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>It’s as though Mark Zuckerberg woke up one morning and realized that the oily rags he’d been accumulating in his garage could be refined for an extremely low-g

>It’s as though Mark Zuckerberg woke up one morning and realized that the oily rags he’d been accumulating in his garage could be refined for an extremely low-grade, low-value crude oil. No one would pay very much for this oil, but there were a lot of oily rags, and provided no one asked him to pay for the inevitable horrific fires that would result from filling the world’s garages with oily rags, he could turn a tidy profit. Given the number of trackers that my ad-blocker blocked while reading this, isn't this article, Locusmag.com, and Cory Doctorow himself sprinkling just a little more oil on the pile of rags? Don't forget to smash that share button!

bunderbunder 8y ago
That's a tricky one. At this point, there are very few media outlets that haven't made a deal with the de^H^H ad and social media networks. As a result, any freelance writer, even one who is also a privacy advocate, has to make a choice between avoiding any involvement of their work in surveillance capitalism, and getting paid and having their work be read. I have a hard time faulting Doctorow for choosing to be relevant.
kbenson 8y ago
> Cory Doctorow himself sprinkling just a little more oil on the pile of rags? I just looked, and this is mirrored on his blog[1], and it appears to have very little or no tracking set up. Feel free to read it there. https://craphound.com/news/2018/07/02/mark-zuckerberg-and-his-empire-of-oily-rags/ https://craphound.com/news/2018/07/02/mark-zuckerberg-and-hi...
- disqard 8y ago
  Thank you for this link. Thanks GP also, for pointing out the irony that an article discussing our digital society's deep dependence on advertising is itself hosted on a space that has to rely on advertising to stay afloat (and thereby engages in precisely the sort of pernicious tracking that the article is dissecting).
- jacquesm 8y ago
  That's a much better link!
- sctb 8y ago
  Thanks, we've updated the link from http://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/ http://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oi....
  - polynomial 8y ago
    Is it still mirrored? It appears to be only a 3 paragraph excerpt.

bunderbunder 8y ago

That's a tricky one. At this point, there are very few media outlets that haven't made a deal with the de^H^H ad and social media networks. As a result, any freelance writer, even one who is also a privacy advocate, has to make a choice between avoiding any involvement of their work in surveillance capitalism, and getting paid and having their work be read. I have a hard time faulting Doctorow for choosing to be relevant.

kbenson 8y ago

> Cory Doctorow himself sprinkling just a little more oil on the pile of rags? I just looked, and this is mirrored on his blog[1], and it appears to have very little or no tracking set up. Feel free to read it there. https://craphound.com/news/2018/07/02/mark-zuckerberg-and-his-empire-of-oily-rags/ https://craphound.com/news/2018/07/02/mark-zuckerberg-and-hi...

disqard 8y ago
Thank you for this link. Thanks GP also, for pointing out the irony that an article discussing our digital society's deep dependence on advertising is itself hosted on a space that has to rely on advertising to stay afloat (and thereby engages in precisely the sort of pernicious tracking that the article is dissecting).
jacquesm 8y ago
That's a much better link!
sctb 8y ago
Thanks, we've updated the link from http://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/ http://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oi....
- polynomial 8y ago
  Is it still mirrored? It appears to be only a 3 paragraph excerpt.