8 ms·

Problems coming for online publishing

168 points by jedwhite 9y ago

jedwhite 9y ago
Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal had an Editorial piece yesterday that Facebook should pay for news and media content to increase its trust. There is a lot of self-interest in much of the the commercial-scale hating on Facebook. This is the article although it may be paywalled (WSJ uses variable restriction based on user prediction ironically enough): https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-public-reckoning-1521846210 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-public-reckoning-1521...
- domevent 9y ago
  Media is definitely taking the chance to try and kick Facebook to death, and often for selfish reasons. That shouldn’t distract us from the very real fact that Facebook is a terrible value proposition for users of their service, untrustworthy, and even dangerous. Facebook deserves to be kicked to death, even if the media wants it for their own reasons.
IAmEveryone 9y ago
This is a rather asinine line of argumentation. (a) The New York Time's newsroom and editorial staff are rather well-separated from their business department which makes decision about ad tech on their website. If you don't believe me, see this paragraph from a recent article at The Atlantic, which operates by the same principle: As you read this article on The Atlantic, roughly three dozen ad trackers are watching you, adding your interest in this story to profiles they maintain on your online behavior. (If you want to know more about who’s watching you, download Ghostery, a browser extension that tracks and can block these “third-party” trackers.)[0] That's a reporter arguing against the financial interests of his employer. And they are not going to fire him. (b) There's one big difference between Facebook and generic advertising technology: the New York Times doesn't require you to sign up. Every time you change devices or delete cookies, the ad targeting starts from a blank slate. And while some websites try to get you to sign up, it's trivially easy to switch to a new account every once in a while. (c) Ad tracking knows which websites I visit. Facebook knows which nude parties I attended in 2005 (d) The New York Times has actually turned to subscription revenue as its main source of income. While the split used to be 50/50, it is not much closer to 75/25 (subscriptions/ads). The "if you're not paying, you're the product..." cliché is getting tired anyway. But its premise simply doesn't apply to the New York Times. [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/data-misuse-bigger-than-facebook/556310/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/data-...
- dominotw 9y ago
  > While the split used to be 50/50, it is not much closer to 75/25 (subscriptions/ads). Thank Trump for that. This didn't happen naturally for them and was only made possible by the election of Trump. Its unlikely that this is going to sustainable for them beyond trump presidency.
- graeme 9y ago
  The mentions your first point, fairly early on.
  - IAmEveryone 9y ago
    Yes, you are right (and I was wrong). I admit I stopped reading when they suggested the media was being "ironic" (i. e. hypocritical) on the matter.
    - graeme 9y ago
      If it makes you feel better, I had stopped reading your comment when I found that point, and posted mine. My original version was that "the article addressed your points". I subsequently reread your comment and realized you made several other points. Oops. I then edited mine.
- huac 9y ago
  It's plausible that a world of ad brokers (with many smaller ad buys) is better than a world of few but very large ad engagements, vis a vis the Chinese firewall. In that world, a single advertiser would have enough (purchasing) power over the newspaper, to the point where they could veto an article critical of that advertiser.
- zo7 9y ago
  > (b) There's one big difference between Facebook and generic advertising technology: the New York Times doesn't require you to sign up. > (c) Ad tracking knows which websites I visit. Facebook knows which nude parties I attended in 2005 Facebook tracks you off the site and has been known to build shadow profiles of non-users.
Scaevolus 9y ago
The title should end with "publishers", not "pubs".
- jedwhite 9y ago
  There is an 80 character title field limit on the HN input field so the title had to be shortened.
  - dom96 9y ago
    The title should be reworded, I had to read the article's title to understand it. Edit: and as I say this it was just modified.
purple-again 9y ago
If the backlash lasts long enough to really change the landscape of non explicit permission data gathering then an opportunity for hacker news one million jobs may arise. How much is my data worth? I’ll sign a buncb of revenue sharing agreements with YouTube, Google, Mozilla, Facebook etc if the price is right. I know that HN has a lot of really heavy pro privacy advocates but I hope you can recognize a lot of people don’t share those concerns and would happyily welcome a little passive income stream in their lives.
- beambot 9y ago
  Really does seem like an interesting use of smart contracts? And it's not just social data -- there's probably real personal and societal benefit to collaboration around medical data too.
- dominotw 9y ago
  > people don’t share those concerns and would happyily welcome a little passive income stream in their lives. This is what I gathered from moviepass privacy thread on HN. Most people didn't care about sharing location if it gave them cheap movie tickets.
- RyanShook 9y ago
  Great point. Makes you think there may be room for another ad middle man that offers more to consumers because pretty much all adtech right now is built on top of Google, FB, or Apple ad platforms.
- adventured 9y ago
  > How much is my data worth? I’ll sign a buncb of revenue sharing agreements with YouTube, Google, Mozilla, Facebook etc if the price is right. That's not how it would work. In that scenario, you'll have a choice of paying $N per month for the higher privacy version of Facebook, or you can use the advertising supported low-privacy option. They are not going to pay you. Your other choice will be to not use their platform and they will be fine with that because everyone else will continue to choose ad supported because they do not want to pay $50 or $100 per year for Facebook when they can get it for what they perceive to be as free.
empath75 9y ago
I think adtech companies are at greater risk than publishers. Publishers will move to a subscription model and most of them will be okay. A whole lot of adtech companies’ entire business model is sleazy at best and outright criminal at worst.
- blablabla123 9y ago
  Yeah but it's also crazy how many pubs (the word is nice ;)) already had to close or at least merge which others. Google News made it quite obvious how redundant a lot of content is. Often articles are just exact copies of Reuters, AP, ... texts. If subscription is the only solution, I expect more pubs to disappear. Being from Germany, if I had to subscribe to nytimes.com to read articles from there I'd stop reading them probably. Just pretending I would subscribe, I would also have to subscribe to 5 more US Newspapers, 2-3 UK ones and 10-15 German ones. NYT Basic is 1.75 € a week, Washington post 10 $ a month. That would be more than 140 € a month. No way :-) (Oh, I forgot all the commercial tech pubs I read) I hope the publishers come up with a better model.
  - mlb_hn 9y ago
    > Google News made it quite obvious how redundant a lot of content is. Often articles are just exact copies of Reuters, AP, ... texts. Reuters and AP are newswire services which is meant to be used by multiple pubs because local pubs don't have reporters all around the world. The local papers' reporters are busy telling you what your local schoolboard is up to and whatnot. But I agree more pubs will likely disappear or be merged into larger media conglomerates, and that leads into issues like Sinclair forcing all their pubs to push certain agendas.
osrec 9y ago
I am rather skeptical of the effectiveness of online advertising, despite all the tracking and profiling. I see companies like Google and Facebook post bumper profits, yet I see users becoming smarter at avoiding ads. Something doesn't quite add up, and because the validity of clicks is shrouded in mystery, it's not difficult for the platform owners to play dirty. I have had very little success with online ads for my app (https://usebx.com/app https://usebx.com/app), yet what worked really well for acquiring users was releasing a JS library for free (https://osrec.github.io/currencyFormatter.js/ https://osrec.github.io/currencyFormatter.js/)
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  > yet what worked really well for acquiring users was releasing a JS library for free I notice this with a lot of new OSS. E.x. Etcher is basically an ad for Resin (tired of flashing SD cards? Use resin and do it with a git push.) This is the best form of advertising because I get a free useful tool out of it.
  - osrec 9y ago
    Yes absolutely. I think if you want people to give you their time and trust, you have to give them something of value in return. We're working on releasing more OSS as it really does help to bolster our business. In fact, we are even thinking of making Bx itself free, and simply taking a small cut when users receive payment for invoices raised on the platform.
- godzillabrennus 9y ago
  I know someone who has a company with over a billion unique visitors a year and they only bring in tens of millions a year in revenue. I have a site with over a million uniques a year and we did almost thousands a year in revenue. We are far from experts on selling ads but still it’s a tough way to monetize something small.
  - elorant 9y ago
    Your examples aren't contradictory. A site with a bn uniques can have let's say 10bn impressions. With a CTR of 1%, assuming by the the high number of users that it's news related and so doesn't get that many clicks, and a CPC of $0,15 it could bring a low 8 figure income. It all depends on the kind of content. Target women and you get higher CTRs. As for the guy with the billion uniques, well he should start contacting advertisers himself. With that kind of traffic it's a crime not to.
roywiggins 9y ago
Ha, redmorph's website doesn't even load without enabling third-party scripts (it loads http://ip-api.io http://ip-api.io, I guess to geolocate visitors)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
protomyth 9y ago
Craigslist replaced paper's classified ads. Pretty much every website is using online ads. I gotta wonder who is doing the coupons that a fair number of people use the paper to get?
- cosmie 9y ago
  Coupons are a fascinating business, with a lot of middlemen taking cuts. From the agency that creates the advertising campaign (and possibly books the media) to the media platforms that display the coupons (whether inserts in physical papers, direct mail flyers, digital coupons via coupons.com/Quotient and retailer sites and emails, etc). Plus the clearinghouses that process the physical coupons for retailers, and the processors that handle the financial aspect of cutting a check from the manufacturer to the clearinghouse and onto the retailer for the redeemed coupons. There are a few big names in each of those sections; but "doing the coupons" is an entire process that sets off a chain of necessary suppliers, rather than just a single name like Google.
jedwhite 9y ago
The original title was "Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing" for those wondering what more specifically this post is about. I shortened it when I posted it to get it under the 80 char limit, but the further mod edits probably lost some information of value :)
dqpb 9y ago
I would like to mention that I find it extremely irritating that despite paying for a subscription, the NYT still collects data on me and serves me ads. That's the worst of both worlds.
- criddell 9y ago
  Yep. I'm not anti-advertising, but I am anti-tracking. Serve me ads, but please don't personalize them.
Dowwie 9y ago
No, change isn't coming. Sorry. Trump's victory signaled a social media gold-rush for political campaigns. 2018 is a major election year in American politics. You can bet that campaigns are evaluating and signing onto social media related efforts. To meet this demand, as Cambridge Analytica buckles, others will take it place. The people who benefit by these services are those who make the laws. While legislators benefit by social media targeted services, there won't be a political will sufficient to pass a law that will slay the goose laying golden eggs.
SolarUpNote 9y ago
Compare ad tech that news websites use to what Cambridge Analytica did. 1. Ad tech: As I browse, my interests are accumulated into basic interest groups, demographic data, and maybe recently visited websites that use tracking. The result: when I visit a news website, I might see an ad for tennis racquets (because of interest), or a local bank (because of location), or DigitalOcean hosting, because I recently visited that site. 2. Facebook's platform, used by Cambridge Analytica: I install a Facebook psychological quiz app (supposedly from the prestigious Cambridge university), and give it permission to access my data. Through that, Republican campaigns also access my grandmother's account, with all of her photos, likes, and comments. They use that data to learn her deepest fears. They hire designers and writers to create fake news websites, and get their propaganda stories to appear in her Facebook news feed, where they appear to be legitimate right next to the news about the local sports team. The result: when I visit for Christmas, I have to try to calm her down, that Hillary Clinton isn't actually running a late term abortion clinic out of a pizza parlor. And she won't believe me.
- birksherty 9y ago
  You are normalizing data collection by third party companies. The article is about selling our data to third party by both Facebook and other websites. Truth is we don't know what any of those companies are doing besides showing ads. Maybe today they are not doing it, but tomorrow they can use it for other purposes. They know what people are browsing and what their interests are for a location. Also they can pinpoint users by ip, canvas fingerprinting, fonts installed etc.. https://firstpartysimulator.net/tracker https://firstpartysimulator.net/tracker
- zombieprocesses 9y ago
  Can we please keep the reddit style hysterics on reddit? I pretty much left reddit to escape the fake political nonsense. And with all due respect, you are doing exactly what you claim cambridge analytica did. You are pushing extreme fear and agenda. But for what end? > As I browse, my interests are accumulated into basic interest groups, demographic data, and maybe recently visited websites that use tracking. You are forgetting installing cookies and fingerprinting ( amongst others ) to track across platforms. You are forgetting using that data to target customers with tailored fearmongering news articles to better clickbait. > Through that, Republican campaigns also access my grandmother's account, with all of her photos, likes, and comments. They use that data to learn her deepest fears. I hate to break this to you but everyone does this. Obama did this. The democrats did. Hillary's campaign did this. I love how you excuse news websites when they cause hysteria and panic over nonsense like campus rape crisis and pay gap in male and female sports. Not to mention the hysteria over cambridge analytica. Seems like the news has done far more harm to you than facebook did to your grandmother, assuming your story is legit and not made up. I recommend you go watch the 13th on netflix to see how news and media can be dangerous. The problem now is that news has access to tons of data about us ( just like facebook ). The biggest difference is that facebook was pretty much "neutral" whereas the news/media are highly biased. Facebook allowed both trump and hillary political ads.
docsearls 9y ago
I've updated that piece several times to clarify things, so you might check it again. What it's a call for is hacking our way to publishing norms that don't involve tracking. And that's what we're starting to do at Linux Journal, where I'm editor-in-chief. For the first time anywhere, we'll be agreeing to readers' terms, rather than the reverse. In legal terms, the reader will be the first party and Linux Journal will be the second party. I explain how we're approaching this in "Help Us Cure Online Publishing of Its Addiction to Personal Data": http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/help-us-cure-online-publishing-its-addiction-personal-data http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/help-us-cure-online-publ... The barn we’re raising is for all of publishing, but we’re short-handed. So, if you're interested in helping, let me know (doc at linuxjournal dot com). Or show up on 2 April at the Computer History Museum: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vrm-day-2018a-tickets-43870689413 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vrm-day-2018a-tickets-438706894... . Thanks!
- yuhong 9y ago
  Happens that I just posted an essay on that topic: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2018/03/google-doubleclick-mozilla-essay-second.html http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2018/03/google-doubleclick-mozi...
  - sctb 9y ago
    If you're going to mention this post in multiple threads, please do a regular submission instead.
    - yuhong 9y ago
      Yea, I don't normally do this. I did it because docsearls was there.

168 points by jedwhite 9y ago

Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal had an Editorial piece yesterday that Facebook should pay for news and media content to increase its trust. There is a lot of self-interest in much of the the commercial-scale hating on Facebook. This is the article although it may be paywalled (WSJ uses variable restriction based on user prediction ironically enough): https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-public-reckoning-1521846210 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-public-reckoning-1521...

domevent 9y ago
Media is definitely taking the chance to try and kick Facebook to death, and often for selfish reasons. That shouldn’t distract us from the very real fact that Facebook is a terrible value proposition for users of their service, untrustworthy, and even dangerous. Facebook deserves to be kicked to death, even if the media wants it for their own reasons.

IAmEveryone 9y ago

This is a rather asinine line of argumentation. (a) The New York Time's newsroom and editorial staff are rather well-separated from their business department which makes decision about ad tech on their website. If you don't believe me, see this paragraph from a recent article at The Atlantic, which operates by the same principle: As you read this article on The Atlantic, roughly three dozen ad trackers are watching you, adding your interest in this story to profiles they maintain on your online behavior. (If you want to know more about who’s watching you, download Ghostery, a browser extension that tracks and can block these “third-party” trackers.)[0] That's a reporter arguing against the financial interests of his employer. And they are not going to fire him. (b) There's one big difference between Facebook and generic advertising technology: the New York Times doesn't require you to sign up. Every time you change devices or delete cookies, the ad targeting starts from a blank slate. And while some websites try to get you to sign up, it's trivially easy to switch to a new account every once in a while. (c) Ad tracking knows which websites I visit. Facebook knows which nude parties I attended in 2005 (d) The New York Times has actually turned to subscription revenue as its main source of income. While the split used to be 50/50, it is not much closer to 75/25 (subscriptions/ads). The "if you're not paying, you're the product..." cliché is getting tired anyway. But its premise simply doesn't apply to the New York Times. [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/data-misuse-bigger-than-facebook/556310/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/data-...

dominotw 9y ago
> While the split used to be 50/50, it is not much closer to 75/25 (subscriptions/ads). Thank Trump for that. This didn't happen naturally for them and was only made possible by the election of Trump. Its unlikely that this is going to sustainable for them beyond trump presidency.
graeme 9y ago
The mentions your first point, fairly early on.
- IAmEveryone 9y ago
  Yes, you are right (and I was wrong). I admit I stopped reading when they suggested the media was being "ironic" (i. e. hypocritical) on the matter.
  - graeme 9y ago
    If it makes you feel better, I had stopped reading your comment when I found that point, and posted mine. My original version was that "the article addressed your points". I subsequently reread your comment and realized you made several other points. Oops. I then edited mine.
huac 9y ago
It's plausible that a world of ad brokers (with many smaller ad buys) is better than a world of few but very large ad engagements, vis a vis the Chinese firewall. In that world, a single advertiser would have enough (purchasing) power over the newspaper, to the point where they could veto an article critical of that advertiser.
zo7 9y ago
> (b) There's one big difference between Facebook and generic advertising technology: the New York Times doesn't require you to sign up. > (c) Ad tracking knows which websites I visit. Facebook knows which nude parties I attended in 2005 Facebook tracks you off the site and has been known to build shadow profiles of non-users.

Scaevolus 9y ago

The title should end with "publishers", not "pubs".

jedwhite 9y ago
There is an 80 character title field limit on the HN input field so the title had to be shortened.
- dom96 9y ago
  The title should be reworded, I had to read the article's title to understand it. Edit: and as I say this it was just modified.

purple-again 9y ago

If the backlash lasts long enough to really change the landscape of non explicit permission data gathering then an opportunity for hacker news one million jobs may arise. How much is my data worth? I’ll sign a buncb of revenue sharing agreements with YouTube, Google, Mozilla, Facebook etc if the price is right. I know that HN has a lot of really heavy pro privacy advocates but I hope you can recognize a lot of people don’t share those concerns and would happyily welcome a little passive income stream in their lives.

beambot 9y ago
Really does seem like an interesting use of smart contracts? And it's not just social data -- there's probably real personal and societal benefit to collaboration around medical data too.
dominotw 9y ago
> people don’t share those concerns and would happyily welcome a little passive income stream in their lives. This is what I gathered from moviepass privacy thread on HN. Most people didn't care about sharing location if it gave them cheap movie tickets.
RyanShook 9y ago
Great point. Makes you think there may be room for another ad middle man that offers more to consumers because pretty much all adtech right now is built on top of Google, FB, or Apple ad platforms.
adventured 9y ago
> How much is my data worth? I’ll sign a buncb of revenue sharing agreements with YouTube, Google, Mozilla, Facebook etc if the price is right. That's not how it would work. In that scenario, you'll have a choice of paying $N per month for the higher privacy version of Facebook, or you can use the advertising supported low-privacy option. They are not going to pay you. Your other choice will be to not use their platform and they will be fine with that because everyone else will continue to choose ad supported because they do not want to pay $50 or $100 per year for Facebook when they can get it for what they perceive to be as free.

empath75 9y ago

I think adtech companies are at greater risk than publishers. Publishers will move to a subscription model and most of them will be okay. A whole lot of adtech companies’ entire business model is sleazy at best and outright criminal at worst.

blablabla123 9y ago
Yeah but it's also crazy how many pubs (the word is nice ;)) already had to close or at least merge which others. Google News made it quite obvious how redundant a lot of content is. Often articles are just exact copies of Reuters, AP, ... texts. If subscription is the only solution, I expect more pubs to disappear. Being from Germany, if I had to subscribe to nytimes.com to read articles from there I'd stop reading them probably. Just pretending I would subscribe, I would also have to subscribe to 5 more US Newspapers, 2-3 UK ones and 10-15 German ones. NYT Basic is 1.75 € a week, Washington post 10 $ a month. That would be more than 140 € a month. No way :-) (Oh, I forgot all the commercial tech pubs I read) I hope the publishers come up with a better model.
- mlb_hn 9y ago
  > Google News made it quite obvious how redundant a lot of content is. Often articles are just exact copies of Reuters, AP, ... texts. Reuters and AP are newswire services which is meant to be used by multiple pubs because local pubs don't have reporters all around the world. The local papers' reporters are busy telling you what your local schoolboard is up to and whatnot. But I agree more pubs will likely disappear or be merged into larger media conglomerates, and that leads into issues like Sinclair forcing all their pubs to push certain agendas.

osrec 9y ago

I am rather skeptical of the effectiveness of online advertising, despite all the tracking and profiling. I see companies like Google and Facebook post bumper profits, yet I see users becoming smarter at avoiding ads. Something doesn't quite add up, and because the validity of clicks is shrouded in mystery, it's not difficult for the platform owners to play dirty. I have had very little success with online ads for my app (https://usebx.com/app https://usebx.com/app), yet what worked really well for acquiring users was releasing a JS library for free (https://osrec.github.io/currencyFormatter.js/ https://osrec.github.io/currencyFormatter.js/)

ReverseCold 9y ago
> yet what worked really well for acquiring users was releasing a JS library for free I notice this with a lot of new OSS. E.x. Etcher is basically an ad for Resin (tired of flashing SD cards? Use resin and do it with a git push.) This is the best form of advertising because I get a free useful tool out of it.
- osrec 9y ago
  Yes absolutely. I think if you want people to give you their time and trust, you have to give them something of value in return. We're working on releasing more OSS as it really does help to bolster our business. In fact, we are even thinking of making Bx itself free, and simply taking a small cut when users receive payment for invoices raised on the platform.
godzillabrennus 9y ago
I know someone who has a company with over a billion unique visitors a year and they only bring in tens of millions a year in revenue. I have a site with over a million uniques a year and we did almost thousands a year in revenue. We are far from experts on selling ads but still it’s a tough way to monetize something small.
- elorant 9y ago
  Your examples aren't contradictory. A site with a bn uniques can have let's say 10bn impressions. With a CTR of 1%, assuming by the the high number of users that it's news related and so doesn't get that many clicks, and a CPC of $0,15 it could bring a low 8 figure income. It all depends on the kind of content. Target women and you get higher CTRs. As for the guy with the billion uniques, well he should start contacting advertisers himself. With that kind of traffic it's a crime not to.

roywiggins 9y ago

Ha, redmorph's website doesn't even load without enabling third-party scripts (it loads http://ip-api.io http://ip-api.io, I guess to geolocate visitors)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

protomyth 9y ago

Craigslist replaced paper's classified ads. Pretty much every website is using online ads. I gotta wonder who is doing the coupons that a fair number of people use the paper to get?

cosmie 9y ago
Coupons are a fascinating business, with a lot of middlemen taking cuts. From the agency that creates the advertising campaign (and possibly books the media) to the media platforms that display the coupons (whether inserts in physical papers, direct mail flyers, digital coupons via coupons.com/Quotient and retailer sites and emails, etc). Plus the clearinghouses that process the physical coupons for retailers, and the processors that handle the financial aspect of cutting a check from the manufacturer to the clearinghouse and onto the retailer for the redeemed coupons. There are a few big names in each of those sections; but "doing the coupons" is an entire process that sets off a chain of necessary suppliers, rather than just a single name like Google.

jedwhite 9y ago

The original title was "Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing" for those wondering what more specifically this post is about. I shortened it when I posted it to get it under the 80 char limit, but the further mod edits probably lost some information of value :)

dqpb 9y ago

I would like to mention that I find it extremely irritating that despite paying for a subscription, the NYT still collects data on me and serves me ads. That's the worst of both worlds.

criddell 9y ago
Yep. I'm not anti-advertising, but I am anti-tracking. Serve me ads, but please don't personalize them.

Dowwie 9y ago

No, change isn't coming. Sorry. Trump's victory signaled a social media gold-rush for political campaigns. 2018 is a major election year in American politics. You can bet that campaigns are evaluating and signing onto social media related efforts. To meet this demand, as Cambridge Analytica buckles, others will take it place. The people who benefit by these services are those who make the laws. While legislators benefit by social media targeted services, there won't be a political will sufficient to pass a law that will slay the goose laying golden eggs.

SolarUpNote 9y ago

Compare ad tech that news websites use to what Cambridge Analytica did. 1. Ad tech: As I browse, my interests are accumulated into basic interest groups, demographic data, and maybe recently visited websites that use tracking. The result: when I visit a news website, I might see an ad for tennis racquets (because of interest), or a local bank (because of location), or DigitalOcean hosting, because I recently visited that site. 2. Facebook's platform, used by Cambridge Analytica: I install a Facebook psychological quiz app (supposedly from the prestigious Cambridge university), and give it permission to access my data. Through that, Republican campaigns also access my grandmother's account, with all of her photos, likes, and comments. They use that data to learn her deepest fears. They hire designers and writers to create fake news websites, and get their propaganda stories to appear in her Facebook news feed, where they appear to be legitimate right next to the news about the local sports team. The result: when I visit for Christmas, I have to try to calm her down, that Hillary Clinton isn't actually running a late term abortion clinic out of a pizza parlor. And she won't believe me.

birksherty 9y ago
You are normalizing data collection by third party companies. The article is about selling our data to third party by both Facebook and other websites. Truth is we don't know what any of those companies are doing besides showing ads. Maybe today they are not doing it, but tomorrow they can use it for other purposes. They know what people are browsing and what their interests are for a location. Also they can pinpoint users by ip, canvas fingerprinting, fonts installed etc.. https://firstpartysimulator.net/tracker https://firstpartysimulator.net/tracker
zombieprocesses 9y ago
Can we please keep the reddit style hysterics on reddit? I pretty much left reddit to escape the fake political nonsense. And with all due respect, you are doing exactly what you claim cambridge analytica did. You are pushing extreme fear and agenda. But for what end? > As I browse, my interests are accumulated into basic interest groups, demographic data, and maybe recently visited websites that use tracking. You are forgetting installing cookies and fingerprinting ( amongst others ) to track across platforms. You are forgetting using that data to target customers with tailored fearmongering news articles to better clickbait. > Through that, Republican campaigns also access my grandmother's account, with all of her photos, likes, and comments. They use that data to learn her deepest fears. I hate to break this to you but everyone does this. Obama did this. The democrats did. Hillary's campaign did this. I love how you excuse news websites when they cause hysteria and panic over nonsense like campus rape crisis and pay gap in male and female sports. Not to mention the hysteria over cambridge analytica. Seems like the news has done far more harm to you than facebook did to your grandmother, assuming your story is legit and not made up. I recommend you go watch the 13th on netflix to see how news and media can be dangerous. The problem now is that news has access to tons of data about us ( just like facebook ). The biggest difference is that facebook was pretty much "neutral" whereas the news/media are highly biased. Facebook allowed both trump and hillary political ads.

docsearls 9y ago

I've updated that piece several times to clarify things, so you might check it again. What it's a call for is hacking our way to publishing norms that don't involve tracking. And that's what we're starting to do at Linux Journal, where I'm editor-in-chief. For the first time anywhere, we'll be agreeing to readers' terms, rather than the reverse. In legal terms, the reader will be the first party and Linux Journal will be the second party. I explain how we're approaching this in "Help Us Cure Online Publishing of Its Addiction to Personal Data": http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/help-us-cure-online-publishing-its-addiction-personal-data http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/help-us-cure-online-publ... The barn we’re raising is for all of publishing, but we’re short-handed. So, if you're interested in helping, let me know (doc at linuxjournal dot com). Or show up on 2 April at the Computer History Museum: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vrm-day-2018a-tickets-43870689413 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vrm-day-2018a-tickets-438706894... . Thanks!

yuhong 9y ago
Happens that I just posted an essay on that topic: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2018/03/google-doubleclick-mozilla-essay-second.html http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2018/03/google-doubleclick-mozi...
- sctb 9y ago
  If you're going to mention this post in multiple threads, please do a regular submission instead.
  - yuhong 9y ago
    Yea, I don't normally do this. I did it because docsearls was there.