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Tell me about these tricks, and maybe I'll change my opinion too.

xondono 6y ago
Targeted ads don’t only serve you with useful information, they serve you targeted anything. - For instance, if you are a decision maker in a company, buying targeted ads across platforms is an amazingly effective way of changing your opinion. Seeing helpful articles in LinkedIn or in that specialized site for professionals? You might be The target of a salesman, or worse, a competitor trying to slow you down (I’ve seen this last one happening). - Targeted malware distribution is also a thing. - Try checking something weird online and see how much the ads everywhere change. That’s a self-forming bubble around you. Start thinking about how all of that works and you will start to doubt which ideas and desires are yours and which were decided for you. - This has side-effects, Internet profiling is reducing diversity, since ads are shown on a profile basis, there’s a silo-ing of interests. - The insights that can be gained from profiling can be of a very sensitive nature, and can be inferred by third parties. Let’s say I’m a backwards boss who has ill-formed opinions about homosexuality. It’s trivial and quite cheap for me to use targeted ads with my employees emails (and some fake emails if I need some extra) to send you ads on things like gay dating platforms. If the click-through of the ads goes up, I know I have some pruning to do. The options are pretty much limitless
- lightgreen 6y ago
  These and other examples you mentioned are improbable and low harm possibilities. Average damage per user is several orders of magnitude smaller than the average benefit of targeted advertising: for the company, for businesses and even for users of the platform. The similar arguments can be applied to convince people that cars are harmful: * cars kill quite a lot of people * if you drink and drive, you can get to jail * gazoline is expensive * cars pollute the air * cars produce noise which reduces quality of life A hundred years ago one could convince a lot of people that cars need to be prohibited. And they were quite successful: > The most draconian restrictions and speed limits were imposed by the 1865 act (the "Red Flag Act"), which required all road locomotives, which included automobiles, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) in the country and 2 mph (3.2 km/h) in the city, as well as requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of road vehicles hauling multiple wagons. The arguments you are suggesting, all of them are true. Companies need to be more transparent about tracking, perform external audit etc., stricter laws regulating personal data is needed to make sure data is not misused, strict laws regulating what can be advertized. But killing all of tracking would be similar to restricting speed limit to 3 mph. Well, it will definitely be safer.
  - xondono 6y ago
    I didn’t say you need to ban all tracking, in fact I’d love that Apple is doing this without regulators having to intervene. The dangers of cars are pretty obvious, the dangers of tracking are not. And I disagree that these are “low harm”, being forcefully outed is no joke in certain communities. The only thing that is protecting a lot of people right now is a correlation between certain ideologies and low technological know-how.

Targeted ads don’t only serve you with useful information, they serve you targeted anything. - For instance, if you are a decision maker in a company, buying targeted ads across platforms is an amazingly effective way of changing your opinion. Seeing helpful articles in LinkedIn or in that specialized site for professionals? You might be The target of a salesman, or worse, a competitor trying to slow you down (I’ve seen this last one happening). - Targeted malware distribution is also a thing. - Try checking something weird online and see how much the ads everywhere change. That’s a self-forming bubble around you. Start thinking about how all of that works and you will start to doubt which ideas and desires are yours and which were decided for you. - This has side-effects, Internet profiling is reducing diversity, since ads are shown on a profile basis, there’s a silo-ing of interests. - The insights that can be gained from profiling can be of a very sensitive nature, and can be inferred by third parties. Let’s say I’m a backwards boss who has ill-formed opinions about homosexuality. It’s trivial and quite cheap for me to use targeted ads with my employees emails (and some fake emails if I need some extra) to send you ads on things like gay dating platforms. If the click-through of the ads goes up, I know I have some pruning to do. The options are pretty much limitless

lightgreen 6y ago
These and other examples you mentioned are improbable and low harm possibilities. Average damage per user is several orders of magnitude smaller than the average benefit of targeted advertising: for the company, for businesses and even for users of the platform. The similar arguments can be applied to convince people that cars are harmful: * cars kill quite a lot of people * if you drink and drive, you can get to jail * gazoline is expensive * cars pollute the air * cars produce noise which reduces quality of life A hundred years ago one could convince a lot of people that cars need to be prohibited. And they were quite successful: > The most draconian restrictions and speed limits were imposed by the 1865 act (the "Red Flag Act"), which required all road locomotives, which included automobiles, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) in the country and 2 mph (3.2 km/h) in the city, as well as requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of road vehicles hauling multiple wagons. The arguments you are suggesting, all of them are true. Companies need to be more transparent about tracking, perform external audit etc., stricter laws regulating personal data is needed to make sure data is not misused, strict laws regulating what can be advertized. But killing all of tracking would be similar to restricting speed limit to 3 mph. Well, it will definitely be safer.
- xondono 6y ago
  I didn’t say you need to ban all tracking, in fact I’d love that Apple is doing this without regulators having to intervene. The dangers of cars are pretty obvious, the dangers of tracking are not. And I disagree that these are “low harm”, being forcefully outed is no joke in certain communities. The only thing that is protecting a lot of people right now is a correlation between certain ideologies and low technological know-how.