One issue is that big data is just too big for the small minds that are tasked with gaining insights from it. It is a really weird hysteria that I can't explain. Even network engineers are starting to collect every packet and archive it in some kind of distributed data store like HDFS. What insights are they going to gain from it exactly? If the goal is security then work on better network infrastructure and tools, e.g. libressl. Collecting all that data is not going to get you any closer to making better/smarter networks or allow you to fight DDoS attacks any better because the underlying network infrastructure is what makes it possible in the first place.
The Internet With A Human Face
41–50 of 66 posts
Re: The Internet With A Human Face
#42https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/162743?hl=en I thought it worth noting that Google does strip personal identifiers after 18 months which is in line with one of his proposed fixes.
Not if you have a Google account, they don't. > If you have Web History enabled, this data may also be stored in your Google Account until you delete the record of your search. > When you create a Google Account, Google Web History is automatically turned on.[0] So for everyone who has a Google account, and who hasn't taken specific steps to disable "web history" (read: 99.9% of users) they're storing that data indef…
On that note:
The site you linked links to https://history.google.com/history/lookup , where you can see all of the searches Google associates to your account (if you have web history enabled).
For me, this goes all the way back to 2006.
Re: The Internet With A Human Face
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not if you have a Google account, they don't. > If you have Web History enabled, this data may also be stored in your Google Account until you delete the record of your search. > When you create a Google Account, Google Web History is automatically turned on.[0] So for everyone who has a Google account, and who hasn't taken specific steps to disable "web history" (read: 99.9% of users) they're storing that data indef…
On that note: The site you linked links to https://history.google.com/history/lookup , where you can see all of the searches Google associates to your account (if you have web history enabled). For me, this goes all the way back to 2006.
If you turn it off, and then turn it back on again, are all your searches still there?
Re: The Internet With A Human Face
#44The 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."
I've been wondering - is there a point when people lose faith that they're getting ROI by buying adwords?
Isn't it possible that the culture may just stop giving money to Google at some point?
And then no more aqui-hires, so no more inflated valuations, and then most of us go back to whatever we were doing before we were working at startups, right?
Re: The Internet With A Human Face
#45Much of what the author suggests in terms of regulation already exists in most European countries, and most of it pre-dates the commercial rise of the internet.
Sure, much of the wording and enforcement is lagging behind today's reality, but the principles are clear: data about me is my data. Companies are not free to collect, collate and keep anything that they can get their hands on.
Facebook, Google et al are breaking the laws of countries they operate in on a massive scale. The backlash is being tempered by massive lobbying from those companies and the US government.
Not to mention the media propaganda (media are part of the advertising mafia), as seen in the recent wave of scaremongering bullshit about the "right to be forgotten" verdict.
Re: The Internet With A Human Face
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
On that note: The site you linked links to https://history.google.com/history/lookup , where you can see all of the searches Google associates to your account (if you have web history enabled). For me, this goes all the way back to 2006.
If you turn it off, and then turn it back on again, are all your searches still there?
No.
Re: The Internet With A Human Face
#47This is a great quote, and very timely with the recent metafilter kerfuffle:
"If you don't run your own ad network, advertising is a scary business. You bring your user data to the altar and sacrifice it to AdSense. If the AdSense gods are pleased, they rain earnings down upon you."
"But if the AdSense gods are angry, there is wailing, and gnashing of teeth. You rend your garments and ask forgiveness, but you can never be sure what you did wrong. Maybe you pray to Matt Cutts, the intercessionary saint at Google, who has been known to descend from the clouds and speak with a human voice."
Re: The Internet With A Human Face
#48The 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.
Google alone is ~10% of global advertising revenues. That's at least an interestingly shaped potato.
http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
(a nice friendly and solid number for global ad revenues is harder to come by, but it's ~$500 billion)
Re: The Internet With A Human Face
#49This is how you share slides!
Re: The Internet With A Human Face
#50Very well written, but a little unconvincing: he does a great job showing the ads he's bombarded with on Youtube are completely irrelevant to his personal situation.
Of course, it could be that advertisers are inept. That's what he implies.
But it could be, they don't have access to all the data he/we fear they do. Maybe this data doesn't even exist in the first place, or is downright unusable.