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Walled gardens are partly due to the emergence of huge corporations who harvest and aggregate personal data to build profiles ostensibly to aid advertising. I

by sn41 8y ago

Walled gardens are partly due to the emergence of huge corporations who harvest and aggregate personal data to build profiles ostensibly to aid advertising. I find this baffling - traditional shopkeepers never used to ask for the personal details of the customers. That's why the phrase "it's just business" makes sense. Elizabeth Warren seems to have spoken of breaking up some of Facebook and Google. This might be the only way to combat the data hawkishness of corporate leaders like Eric Schmidt.

zdragnar 8y ago
> traditional shopkeepers never used to ask for the personal details of the customers Based on that statement, it sounds like you never lived in a small town, or you lived in a twilight zone version of one.
- 908087 8y ago
  I've never been to a small town where the shopkeeper asks for my address book and to briefly scan my personal communications for keywords "to improve our services and deliver a more relevant shopping experience".
- JohnFen 8y ago
  I don't know, I've lived in a few real-world small towns and have never had a shopkeeper ask for personal details as part of a transaction.
onion2k 8y ago
Walled gardens are partly due to the emergence of huge corporations who harvest and aggregate personal data to build profiles ostensibly to aid advertising. The FAANG companies built surveillance networks to target adverts at the beginning, but I think things have changed so much that advertising is just one of many uses of the surveillance data now. Take Android's location tracking as an example; Google doesn't need minute-by-minute location information of where everyone is to sell more adverts. They gather that data, and use it in Maps for live traffic tracking which is ostensibly useful, but it's not for advertising. These companies are at the point now where they soak up whatever data they can get just in case they can think of a use for it in the future. Advertising is the excuse, not the reason.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Also ML models, which in modern application boil down to "throw everything you have at some DNN and see what sticks". Which also encourage hoarding anything you can get your hands on, since you never know (and really, don't care about figuring out through thinking) which data feature will suddenly be the key to make your ML product work.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > Advertising is the excuse, not the reason. I think you have a solid point here, but even so, that doesn't make anything better. Collecting data on people without their informed consent is wrong regardless of what you want to use that data for.

by sn41 8y ago

zdragnar 8y ago

> traditional shopkeepers never used to ask for the personal details of the customers Based on that statement, it sounds like you never lived in a small town, or you lived in a twilight zone version of one.

908087 8y ago
I've never been to a small town where the shopkeeper asks for my address book and to briefly scan my personal communications for keywords "to improve our services and deliver a more relevant shopping experience".
JohnFen 8y ago
I don't know, I've lived in a few real-world small towns and have never had a shopkeeper ask for personal details as part of a transaction.

onion2k 8y ago

Walled gardens are partly due to the emergence of huge corporations who harvest and aggregate personal data to build profiles ostensibly to aid advertising. The FAANG companies built surveillance networks to target adverts at the beginning, but I think things have changed so much that advertising is just one of many uses of the surveillance data now. Take Android's location tracking as an example; Google doesn't need minute-by-minute location information of where everyone is to sell more adverts. They gather that data, and use it in Maps for live traffic tracking which is ostensibly useful, but it's not for advertising. These companies are at the point now where they soak up whatever data they can get just in case they can think of a use for it in the future. Advertising is the excuse, not the reason.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Also ML models, which in modern application boil down to "throw everything you have at some DNN and see what sticks". Which also encourage hoarding anything you can get your hands on, since you never know (and really, don't care about figuring out through thinking) which data feature will suddenly be the key to make your ML product work.
JohnFen 8y ago
> Advertising is the excuse, not the reason. I think you have a solid point here, but even so, that doesn't make anything better. Collecting data on people without their informed consent is wrong regardless of what you want to use that data for.