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Personally, I don't see how any of it adds up to a fair deal in anyone's mind, but I very often am unable to understand why people do things that are against th

Personally, I don't see how any of it adds up to a fair deal in anyone's mind, but I very often am unable to understand why people do things that are against their own best interests. You've listed the upsides, which for some people (I dare say even most people, at least outside of these circles) are quite significant - most people I know absolutely love Facebook, and feel it adds a lot to their lives. They're definitely getting something useful out of it. But even if this advertising-pocalypse 2.0 comes to pass, what's the tangible downside for most of these people? Beyond the obvious "don't post naked pictures of yourself hitting the crack pipe right before going into your job interview" stuff, I mean. Almost nobody actually gives a shit or a half whether some company knows what they buy, what sites they visit, what products they might be interested in, etc., as long as this stuff is not browseable by the public at large. Certainly this information could be used in ways that might hurt them, but for the most part it is merely used to try to sell them stuff that they didn't realize they might want. I just can't get behind the "ZOMG they'll try to sell me stuff that I actually might want to buy, based on what I've already bought, the HORROR!" logic, it really doesn't seem that sinister to me, and in certain contexts (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) I find it incredibly useful. I don't use Facebook, but that's only because I value social privacy; as a rule, I don't want people I went to school with to be able to get in touch with me at all, especially not if it's as easy and impersonal as clicking a box next to my name on a list of former classmates. People that care enough can find me in any of a million other ways if they have anything specific to say to me. But I could care less if Facebook gathers advertising data on me; I don't care one bit when Google does it, and I actually find a bit of value in it because if I'm going to be served ads, I'd prefer that they be targeted at me than completely irrelevant.

jrconlin 17y ago
One of the potential issues is that companies tend to leak information. To your point, while you may not want your old fellow high school students finding you, a quick bit of data mining on your profile could probably guess fairly quickly and present your profile to those individuals without your consent. (Obviously, mileage will vary depending on how much information you've elected to share, but it's fairly disturbing how easy it can be to isolate individuals in a fairly large group off of only a few small traits.) Just look at how the Netflix Challenge data was matched to individuals based off of very meager information. The bigger issue at hand is that when you start adding up all the various public bits of information, things can get rather scary. Did you know that in Canada, a credit card company could determine potential credit risk based off whether or not an individual bought a drink in a particular bar in a particular city with fairly impressive accuracy? http://consumerist.com/2009/05/your-credit-card-company-is-building-a-psychological-profile-of-you.html http://consumerist.com/2009/05/your-credit-card-company-is-b... I could easily imagine that an insurance company may want to determine risk profile for customers based off of browsing history and age, or possibly an online retailer may alter prices slightly because they know you have more income to spend and a history of not checking prices that aggressively. The larger a presence you have, the easier it is to do that sort of thing.
pyre 17y ago
What happens when the insurance company sees that you've been browsing swingers sights? Maybe they raise your rates because you're into 'high risk' activities? You browse for 'sexual' things in 'private browsing mode' you say? What about the insurance company finds out that you're on a rock-climbing mailing list or that you frequent a rock-climbing forum? Up goes your rates! Access to these kinds of information need to come with a set of rules regarding how the information can be used. The problem is that hindsight is 20/20 on what rules will work the best (i.e. which are too strict, which are not strict enough, which don't do anything, which have loopholes, etc), too bad foresight isn't. I personally don't think that private B2B contracts can get everything right, nor do I believe that the government can/will pass any laws that will fix this. Personally, I don't think that anyone can be trusted with the vast quantities of data that are out there.

jrconlin 17y ago

One of the potential issues is that companies tend to leak information. To your point, while you may not want your old fellow high school students finding you, a quick bit of data mining on your profile could probably guess fairly quickly and present your profile to those individuals without your consent. (Obviously, mileage will vary depending on how much information you've elected to share, but it's fairly disturbing how easy it can be to isolate individuals in a fairly large group off of only a few small traits.) Just look at how the Netflix Challenge data was matched to individuals based off of very meager information. The bigger issue at hand is that when you start adding up all the various public bits of information, things can get rather scary. Did you know that in Canada, a credit card company could determine potential credit risk based off whether or not an individual bought a drink in a particular bar in a particular city with fairly impressive accuracy? http://consumerist.com/2009/05/your-credit-card-company-is-building-a-psychological-profile-of-you.html http://consumerist.com/2009/05/your-credit-card-company-is-b... I could easily imagine that an insurance company may want to determine risk profile for customers based off of browsing history and age, or possibly an online retailer may alter prices slightly because they know you have more income to spend and a history of not checking prices that aggressively. The larger a presence you have, the easier it is to do that sort of thing.

pyre 17y ago

What happens when the insurance company sees that you've been browsing swingers sights? Maybe they raise your rates because you're into 'high risk' activities? You browse for 'sexual' things in 'private browsing mode' you say? What about the insurance company finds out that you're on a rock-climbing mailing list or that you frequent a rock-climbing forum? Up goes your rates! Access to these kinds of information need to come with a set of rules regarding how the information can be used. The problem is that hindsight is 20/20 on what rules will work the best (i.e. which are too strict, which are not strict enough, which don't do anything, which have loopholes, etc), too bad foresight isn't. I personally don't think that private B2B contracts can get everything right, nor do I believe that the government can/will pass any laws that will fix this. Personally, I don't think that anyone can be trusted with the vast quantities of data that are out there.