's just a random thought and not fully fleshed out. I'm sure there are millions of much smarter individ…
So you want the ability to be a modern website held by a centralised authority? The world is not a world of static websites anymore; it is a world of applications accessible by a web browser. That would be a huge and unjust centralisation of power. The most should be a consent popup, similar to how websites request to use the camera.
/s
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Eh. I work in advertising as a programmer, and if advertising were banned there would still be lots of other programming work I could do. (I do think advertising is net positive and prohibiting it would be a bad idea: https://www.jefftk.com/p/effect-of-advertising )
I block ads and I still buy things. The world won't collapse if advertising is curtailed. Consumer habits will just become more unpredictable- and small companies could compete with big companies that spend billions on marketing.
Even if you were not directly influenced by advertising, you probably were indirectly through word of mouth.
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Maybe I'm being naive; I work with some peers who smoke habitually. They pay a hefty tax for their habit. I don't really see the government's incentive to keep them at it to collect more taxes happening. Is it super sneaky and I just don't see it?
Smokers dying early saves the State a ton of money, they did the math on this. Getting people to stop smoking is about morality.