> What are the consequences of ad-tech surveillance in practice? My views on this are a bit deeper than I can easily cover in a single comment that I’m writing

> What are the consequences of ad-tech surveillance in practice? My views on this are a bit deeper than I can easily cover in a single comment that I’m writing on my phone, but the question reminds me that I need to publish a talk I gave last year on the subject. The short version is that the development of recommendation systems, both for targeting ads and for generating engagement loops for users so that you can show more ads, have some chilling second and third order social effects. The algorithmic bubbles that come from social media are a well known problem, as are the privacy implications of data breaches associated with these systems. Even outside of actual systems being compromised, these systems are open to side channel attacks that can both allow data collection and influence on the sorts of content people see. In short, the system isn’t complex and open to abuse, and the incentives built in are not aligned with building a healthy society. As for not using the services- there’s no simple satisfying answer here. You can cut out a lot of things, but ultimately it’s nearly impossible for an individual to completely opt out of a bad decision the rest of society has collectively made, and so we need to find ways to mitigate the damage where we can.