Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the Surveillance Industry

Post by ghostwords » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 7:37 PM UTC

griomnib wrote: post #90

dredmorbius wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple falsehoods in your comment. EFF have been putting some significant distance between themselves and their (admittedly, true) Libertarian origins. Cory Doctorow (long-time public-face, current special advisor) has distinctly non -Libertarian leanings. https://www.eff.org/about/special-counsel#main-content > The more-libertarian John Gilmore and Brad Templeton are both emeriti: https://www.eff.org/abo…

Cory is a nominal figurehead who isn’t in charge of anything. Many EFF staffers have been unhappy with the direction for a long time. Cindy’s leadership is wildly out of touch with the state of the world. Privacy Badger is at best an also-ran privacy tool that’s had little impact in general, and no impact on big tech bottom line. It’s a joke in the grand scheme of things. Also, “concern over Google” is utterly immate…

Post by ghostwords » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 9:57 PM UTC

griomnib wrote: post #92

ghostwords wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>EFF takes millions from Google ???

“Over the past years, EFF has taken millions in funds from Google and Facebook via straight donations and controversial court payouts that many see as under-the-radar contributions. Hell, Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s foundation gave EFF at least $1.2 million.” https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine It seems to hurt a lot of people’s feelings in SV, but no, you wearing an EFF tshirt and making yearly corp…

Post by alphan0n » Wed, Jan 08, 2025, 10:56 PM UTC

thewanderer1983 wrote: post #28

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 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.ab…

Post by brokenmachine » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 5:08 AM UTC

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…

Post by stuaxo » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 12:25 PM UTC

musicale wrote: post #9

ge96 wrote: post #5

I cannot understand how people accept ads. It triggers me so much when I open an article and between every paragraph is an ad and a video fixed to the top/bottom following you as you scroll and they change once the video ends. YT is crazy with their multiple ads unskippable sometimes 30 mins long wtf. Thank you UBO regarding tracking: I guess I don't care about that since I get these updates from Google about where I…

> between every paragraph is an ad and a video fixed to the top/bottom following you as you scroll and they change once the video ends And of course Chrome, Firefox, and Safari don't provide a reliable way to stop those obnoxious auto-playing videos.