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"The surveillance economy should die." This is the key point. We don't need a perfect fix. We "just" need to change incentives enough that, say, 95% of enginee
by JackC 8y ago
"The surveillance economy should die."
This is the key point. We don't need a perfect fix. We "just" need to change incentives enough that, say, 95% of engineers who work on surveillance and psychological profiling of individuals move on to something else.
- jonbarker 8y agoThis is a great point. A common complaint about adtech is that since it prints money, the opportunity cost of the brain power being poured into it is other more important problems, like cancer research, for one. Where it gets tricky is when the adtech behemoths start funding cancer research. I don't have an answer to this one.
- alpos 8y agoCancer research needs brain power. Of course, brain power costs money. However, funding cancer brain power by transferring brain power out of cancer seems like a broken window fallacy.
- jonbarker 8y agoI'm not talking about funding cancer research by transferring smart people out of cancer research. I was actually referring to encouraging cancer research and other more beneficial endeavors by discouraging very smart people from working in adtech. This discouragement may come in the form of regulation, or not. As an example, many folks had to go into some other field when the global financial crisis and subsequent regulation caused a bunch of finance jobs to go away.
- alpos 8y agoI get it, just trying to provide ammunition for you. :D The reality may be that there is a decent amount of brain power to go around but I can easily agree that any brain power spent of ads would have been better used if such a money printer were not allowed to exist. With that, I can see the continued existence of advertising work as something that ultimately removes more value from the economy that it creates.