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Why we should end the data economy

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Re: Why we should end the data economy

#71

Post by nickff »

mumblemumble wrote: post #62
Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

> cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. This is a very specific statement. It may be true. But, even if we accept for the sake of argument that it is, it's not quite the same statement as, "Mass personal data collection has never resulted in personal harm," which, while seeming quite similar, also happens to be false.

But "[m]ass personal data collection" is a huge superset of "cookie tracking data"; the former encompasses all credit card information database breaches (such as Sony's), along with all government and healthcare database 'leaks'.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#72

Post by questionableans »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #68
Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

"Marketing is manipulation and deceit. It tries to turn people into something they aren’t — individuals focused solely on themselves, maximising their consumption of goods that they don’t need"

It doesn't have to be that way, but that's typically the most profitable strategy, because most products actually suck.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#73

Post by n0on3 »

version_five wrote: post #12

What these kinds of articles (that basically just say how much of our data is being collected, and assert that it's bad) miss is the whole "attention economy" side of the equation, which I believe is more detrimental. Data is concretely used to maximize engagement, outrage, polarization, etc. in order to get more attention, which is at a root of a lot of the public discourse challenges we have these days. It would be…

This is the point I feel most as well. I think this trend of burning attention is both destructive in ways and depth we don't completely understand yet - possibly making unrecoverable damage to our society on ridiculously large scale - and a blunt exploitation of the bias to consider attention as an infinite resource / not a real cost.

Personally I dislike also the "tracking to show me what I'm most likely to buy" but this itself (assuming such thing could exist in a vacuum, which seems unrealistic to me) has an inherently limited impact.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#74

Post by ianai »

infogulch wrote: post #65

Somehow organizations get an immense amount of value out of tracking everything you do, say, think, and buy; everywhere you go; and everyone you meet. Two questions: 1. Why should they profit off of my data without my consent? (Hint: they shouldn't.) 2. Why is it so hard for me to get value out of it? Shit, if it's gonna be collected, aggregated, and analyzed anyway, I should just do it my damn self and actually get…

Exactly, there’s a dollar value to you that they’re not paying you. You’d need a “property right” over it. (You are your own “property” already anyway.)

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#75

Post by hypertele-Xii »

Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

Advertizing needs to be pull, not push. That is, when I have disposable income and am looking to spend it, there ought to be a place I can go to browse ads.

Otherwise, get the fuck off my attention span, stop bloating the web, and stop polluting public spaces with irrelevant information!

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#76

Post by gspq »

egypturnash wrote: post #41
jtdev wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhh, you can stop using said services and software that abuse privacy, e.g., Facebook, Google, Twitter, TicToc, etc.

Here's another industry that relies on aggregating your data: Credit reports. Go ahead. Figure out how to opt out of Experian, Transunion, or Equifax collecting everything they can about you, including pretty much every piece of data needed for identity theft, possibly confusing it with someone with a similar name, and then putting it in a badly-secured database. No, really, if you can figure it out I'd love to know.…

And they have an API to these data. Selling your data to data vendors. And now this: https://www.melissa.com/industries/healthcare

Health records used for AI machine learning training . Your health data are in the vendor database . What possibly could go wrong?

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#77

Post by adkadskhj »

Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

> Also, fact is that matching consumers with products that they like doesn't just have enormous business value, but is actually socially positive! If you can more easily reach a niche audience, you can build better more targeted products.

Maybe this works well for some products, like "I know i need to buy milk, what should i buy?" but it has often been used in a form that appears like an abusive relationship.

Think about all of the kid-targeted ads from 30 years ago which peddled sugars and psychological tricks to get kids frothing at the mouth over their food and toy products. These weren't merely advertisements, but targeted attacks to the brain. And of course things haven't changed, it's just iconic to talk about early TV's cereal commercials hah. As with many product advertisements, they're not just trying to make you aware of the product - they're trying to bypass your consciousness and hook straight into your brain.

That was 30 years ago, and we've had the misfortune of seeing this evolve. Now social media advertisements are hyper targeted with similar tactics but more nefarious goals. Misinformation at the hands of targeted advertisements has been the source many-a controversies of recent years.

My point is i'd agree with you if advertisements haven't been so blatantly manipulative over the last 50+ years. If they were simply "Hey, you like X, try Y?"; but they're not. That ship sailed before i was even born. And it's only gotten worse with time.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#78

Post by questionableans »

brokencode wrote: post #27
rhacker wrote: post #10

We need to go back to the TV model. I mean we sold things back in 1995 right? You go to a website about babies, you get baby ads. You go to a website about electrified fences, you get ads for trucks, tractors, backhoe rentals (even in your area because of your IP address - but that's it) It's damn near equivalent to local / cable TV.

Does anybody know if targeted ads based on tracking even work? Are they worth all the extra cost and complexity compared to traditional ads? It doesn’t seem like it. Half the time I see a super-targeted ad, it’s for a product I already purchased. Also, what ever happened to showing ads to people who aren’t already interested in your product to expand your brand and maybe bring in new customers? The current ad model f…

It helps with being able to measure whether you're advertising to the right people. Traditional mass media advertising made a lot of money off of showing ads to completely irrelevant people. Targeted advertising makes even more money off of showing ads to mostly irrelevant people.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#79

Post by amelius »

ianai wrote: post #74
infogulch wrote: post #65

Somehow organizations get an immense amount of value out of tracking everything you do, say, think, and buy; everywhere you go; and everyone you meet. Two questions: 1. Why should they profit off of my data without my consent? (Hint: they shouldn't.) 2. Why is it so hard for me to get value out of it? Shit, if it's gonna be collected, aggregated, and analyzed anyway, I should just do it my damn self and actually get…

Exactly, there’s a dollar value to you that they’re not paying you. You’d need a “property right” over it. (You are your own “property” already anyway.)

Too late. You already clicked "I agree" on that EULA.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#80

Post by SavantIdiot »

cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

This is a great list. SO many times people have said to me, "Let them track me, I've got nothing to hide." And you hit them with a few things off this list and they immediately change their mind. There should be a tinurl for website I can send people to that shows a simple list of all the ways personal information can be used.
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