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You are an outlier, most people like their privacy and do not want to be manipulated by advertisers.

quotemstr 8y ago
Is that so? If you look at people's behavior, most people seem to accept targeted advertising. Every bit of evidence I've seen indicates that the outrage against the practice comes from a small minority with a disproportionate voice --- much like many other sources of chronic public outrage today. Regular people, to the best of my knowledge, don't care.
- titzer 8y ago
  I think most people have no idea what is going on and literally would not be able to understand it even if it were laid out in black and white. Even then, most people "understand" that smoking causes cancer. Behavior is not always a good predictor of people's internal mental states. Addiction is real. Damn that dopamine. Is smoking somehow fine because lots of people do it and it kills you slow? (I say that as someone who can't help but have a cig now and then).
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
Disagree. I think the last fifty years proves that the vast majority of people will almost always go with convenience over some abstract ideal of "privacy".
- dpark 8y ago
  People don't care about privacy in the abstract but do care once it becomes concrete. If you ask someone if they are willing to let an impersonal algorithm analyze their data in exchange for a free service, the answer is generally yes. If you ask them if you can read their email and peruse their browsing history, the answer is almost always no. The problem privacy advocates have is forging a link between the abstract and the concrete. I don't really care that Experian compiles a list of my credit data. I really do care when they fuck up and leak it publicly. The tricky thing is that the former is a prerequisite for the latter, so I should care about that, too.
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    If you ask someone if they are willing to let an impersonal algorithm analyze their data in exchange for a free service, the answer is generally yes. If you ask them if you can read their email and peruse their browsing history, the answer is almost always no. Exactly. That's why I put "privacy" in quotes. I think people are smarter than you give them credit for. I don't give out the password to my email account, but do I care that much if Google has some machine learning algorithm with a bunch of data points buried in there that I use the word "NYC" a lot? No, I really don't care. And yeah, they might get hacked and leak my emails to the world. That would suck. But that risk is worth it to me, and judging by the hundreds of millions of people with Gmail accounts, I'm not alone.

Is that so? If you look at people's behavior, most people seem to accept targeted advertising. Every bit of evidence I've seen indicates that the outrage against the practice comes from a small minority with a disproportionate voice --- much like many other sources of chronic public outrage today. Regular people, to the best of my knowledge, don't care.

titzer 8y ago
I think most people have no idea what is going on and literally would not be able to understand it even if it were laid out in black and white. Even then, most people "understand" that smoking causes cancer. Behavior is not always a good predictor of people's internal mental states. Addiction is real. Damn that dopamine. Is smoking somehow fine because lots of people do it and it kills you slow? (I say that as someone who can't help but have a cig now and then).

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

Disagree. I think the last fifty years proves that the vast majority of people will almost always go with convenience over some abstract ideal of "privacy".

dpark 8y ago
People don't care about privacy in the abstract but do care once it becomes concrete. If you ask someone if they are willing to let an impersonal algorithm analyze their data in exchange for a free service, the answer is generally yes. If you ask them if you can read their email and peruse their browsing history, the answer is almost always no. The problem privacy advocates have is forging a link between the abstract and the concrete. I don't really care that Experian compiles a list of my credit data. I really do care when they fuck up and leak it publicly. The tricky thing is that the former is a prerequisite for the latter, so I should care about that, too.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  If you ask someone if they are willing to let an impersonal algorithm analyze their data in exchange for a free service, the answer is generally yes. If you ask them if you can read their email and peruse their browsing history, the answer is almost always no. Exactly. That's why I put "privacy" in quotes. I think people are smarter than you give them credit for. I don't give out the password to my email account, but do I care that much if Google has some machine learning algorithm with a bunch of data points buried in there that I use the word "NYC" a lot? No, I really don't care. And yeah, they might get hacked and leak my emails to the world. That would suck. But that risk is worth it to me, and judging by the hundreds of millions of people with Gmail accounts, I'm not alone.