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Author does not mention the major reason I care which is that allowing others to know what we are doing, thinking, saying, where we are going.. either individua

Author does not mention the major reason I care which is that allowing others to know what we are doing, thinking, saying, where we are going.. either individually or collectively anonymously or not, gives them power over us in many ways to predict, manipulate, dispossess.. which leads to the imbalances we have today of the haves and have nots of data. The people who say big tech already has so much data on them so why care are missing the valence of time. What you did, thought, said.. last year is much less valuable and useful than what you are doing today.

Barrin92 4y ago
>either individually or collectively anonymously or not, gives them power over us in many ways to predict, manipulate, dispossess The thing is, is that actually true? What always comes to mind for me is the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved their self-declared 'psychometric targeting', which it turned out, after scientists did some studies had a measurable effect of zero on people's behaviour[1]. People love this idea of 'big data' as some powerful ominous tool, even big companies themselves seem to push it explicitly to seem more towering than they are. It's much more boring and unfashionable to think that people are a little more complex and have more agency and that companies push it because it makes them sound more sophisticated than they are. [1]https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/23/17152564/cambridge-analytica-psychographic-microtargeting-what https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/23/17152564/ca...
- imachine1980_ 4y ago
  Yes and no, cross source info allows people to know bulneravility that help change behaviors,much time big data means better and cheaper data tools, like easy accea to optimize internal proces or better ui
- fragmede 4y ago
  If you think you're not being manipulated, you're deluded. Advertising works. It worked before the Internet and there's even more of it now. We do still have individual agency but don't you want a cool refreshing Coca-Cola right about now?
  - nr2x 4y ago
    Actually the research is fairly mixed as we’re dealing with N-variable systems of technology, communication, economics, and a non trivial amount of fraud.
    - usernomdeguerre 4y ago
      Is it mixed because the effect is mixed? Low effect? Or is it mixed because it is resistant to observation? Hard to test for?
  - spunker540 4y ago
    Nobody is denying advertising works. But most of the time ads are trying to win you over vs competitors in the market. Most of it is predicated on the fact that you are in the market for something, and they want you to choose them over someone else. I doubt coca-cola is targeting non-soda drinkers in their advertisements. But they want you to pick coke over Pepsi. Even if you create an open source drug that cures cancer and give it away for free, you’re gonna need a marketing campaign so that doctors know about it, or that patients know to ask their doctor about it. Not because you’re malicious and trying to manipulate people but because otherwise people who would benefit from your product won’t know it exists.
    - usernomdeguerre 4y ago
      I think the mechanism of advertising is more fundamental than that, I think it's intimately hooked into the same path as spaced repetition. I feel Marketing isn't so much crafted to compete with other signals on any merits but rather crafted to compete with recall. Once a message hooks into an effective spaced repetition pattern it doesn't matter which is the 'better' product; because you'll search first for the one you recall the easiest. At which point it's an entirely different marketing team who tries to make the sale. My opinion is that some companies craft messages to carry additional product metadata not because it's a necessary component of advertising but because they think it makes it simpler to recall. I think this is evidenced by more than a handful of marketing campaigns that don't explain their product at all in any meaningful way and yet still enjoy immense popularity. All that to say I think the worries alluded to by fragmede are justifiable, since the mechanism of impact could involve so little personal agency.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  "High fidelity targeting" working and "having a lot of data about people's choices and habits allows you to better manipulate them" are related but not identical things. It seems at least plausible to me that pre-internet advertising wasn't really much worse than what we have now, there's just more ways to attach cost to outcome. But the amount of data companies have on their markets now is astounding, and can be used in more ways than just directly targeted ad serving.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  I’d follow the money as opposed to some study. Social media isn’t a boogeyman responsible for everything but it is a critical channel to influence. My mom gets bombarded with crazy tales of Joe Biden taking gasoline away, etc. I get lots of crazy dramatic fundraising requests from EFF, broadband advocates, etc. It’s real and it works.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    I don't doubt that what you're describing is real, I'm just skeptical that this is unique or has much to do with Facebook, advertisement or "the algorithm tm" in particular. Thirty years ago your mom would likely be listening to talk radio, if that's the kind of media diet she's looking for. There's lots of deep reasons why people consume what they consume, I just think it's wrong to attribute a lot of agency to these platforms. It's actually comforting to think that twitter, FB etc are destroying discourse when in reality it's people on the sites, out of their own volition, or through (lack of) education, socialization, etc.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      That’s the thing. She wouldn’t. My mom is in her 70s. She was a peace corps volunteer, a health care provider and an advocate for regulation of certain medical providers. She carried petitions for Al Gore. Not somebody that republicans would knowingly talk to. But places like Facebook push content that your friends like. Sometimes that’s so and so’s new baby. Other times it’s Uncle Bob’s manifesto on why critical race theory is doing whatever.
- blitzar 4y ago
  > It's much more boring and unfashionable to think that people are a little more complex and have more agency and that companies push it because it makes them sound more sophisticated than they are. I wonder if, when it comes to marketing at least, the opposite is true. Facebook have x million data points on each person, but at the end of the day everyone fits into a very finite number marketing buckets based on gender, age and location. In terms of selling you a netflix series, razor, theragun or some other gadget people are predictable with just regular data, it just sounds fancier if you call it big data with a twist of AI and a quantum neural network chaser.
wolverine876 4y ago
It also leads to manipulation. People don't want to hear that - they think, as imagine many people reading this are thinking, that they aren't manipulated. People are manipulated on a large scale. States, advertisers, political movements, and others are investing a lot of money in it. They are getting something for their money. That is the most important issue; that is the power in our society. Propaganda was effective before the Internet. Now, with incredible amounts of information about your behavior, interests, needs, situation, etc., and with expertise and A/B testing, it's certainly possible to move the needle. Yes, for you and me too.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  In the old country, there was a story ( which since I heard variants of ) my parents told me trying to explain why it is not a good idea to share details of your life with strangers, which goes something like this. Secret police was trying to recruit a dissident to be their informer, but he was resisting. They tried to bribe him. They tried to cajole him. They tried to threaten him. He did not break. One day a senior agent went by to introduce himself. When the dissident started to protest, the senior agent waved him away. 'We already know everything there is to know about you. We even know you drink tea and not coffee.' The treats, speeches and monetary gain had no hold on the dissident, but when he learned someone close to him betrayed him, he internally gave up. The moral of the story is and always has been the same. Information is valuable. You may not think it is, but someone does. Do you think that someone has your best interest at heart?
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I don't disagree with your anecdote in general. But it is somewhat interesting that, in the modern world, the implicit threat of an authority figure knowing this bit of trivia about you wouldn't be all that threatening. To the person in the story, it implies someone fairly close to him is giving information. To us it would be like "did get that bit of information from my Google searches, Facebook likes, or did you go through the effort of asking my bank where I shop?"
    - 4y ago
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
There are some who have argued that crytopcurrency is an effort to make everyone's spending habits public. Imagine virtually anyone having access to global purchase history. No need to approach VISA, etc. to purchase the data. This seems like Nirvana for "tech" intermediaries sitting on the internet. A crypto proponent might argue that transactions are anonymous. However it is impossible to remove entries from the ledger, which is of course public. Hence even if this anonymity was true today it would also have to withstand ever-increasing capabilities of "chain analysis" for an infinite amount of time. The existence and use of "crypto mixers", e.g., by criminals, suggests identities are indeed traceable.
- netr0ute 4y ago
  What about Monero, which is supposedly completely anonymous even with chain tracking?
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/09/mastercard-to-buy-blockchain-analytics-start-up-ciphertrace.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/09/mastercard-to-buy-blockchain... Lets assume Monero is untraceable. Did MasterCard buy a company that cannot deliver on its promise of Monero tracing. In 2020, it was announced that American tax dollars were paid by DHS to CipherTrace for "tools" to trace Monero transactions. Thought experiment: What is the financial incentive to keep transactions "untraceable". Is it greater than the financial incentive to make transactions traceable.
    - 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
      For example, IRS paying $625,000 award to company who can help trace Monero https://sam.gov/opp/5ab94eae1a8d422e88945b64181c6018/view https://sam.gov/opp/5ab94eae1a8d422e88945b64181c6018/view
    - icelancer 4y ago
      CipherTrace didn't even win the actual contract from the IRS; Chainalysis did. CipherTrace's tools - by their own admission - can only provide probabilistic analysis and not deterministic analysis. They'll help in an investigation, but are hardly a silver bullet.
freebuju 4y ago
> What you did, thought, said.. last year is much less valuable and useful than what you are doing today. This isn't true for biodata or medical related data.

Barrin92 4y ago

>either individually or collectively anonymously or not, gives them power over us in many ways to predict, manipulate, dispossess The thing is, is that actually true? What always comes to mind for me is the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved their self-declared 'psychometric targeting', which it turned out, after scientists did some studies had a measurable effect of zero on people's behaviour[1]. People love this idea of 'big data' as some powerful ominous tool, even big companies themselves seem to push it explicitly to seem more towering than they are. It's much more boring and unfashionable to think that people are a little more complex and have more agency and that companies push it because it makes them sound more sophisticated than they are. [1]https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/23/17152564/cambridge-analytica-psychographic-microtargeting-what https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/23/17152564/ca...

imachine1980_ 4y ago
Yes and no, cross source info allows people to know bulneravility that help change behaviors,much time big data means better and cheaper data tools, like easy accea to optimize internal proces or better ui
fragmede 4y ago
If you think you're not being manipulated, you're deluded. Advertising works. It worked before the Internet and there's even more of it now. We do still have individual agency but don't you want a cool refreshing Coca-Cola right about now?
- nr2x 4y ago
  Actually the research is fairly mixed as we’re dealing with N-variable systems of technology, communication, economics, and a non trivial amount of fraud.
  - usernomdeguerre 4y ago
    Is it mixed because the effect is mixed? Low effect? Or is it mixed because it is resistant to observation? Hard to test for?
- spunker540 4y ago
  Nobody is denying advertising works. But most of the time ads are trying to win you over vs competitors in the market. Most of it is predicated on the fact that you are in the market for something, and they want you to choose them over someone else. I doubt coca-cola is targeting non-soda drinkers in their advertisements. But they want you to pick coke over Pepsi. Even if you create an open source drug that cures cancer and give it away for free, you’re gonna need a marketing campaign so that doctors know about it, or that patients know to ask their doctor about it. Not because you’re malicious and trying to manipulate people but because otherwise people who would benefit from your product won’t know it exists.
  - usernomdeguerre 4y ago
    I think the mechanism of advertising is more fundamental than that, I think it's intimately hooked into the same path as spaced repetition. I feel Marketing isn't so much crafted to compete with other signals on any merits but rather crafted to compete with recall. Once a message hooks into an effective spaced repetition pattern it doesn't matter which is the 'better' product; because you'll search first for the one you recall the easiest. At which point it's an entirely different marketing team who tries to make the sale. My opinion is that some companies craft messages to carry additional product metadata not because it's a necessary component of advertising but because they think it makes it simpler to recall. I think this is evidenced by more than a handful of marketing campaigns that don't explain their product at all in any meaningful way and yet still enjoy immense popularity. All that to say I think the worries alluded to by fragmede are justifiable, since the mechanism of impact could involve so little personal agency.
stormbrew 4y ago
"High fidelity targeting" working and "having a lot of data about people's choices and habits allows you to better manipulate them" are related but not identical things. It seems at least plausible to me that pre-internet advertising wasn't really much worse than what we have now, there's just more ways to attach cost to outcome. But the amount of data companies have on their markets now is astounding, and can be used in more ways than just directly targeted ad serving.
Spooky23 4y ago
I’d follow the money as opposed to some study. Social media isn’t a boogeyman responsible for everything but it is a critical channel to influence. My mom gets bombarded with crazy tales of Joe Biden taking gasoline away, etc. I get lots of crazy dramatic fundraising requests from EFF, broadband advocates, etc. It’s real and it works.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  I don't doubt that what you're describing is real, I'm just skeptical that this is unique or has much to do with Facebook, advertisement or "the algorithm tm" in particular. Thirty years ago your mom would likely be listening to talk radio, if that's the kind of media diet she's looking for. There's lots of deep reasons why people consume what they consume, I just think it's wrong to attribute a lot of agency to these platforms. It's actually comforting to think that twitter, FB etc are destroying discourse when in reality it's people on the sites, out of their own volition, or through (lack of) education, socialization, etc.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    That’s the thing. She wouldn’t. My mom is in her 70s. She was a peace corps volunteer, a health care provider and an advocate for regulation of certain medical providers. She carried petitions for Al Gore. Not somebody that republicans would knowingly talk to. But places like Facebook push content that your friends like. Sometimes that’s so and so’s new baby. Other times it’s Uncle Bob’s manifesto on why critical race theory is doing whatever.
blitzar 4y ago
> It's much more boring and unfashionable to think that people are a little more complex and have more agency and that companies push it because it makes them sound more sophisticated than they are. I wonder if, when it comes to marketing at least, the opposite is true. Facebook have x million data points on each person, but at the end of the day everyone fits into a very finite number marketing buckets based on gender, age and location. In terms of selling you a netflix series, razor, theragun or some other gadget people are predictable with just regular data, it just sounds fancier if you call it big data with a twist of AI and a quantum neural network chaser.

wolverine876 4y ago

It also leads to manipulation. People don't want to hear that - they think, as imagine many people reading this are thinking, that they aren't manipulated. People are manipulated on a large scale. States, advertisers, political movements, and others are investing a lot of money in it. They are getting something for their money. That is the most important issue; that is the power in our society. Propaganda was effective before the Internet. Now, with incredible amounts of information about your behavior, interests, needs, situation, etc., and with expertise and A/B testing, it's certainly possible to move the needle. Yes, for you and me too.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
In the old country, there was a story ( which since I heard variants of ) my parents told me trying to explain why it is not a good idea to share details of your life with strangers, which goes something like this. Secret police was trying to recruit a dissident to be their informer, but he was resisting. They tried to bribe him. They tried to cajole him. They tried to threaten him. He did not break. One day a senior agent went by to introduce himself. When the dissident started to protest, the senior agent waved him away. 'We already know everything there is to know about you. We even know you drink tea and not coffee.' The treats, speeches and monetary gain had no hold on the dissident, but when he learned someone close to him betrayed him, he internally gave up. The moral of the story is and always has been the same. Information is valuable. You may not think it is, but someone does. Do you think that someone has your best interest at heart?
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I don't disagree with your anecdote in general. But it is somewhat interesting that, in the modern world, the implicit threat of an authority figure knowing this bit of trivia about you wouldn't be all that threatening. To the person in the story, it implies someone fairly close to him is giving information. To us it would be like "did get that bit of information from my Google searches, Facebook likes, or did you go through the effort of asking my bank where I shop?"
  - 4y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

There are some who have argued that crytopcurrency is an effort to make everyone's spending habits public. Imagine virtually anyone having access to global purchase history. No need to approach VISA, etc. to purchase the data. This seems like Nirvana for "tech" intermediaries sitting on the internet. A crypto proponent might argue that transactions are anonymous. However it is impossible to remove entries from the ledger, which is of course public. Hence even if this anonymity was true today it would also have to withstand ever-increasing capabilities of "chain analysis" for an infinite amount of time. The existence and use of "crypto mixers", e.g., by criminals, suggests identities are indeed traceable.

netr0ute 4y ago
What about Monero, which is supposedly completely anonymous even with chain tracking?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/09/mastercard-to-buy-blockchain-analytics-start-up-ciphertrace.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/09/mastercard-to-buy-blockchain... Lets assume Monero is untraceable. Did MasterCard buy a company that cannot deliver on its promise of Monero tracing. In 2020, it was announced that American tax dollars were paid by DHS to CipherTrace for "tools" to trace Monero transactions. Thought experiment: What is the financial incentive to keep transactions "untraceable". Is it greater than the financial incentive to make transactions traceable.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
    For example, IRS paying $625,000 award to company who can help trace Monero https://sam.gov/opp/5ab94eae1a8d422e88945b64181c6018/view https://sam.gov/opp/5ab94eae1a8d422e88945b64181c6018/view
  - icelancer 4y ago
    CipherTrace didn't even win the actual contract from the IRS; Chainalysis did. CipherTrace's tools - by their own admission - can only provide probabilistic analysis and not deterministic analysis. They'll help in an investigation, but are hardly a silver bullet.

freebuju 4y ago

> What you did, thought, said.. last year is much less valuable and useful than what you are doing today. This isn't true for biodata or medical related data.