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Everyone is paying more to acquire users these days. I haven't read the book that coins them as 'attention merchants,' but it seems like an accurate description

Everyone is paying more to acquire users these days. I haven't read the book that coins them as 'attention merchants,' but it seems like an accurate description, and their product is getting to be scarce and expensive. I've got things to do, and when I waste time I'd like it to be wasted in a way that relaxes or recharges me or the people I care about. Not that there isn't such a thing as good advertising, but the trick seems to be targeting. If you can't target people who actually want what you're offering to them, it's a waste of everyone's time and people will start tuning you out. Worse, you really have to hit them when they want what you're selling. Like, when I go to Digikey and see an ad for some company's 48V/166F supercapacitor bank, or a new line of 16-bit ADC chips? Yeah, that sort of thing is a reasonable bet. When I go to a news story and see an ad for a VR headset? Not...quite.

Terr_ 9y ago
A big problem is that once being a bulk attention merchant isn't appealing, they'll double-down on finding ways to creepily invade your privacy, profile you, and resell that profile to companies you'd rather didn't have your information.
- visarga 9y ago
  We need a browser that is more private than what we have today. Something to hide the IP and separate online identities on various sites, and monitor the data being sent out not to contain your personal information, even if it was sent by your own mistake (like, referencing your secret reddit account on your public name email). Privacy has similarities to hygiene. We have learned, through a lot of suffering, the importance of hygiene in daily life, we need to learn a new kind of hygiene now, but people can't do that unaided.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    I'd go a step further and state unequivocably that privacy is hygiene. Hygiene is about preserving the health of a system, and violating principles of privacy endanger the health of social intercourse. This is part of a large set of dynamics associated with technology in that there are systemic side-effects of any number of technologies which affect overall systemic health. The emergence of and/or management of these is itself a major mode of technological mechanisms. http://www.etymonline.com/word/hygiene http://www.etymonline.com/word/hygiene

Terr_ 9y ago

A big problem is that once being a bulk attention merchant isn't appealing, they'll double-down on finding ways to creepily invade your privacy, profile you, and resell that profile to companies you'd rather didn't have your information.

visarga 9y ago
We need a browser that is more private than what we have today. Something to hide the IP and separate online identities on various sites, and monitor the data being sent out not to contain your personal information, even if it was sent by your own mistake (like, referencing your secret reddit account on your public name email). Privacy has similarities to hygiene. We have learned, through a lot of suffering, the importance of hygiene in daily life, we need to learn a new kind of hygiene now, but people can't do that unaided.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  I'd go a step further and state unequivocably that privacy is hygiene. Hygiene is about preserving the health of a system, and violating principles of privacy endanger the health of social intercourse. This is part of a large set of dynamics associated with technology in that there are systemic side-effects of any number of technologies which affect overall systemic health. The emergence of and/or management of these is itself a major mode of technological mechanisms. http://www.etymonline.com/word/hygiene http://www.etymonline.com/word/hygiene