6 ms·

Toronto is surveillance capitalism’s new frontier

87 points by dotcoma 7y ago

dlkf 7y ago
I never cease to be impressed by how effortlessly humanities academics are able to write hundreds of words while saying literally nothing at all. The entire essay could be replaced with "Google wants to measure things in Toronto." Would this be a bad thing? Quite possibly! But there needs to be an argument as to why, and Zuboff doesn't have one. Broadly speaking, measuring things is good. The previous Canadian government tried to kill our long form census, and this was met with widespread public disapproval. How is the government supposed to draft evidence-based policy if they don't have any evidence? The current government brought it back, and we all spent an afternoon filling it out. Obviously it's different when the body doing the measuring and optimizing is a private entity, and there are legitimate concerns about a misalignment of incentives. But instead of offering a single concrete example, the author leans on the tired CAPITALISM == BAD trope, content in the knowledge that there's enough unnuanced leftists out there that she can hit solid sales numbers without even trying. I'm grateful for the article, because I was on the fence about reading her book. Toronto Life just saved me $35.
- xallace 7y ago
  seems like someone is on a booktour
- artsyca 7y ago
  What are you doing on HN don't you have a pointless feature to deliver that'll die in MR
  - dotcoma 7y ago
    Google are hoarding data in a way which is totally unacceptable and probably illegal, at least in Europe. And why? In order to fool companies to buy the worst and most useless advertising format ever, the banner ad.
- jstanley 7y ago
  Everyone acts as if "evidence-based policy" is a good way to govern, but I actually don't think it is. Laws should be decided based on principles, not evidence. There's a great Mitchell and Webb sketch to this effect: Kill the Poor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg
  - Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago
    I mean, the evidence is meant to be used to back some principles. For example, I am proponent of evidence based policy and I am also an advocate of mental health help. There is a lot of pseudo science and easy feel good stuff but there is also a lot of really good behaviour therapy out there. One works, one is muck, and I think tax dollars should be used to fund the one that works because people deserve to not be depressed
  - fouc 7y ago
    I agree laws should be based on principles, but I do wonder where to draw the line. I've noticed that any system that is built up from axiomatic principles and reasoning usually ends up out of touch with reality as well. It's likely we need to have evidence feeding back into a principled-based system.
  - rrmm 7y ago
    I think principles decide what you do about the evidence (and even what evidence needs to be collected) to accomplish your goals. The goals themselves derive from principles. Evidence-based governance can give you gas chambers or head-start pre-K programs depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
  - paganel 7y ago
    > Laws should be decided based on principles, not evidence. Agree 100%. It has become my recent understanding that "evidence-based policy" is a more sanitised, technocratic way of carrying out good old-fashioned eugenics policies.
  - majos 7y ago
    The problem with principles is they don’t tell you much about consequences. We might all agree that we should help very poor people in region X, but what will actually help most? Micro loans, micro loans with coaching, unconditional lump sum cash at random, unconditional lump sum cash to targeted promising candidates, free schools, schools with small fees? We can’t know how the different effects of these things compare from a principled argument. That’s where evidence is useful.
- rtikulit 7y ago
  Broadly speaking, measuring things good, measuring people sometimes good, sometimes very bad. There are two things I would very much like to avoid. One, weaponized behavioral models that allow bad actors to cheaply, anonymously and pervasively manipulate people, groups and societies. Two, having my life, or my children's life, become an exhausting and soulless rat race of conformance to the behavioral models deployed by various gatekeepers in society.
jariel 7y ago
The language is indirect and the issue is overstated. She gives no examples really of how such activities are menacing, just spooky language concerning it i.e. 'monitoring' /'actualisation'. In fact it's surprising how little Google et. al. are able to do with 'all my data'. Google fails to show me relevant ads 99% of the time, and I miss all the cool stuff I want do find out about. That said, this: " To this end, the company unilaterally declares that all public and private experience occurring within this experimental zone would be deemed “urban data” available for monitoring and actuation." Is obviously problematic, and the issue in general, is real. Most people are not hugely worried that Google has some magic power to control us due to data capture, at the same time, a lot of this does represent a material invasion of privacy.
- fouc 7y ago
  >Most people are not hugely worried that Google has some magic power to control us due to data capture, And yet most people are worried about Nineteen Eighty-Four's Big Brother becoming a reality.
  - snaky 7y ago
    > about half of U.S. adults (49%) say it is acceptable for the government to collect data about all Americans in order to assess potential threats. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-about-privacy-surveillance-and-data-sharing/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeawa...
- dylkil 7y ago
  >Google fails to show me relevant ads 99% of the time either this or the people targeting you have their audience completely wrong
  - jariel 7y ago
    So I spend a lot on ads, I'm a little bit familiar: Most 'search' ads are 'relevant' to the search, but they're not necessarily relevant to me. In particular, banner ads, which are very crudely targeted, tend to be of 'low relevance' in marketing lingo, but in real terms, extremely low relevance. For example, I don't live in the US, and I see an astonishing number of ads for US-centric content, and for products that are not even available where I live. Consider the ad in the article itself: it's for a special night at the 'ROM' (Royal Ontario Museum) in Toronto. But I don't live anywhere near Toronto! Scrolling down I see an add for the IDS 'Interior Design Show' in Toronto. Not only do I have absolutely no interest in the subject, but I don't live in Toronto. I don't know if those are Google ad displays or not, but the it's basically the same, ad nauseam: the ad market is an astonishingly inefficient marketplace. Perhaps the greatest opportunity for 'relevance' might be on Facebook - because they have such a massive base, and a real means to captured nuance behaviour. I run ads on that platform which score way above average in terms of relevance and performance, but I know for certain I'm not getting the kind of material relevance that I want. Honestly it's a strange paradox to me: Google has everything at their fingertips and can't figure out who wants to buy a lawn mower and who has definitely no interest.

87 points by dotcoma 7y ago

dlkf 7y ago

I never cease to be impressed by how effortlessly humanities academics are able to write hundreds of words while saying literally nothing at all. The entire essay could be replaced with "Google wants to measure things in Toronto." Would this be a bad thing? Quite possibly! But there needs to be an argument as to why, and Zuboff doesn't have one. Broadly speaking, measuring things is good. The previous Canadian government tried to kill our long form census, and this was met with widespread public disapproval. How is the government supposed to draft evidence-based policy if they don't have any evidence? The current government brought it back, and we all spent an afternoon filling it out. Obviously it's different when the body doing the measuring and optimizing is a private entity, and there are legitimate concerns about a misalignment of incentives. But instead of offering a single concrete example, the author leans on the tired CAPITALISM == BAD trope, content in the knowledge that there's enough unnuanced leftists out there that she can hit solid sales numbers without even trying. I'm grateful for the article, because I was on the fence about reading her book. Toronto Life just saved me $35.

xallace 7y ago
seems like someone is on a booktour
artsyca 7y ago
What are you doing on HN don't you have a pointless feature to deliver that'll die in MR
- dotcoma 7y ago
  Google are hoarding data in a way which is totally unacceptable and probably illegal, at least in Europe. And why? In order to fool companies to buy the worst and most useless advertising format ever, the banner ad.
jstanley 7y ago
Everyone acts as if "evidence-based policy" is a good way to govern, but I actually don't think it is. Laws should be decided based on principles, not evidence. There's a great Mitchell and Webb sketch to this effect: Kill the Poor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg
- Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago
  I mean, the evidence is meant to be used to back some principles. For example, I am proponent of evidence based policy and I am also an advocate of mental health help. There is a lot of pseudo science and easy feel good stuff but there is also a lot of really good behaviour therapy out there. One works, one is muck, and I think tax dollars should be used to fund the one that works because people deserve to not be depressed
- fouc 7y ago
  I agree laws should be based on principles, but I do wonder where to draw the line. I've noticed that any system that is built up from axiomatic principles and reasoning usually ends up out of touch with reality as well. It's likely we need to have evidence feeding back into a principled-based system.
- rrmm 7y ago
  I think principles decide what you do about the evidence (and even what evidence needs to be collected) to accomplish your goals. The goals themselves derive from principles. Evidence-based governance can give you gas chambers or head-start pre-K programs depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
- paganel 7y ago
  > Laws should be decided based on principles, not evidence. Agree 100%. It has become my recent understanding that "evidence-based policy" is a more sanitised, technocratic way of carrying out good old-fashioned eugenics policies.
- majos 7y ago
  The problem with principles is they don’t tell you much about consequences. We might all agree that we should help very poor people in region X, but what will actually help most? Micro loans, micro loans with coaching, unconditional lump sum cash at random, unconditional lump sum cash to targeted promising candidates, free schools, schools with small fees? We can’t know how the different effects of these things compare from a principled argument. That’s where evidence is useful.
rtikulit 7y ago
Broadly speaking, measuring things good, measuring people sometimes good, sometimes very bad. There are two things I would very much like to avoid. One, weaponized behavioral models that allow bad actors to cheaply, anonymously and pervasively manipulate people, groups and societies. Two, having my life, or my children's life, become an exhausting and soulless rat race of conformance to the behavioral models deployed by various gatekeepers in society.

jariel 7y ago

The language is indirect and the issue is overstated. She gives no examples really of how such activities are menacing, just spooky language concerning it i.e. 'monitoring' /'actualisation'. In fact it's surprising how little Google et. al. are able to do with 'all my data'. Google fails to show me relevant ads 99% of the time, and I miss all the cool stuff I want do find out about. That said, this: " To this end, the company unilaterally declares that all public and private experience occurring within this experimental zone would be deemed “urban data” available for monitoring and actuation." Is obviously problematic, and the issue in general, is real. Most people are not hugely worried that Google has some magic power to control us due to data capture, at the same time, a lot of this does represent a material invasion of privacy.

fouc 7y ago
>Most people are not hugely worried that Google has some magic power to control us due to data capture, And yet most people are worried about Nineteen Eighty-Four's Big Brother becoming a reality.
- snaky 7y ago
  > about half of U.S. adults (49%) say it is acceptable for the government to collect data about all Americans in order to assess potential threats. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-about-privacy-surveillance-and-data-sharing/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeawa...
dylkil 7y ago
>Google fails to show me relevant ads 99% of the time either this or the people targeting you have their audience completely wrong
- jariel 7y ago
  So I spend a lot on ads, I'm a little bit familiar: Most 'search' ads are 'relevant' to the search, but they're not necessarily relevant to me. In particular, banner ads, which are very crudely targeted, tend to be of 'low relevance' in marketing lingo, but in real terms, extremely low relevance. For example, I don't live in the US, and I see an astonishing number of ads for US-centric content, and for products that are not even available where I live. Consider the ad in the article itself: it's for a special night at the 'ROM' (Royal Ontario Museum) in Toronto. But I don't live anywhere near Toronto! Scrolling down I see an add for the IDS 'Interior Design Show' in Toronto. Not only do I have absolutely no interest in the subject, but I don't live in Toronto. I don't know if those are Google ad displays or not, but the it's basically the same, ad nauseam: the ad market is an astonishingly inefficient marketplace. Perhaps the greatest opportunity for 'relevance' might be on Facebook - because they have such a massive base, and a real means to captured nuance behaviour. I run ads on that platform which score way above average in terms of relevance and performance, but I know for certain I'm not getting the kind of material relevance that I want. Honestly it's a strange paradox to me: Google has everything at their fingertips and can't figure out who wants to buy a lawn mower and who has definitely no interest.