4 ms·

> I fail to see why sending the referer is a privacy concern. From the article: >> The Zeus platform monitors contextual data such as ... what URL they have u

by pdkl95 7y ago

> I fail to see why sending the referer is a privacy concern. From the article: >> The Zeus platform monitors contextual data such as ... what URL they have used to arrive there ... The publisher will then match that data to its existing audience data pools ... to create assumptions on what that news user’s consumption intent will be. The technology uses machine learning to decipher the patterns. They are explicitly stating they use Referrer-like data to track users.

spiderfarmer 7y ago
So that probably makes me part of a group composed of several hundreds of other visitors who exhibited the same behavior. I fail to see how that violates my privacy. You'd probably learn a lot more about me by watching me walk from my office to the parking lot.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  >You'd probably learn a lot more about me by watching me walk from my office to the parking lot. well I don't really expect the newspaper that I read to watch me walk from my place of work to the parking lot. In fact I don't want them to watch me at all because I don't expect newspapers to be in the surveillance business. When I buy a newspaper at a store the guy behind the counter doesn't follow me three blocks to figure out how I drink my coffee at the coffeeshop, yet curiously enough this is how the internet works, everyhwere
  - spiderfarmer 7y ago
    > When I buy a newspaper at a store the guy behind the counter doesn't follow me three blocks to figure out how I drink my coffee at the coffeeshop, yet curiously enough this is how the internet works, everyhwere But if you keep returning to the same news stand, he'll probably reach for the newspaper you like when he sees you coming. This is the equivalent of what the Washington Post does now. Not following you to the coffeeshop like the ad tech of today.
    - Barrin92 7y ago
      I don't object to a business or individual I interact with to getting to know my preferences better, that's inevitable and a good thing. What he doesn't do however is commodify my personal information and sell it to third parties and advertisement agencies so that they in turn can try to manipulate me and show me stuff I don't want, and I also suspect no newspaper vendor runs a high tech operation in the basement that, without my explicit knowledge runs some sort of panopticon like experiment on my personal data. Do you know what I'd really like to see? A sort of frame in frame of what the algorithm sees that tracks me while reading a Wapo article, directly shown to the reader. It'd be interesting to see how people would react if they were aware of how exactly they're being followed around and analysed.
      - spiderfarmer 7y ago
        >What he doesn't do however is commodify my personal information and sell it to third parties and advertisement agencies so that they in turn can try to manipulate me and show me stuff I don't want, and I also suspect no newspaper vendor runs a high tech operation in the basement that, without my explicit knowledge runs some sort of panopticon like experiment on my personal data. Where in the article do you see that WaPo does this? I was under the impression that this is WaPo-only data, collected by WaPo and used by WaPo. Too sell advertising space, yes. But that's because you're not paying them directly. >Do you know what I'd really like to see? A sort of frame in frame of what the algorithm sees that tracks me while reading a Wapo article, directly shown to the reader. It'd be interesting to see how people would react if they were aware of how exactly they're being followed around and analysed. I would love that too, but as long as it doesn't explicitly mention them by name I guess people don't care. Look at Facebook, here people never had any problem sharing really private information in exchange for free information and entertainment.
        acheron 7y ago
        But that's because you're not paying them directly. No ads or tracking are disabled for subscribers. Paying them directly makes no difference.
snowwrestler 7y ago
> They are explicitly stating they use Referrer-like data to track users. To me, "track user" means persistently ID one person. This sounds more like inferring anonymous interest, like inferring that someone arriving from ESPN.com might be interested in your sports section. If that person comes back tomorrow from The Financial Times, you might infer that they are interested in the economy. But without cookies, I don't see how you would recognize that visit as the same person as yesterday and integrate the sports and economy interests into a persistent profile. Each visit would be self-contained, which doesn't fit my definition of "tracking."
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > But without cookies, I don't see how you would recognize that visit as the same person as yesterday and integrate the sports and economy interests into a persistent profile. If you gather enough of that "anonymous" data, and particularly if you combine it with other data sets (as they claim they are intending to do), then it's not that hard to recognize individuals based on their usage patterns and metadata.
  - spiderfarmer 7y ago
    But does it matter if you don’t know who they are?
    - mr_crankypants 7y ago
      Going with that premise for the sake of argument: Nah, probably not. But that premise is well-known to be in conflict with established reality. Identifying specific individuals from these sorts of data points is famously, disturbingly easy to do. People even do it just for fun, almost like it were an Advent of Code challenge. That's the reason why there will never be another Netflix Prize.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      It does to me.

by pdkl95 7y ago

spiderfarmer 7y ago

So that probably makes me part of a group composed of several hundreds of other visitors who exhibited the same behavior. I fail to see how that violates my privacy. You'd probably learn a lot more about me by watching me walk from my office to the parking lot.

Barrin92 7y ago
>You'd probably learn a lot more about me by watching me walk from my office to the parking lot. well I don't really expect the newspaper that I read to watch me walk from my place of work to the parking lot. In fact I don't want them to watch me at all because I don't expect newspapers to be in the surveillance business. When I buy a newspaper at a store the guy behind the counter doesn't follow me three blocks to figure out how I drink my coffee at the coffeeshop, yet curiously enough this is how the internet works, everyhwere
- spiderfarmer 7y ago
  > When I buy a newspaper at a store the guy behind the counter doesn't follow me three blocks to figure out how I drink my coffee at the coffeeshop, yet curiously enough this is how the internet works, everyhwere But if you keep returning to the same news stand, he'll probably reach for the newspaper you like when he sees you coming. This is the equivalent of what the Washington Post does now. Not following you to the coffeeshop like the ad tech of today.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    I don't object to a business or individual I interact with to getting to know my preferences better, that's inevitable and a good thing. What he doesn't do however is commodify my personal information and sell it to third parties and advertisement agencies so that they in turn can try to manipulate me and show me stuff I don't want, and I also suspect no newspaper vendor runs a high tech operation in the basement that, without my explicit knowledge runs some sort of panopticon like experiment on my personal data. Do you know what I'd really like to see? A sort of frame in frame of what the algorithm sees that tracks me while reading a Wapo article, directly shown to the reader. It'd be interesting to see how people would react if they were aware of how exactly they're being followed around and analysed.
    - spiderfarmer 7y ago
      >What he doesn't do however is commodify my personal information and sell it to third parties and advertisement agencies so that they in turn can try to manipulate me and show me stuff I don't want, and I also suspect no newspaper vendor runs a high tech operation in the basement that, without my explicit knowledge runs some sort of panopticon like experiment on my personal data. Where in the article do you see that WaPo does this? I was under the impression that this is WaPo-only data, collected by WaPo and used by WaPo. Too sell advertising space, yes. But that's because you're not paying them directly. >Do you know what I'd really like to see? A sort of frame in frame of what the algorithm sees that tracks me while reading a Wapo article, directly shown to the reader. It'd be interesting to see how people would react if they were aware of how exactly they're being followed around and analysed. I would love that too, but as long as it doesn't explicitly mention them by name I guess people don't care. Look at Facebook, here people never had any problem sharing really private information in exchange for free information and entertainment.
      - acheron 7y ago
        But that's because you're not paying them directly. No ads or tracking are disabled for subscribers. Paying them directly makes no difference.

snowwrestler 7y ago

> They are explicitly stating they use Referrer-like data to track users. To me, "track user" means persistently ID one person. This sounds more like inferring anonymous interest, like inferring that someone arriving from ESPN.com might be interested in your sports section. If that person comes back tomorrow from The Financial Times, you might infer that they are interested in the economy. But without cookies, I don't see how you would recognize that visit as the same person as yesterday and integrate the sports and economy interests into a persistent profile. Each visit would be self-contained, which doesn't fit my definition of "tracking."

JohnFen 7y ago
> But without cookies, I don't see how you would recognize that visit as the same person as yesterday and integrate the sports and economy interests into a persistent profile. If you gather enough of that "anonymous" data, and particularly if you combine it with other data sets (as they claim they are intending to do), then it's not that hard to recognize individuals based on their usage patterns and metadata.
- spiderfarmer 7y ago
  But does it matter if you don’t know who they are?
  - mr_crankypants 7y ago
    Going with that premise for the sake of argument: Nah, probably not. But that premise is well-known to be in conflict with established reality. Identifying specific individuals from these sorts of data points is famously, disturbingly easy to do. People even do it just for fun, almost like it were an Advent of Code challenge. That's the reason why there will never be another Netflix Prize.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    It does to me.