7 ms·

I'd love to be at the pitch meeting at Time Warner, Comcast, or Verizon, where one of the execs says, "Look, we all know controlling the infrastructure is a suc

I'd love to be at the pitch meeting at Time Warner, Comcast, or Verizon, where one of the execs says, "Look, we all know controlling the infrastructure is a suckers game, and the real money is in blackmail." "Right, brilliant thinking Ted. What about profitability?" "Well, we'd have to do this to a lot of customers to make it worthwhile, since our annual revenues dwarf what most people could pay. I'd say roughly 30% of our customers should be sufficient for a trial period though. But once we get the system down, I'm sure we'll reap economies of scale, and claim a lot of first mover advantages." "Oh, but is there a risk that some customers might be turned off by the new blackmail feature? Would retention become a problem?" "Doubtless no. Once they realize any ISP can blackmail them, they'll hardly want to tell any other ISP what they're up to. I have a feeling this will make them customers for life." "Sounds great Ted. Have you even found any downside risks? I can hardly imagine any." "Well, if just one of our third of customers tells the police, we'll probably all go to jail and our company will be destroyed by the scandal." "Is that all?" "The class action lawsuits, but legal is still working out projections there, so it's probably not a serious consideration." "Well that's easy Ted, we just need to convince people not to tell the police. What's your plan for that?" "That's the beauty, sir. Once we're experts at blackmail, we can convince people to do whatever we want just with more blackmail. It would definitely be a core competency at that stage."

otoburb 10y ago
I chuckled so much after reading the last line in your dialogue that my mouse pointer took a good 2 seconds before accurately finding the upvote arrow.
pdkl95 10y ago
While amusing (and well-written), the real risk is when the data spreads beyond the control of the ISP. "It looks like we're going to miss our growth target. I want my bonus, so find something that looks like a new source of revenue." "We could sell the tracking data we've been collecting." "Aren't we already selling indirect access to that data through our 'Relevant Mobile Advertising'[1] program? We won't be able to sell the tracking data piecemeal if we sell the entire database." "That won't be a problem. We'll just add more Magic Crypto Pixie Dust[2]. If anybody complains, we can explain that we are protecting them by carefully hashing any personal identifying information." "Great! That will hold any problems until after I get may bonus. When someone finally correlates the hashes with other databases, that will be Someone Else's Problem." [... time passes ...] -- A religious fundamentalist in a very rural setting is trying about using databases. "The news said that the only job left is moving the stuff on old computers to something they called 'big data'." -- After getting a job migrating legacy databases, the fundamentalist discovers that the database they are tasked with loading into ${fad_analysis_tool} includes pornography viewing histories. "Finally! With this data we can identify the people that are secretly ${socially_disliked_group}. We can finally eradicate all of ${socially_disliked_group} from the gene pool! The sinners must be purged!" -- Everyone learns to resolve problems with words instead of violence. Our differences start to be seen as opportunities instead of a threat to the in-group. Listening to other people's opinions becomes the national pastime. [1] https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-header-faqs/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-he... [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >While amusing (and well-written), the real risk is when the data spreads beyond the control of the ISP. Everyone watches porn, so what is the risk? I can't imagine being judged by or wanting to work with anybody who cared about such matters. That said, I'm from a "Western" country, so YMMV.

otoburb 10y ago

I chuckled so much after reading the last line in your dialogue that my mouse pointer took a good 2 seconds before accurately finding the upvote arrow.

pdkl95 10y ago

While amusing (and well-written), the real risk is when the data spreads beyond the control of the ISP. "It looks like we're going to miss our growth target. I want my bonus, so find something that looks like a new source of revenue." "We could sell the tracking data we've been collecting." "Aren't we already selling indirect access to that data through our 'Relevant Mobile Advertising'[1] program? We won't be able to sell the tracking data piecemeal if we sell the entire database." "That won't be a problem. We'll just add more Magic Crypto Pixie Dust[2]. If anybody complains, we can explain that we are protecting them by carefully hashing any personal identifying information." "Great! That will hold any problems until after I get may bonus. When someone finally correlates the hashes with other databases, that will be Someone Else's Problem." [... time passes ...] -- A religious fundamentalist in a very rural setting is trying about using databases. "The news said that the only job left is moving the stuff on old computers to something they called 'big data'." -- After getting a job migrating legacy databases, the fundamentalist discovers that the database they are tasked with loading into ${fad_analysis_tool} includes pornography viewing histories. "Finally! With this data we can identify the people that are secretly ${socially_disliked_group}. We can finally eradicate all of ${socially_disliked_group} from the gene pool! The sinners must be purged!" -- Everyone learns to resolve problems with words instead of violence. Our differences start to be seen as opportunities instead of a threat to the in-group. Listening to other people's opinions becomes the national pastime. [1] https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-header-faqs/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-he... [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...

forgetsusername 10y ago
>While amusing (and well-written), the real risk is when the data spreads beyond the control of the ISP. Everyone watches porn, so what is the risk? I can't imagine being judged by or wanting to work with anybody who cared about such matters. That said, I'm from a "Western" country, so YMMV.