4 ms·

> What is the philosophical difference between this and an algo doing it? For one, my village grocer isn’t chatting with my travel agent to correlate my income

> What is the philosophical difference between this and an algo doing it? For one, my village grocer isn’t chatting with my travel agent to correlate my income bracket to then price discriminate more effectively. Another big one is scale to gather accurate information on billions of people and then create even more intricate targeting mechanisms. The gathering of disparate datum from different sources (often in a sketchy manner) is a huge difference. Scale is actually the biggest though and changes lots of things. As a simple example? burning a little bit of whale oil for your night light? No problem. Every human in Europe doing it? Whale’s go extinct. Burning a little bit of coal for your steam engine? No problem. Everyone burning coal at a massive scale in your area? Acid rain, cancer, etc etc. Burning gasoline in your car? Not a problem. Everyone burning huge amounts of gasoline for every facet of running society? Global warming. Algo’s let you scale “personalization” to crazy scales and advertising is the toxic byproduct of funding the internet.

scarface_74 3y ago
> For one, my village grocer isn’t chatting with my travel agent to correlate my income bracket to then price discriminate more effectively. If you use credit cards at both the credit card company definitely can correlate your spending patterns and send you relevant offers
- justinclift 3y ago
  Isn't that whataboutism?
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    It’s a flawed analogy. If you are worried about being tracked and surveilled, there are much larger things to worry about than an ad tech company masquerading as a search engine. You should be worried about a government that wants to record every thing you do eight hours a day when you are at work. If you ever say to a coworker over an internal Slack “let’s talk about this over lunch”, you are automatically assumed guilty of…trying to maintain an illegal monopoly over…ad tech??? And it’s easy just not to go to Google.com if you don’t like their practices. You don’t need the government for that
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > a government that wants to record every thing you do eight hours a day when you are at work This would be concerning. > ever say to a coworker over an internal Slack “let’s talk about this over lunch”, you are automatically assumed guilty This isn’t happening.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        It actually is. With Google being sued, if you start talking to a coworker and then say “let’s talk about this <on a none work recorded communication channel>, you may very well be questioned about what you wanted to talk about. The government is forcing Google to retain all internal messaging communications.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        Your libertarian take disregards that Google is only answerable to its shareholders and uses money as a primary motivator while the government is answerable to the people it governs and has public good as its primary motivator.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        It’s not libertarianism. It’s a strong distrust of government power because I see what it does to minorities and how the “other” party will abuse it to suppress speech. We see it on the state level where companies are afraid to speak out against Desantis because of retaliation. I define the “other” party as “whichever one you disagree with”. I’m not trying to get into a right vs left argument. The difference is that the government is not accountable to the majority either between gerrymandering, the electoral college, etc. For instance, no matter how you feel about abortion, every time a referendum comes up for a vote by the public to restrict it - it’s always defeated even in conservative states yet the legislators go out of their way to work around the people’s will. The same is true about legalized weed in conservative states or expanding Medicaid. I can much easier not fall under the influence of Google than the government. The government is the only force that has a “monopoly on violence”. A powerful government can do much more harm than an adTech company. As far as the government having the “public good as a motivator”, are we talking about the same government? The one that goes out of its way not to be answerable to people? The one that funds the “War on Drugs”, “civil forfeiture”, “eminent domain” to take property to give it to another business, etc?
- callalex 3y ago
  You’re right, two things can be bad at the same time.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  I don’t understand what you’re disagreeing with me here. You’ve just shown why the village grocer making this recommendation is different than the credit card company doing this at scale using algorithms. Also, not sure if you’re aware, but the data that the credit card company gets is really horrible. The category information is often wrong, the business name being billed is often different than the name of the business you’re buying things at, etc. They do have your credit score and probably more accurate financial situation. Google has far better information about you and your behaviors though than the CC company in general.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    It depends on what level of data they get…. https://www.checkout.com/blog/level-2-and-level-3-data-in-credit-card-processing https://www.checkout.com/blog/level-2-and-level-3-data-in-cr...

scarface_74 3y ago

> For one, my village grocer isn’t chatting with my travel agent to correlate my income bracket to then price discriminate more effectively. If you use credit cards at both the credit card company definitely can correlate your spending patterns and send you relevant offers

justinclift 3y ago
Isn't that whataboutism?
- scarface_74 3y ago
  It’s a flawed analogy. If you are worried about being tracked and surveilled, there are much larger things to worry about than an ad tech company masquerading as a search engine. You should be worried about a government that wants to record every thing you do eight hours a day when you are at work. If you ever say to a coworker over an internal Slack “let’s talk about this over lunch”, you are automatically assumed guilty of…trying to maintain an illegal monopoly over…ad tech??? And it’s easy just not to go to Google.com if you don’t like their practices. You don’t need the government for that
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > a government that wants to record every thing you do eight hours a day when you are at work This would be concerning. > ever say to a coworker over an internal Slack “let’s talk about this over lunch”, you are automatically assumed guilty This isn’t happening.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      It actually is. With Google being sued, if you start talking to a coworker and then say “let’s talk about this <on a none work recorded communication channel>, you may very well be questioned about what you wanted to talk about. The government is forcing Google to retain all internal messaging communications.
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        Your libertarian take disregards that Google is only answerable to its shareholders and uses money as a primary motivator while the government is answerable to the people it governs and has public good as its primary motivator.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        It’s not libertarianism. It’s a strong distrust of government power because I see what it does to minorities and how the “other” party will abuse it to suppress speech. We see it on the state level where companies are afraid to speak out against Desantis because of retaliation. I define the “other” party as “whichever one you disagree with”. I’m not trying to get into a right vs left argument. The difference is that the government is not accountable to the majority either between gerrymandering, the electoral college, etc. For instance, no matter how you feel about abortion, every time a referendum comes up for a vote by the public to restrict it - it’s always defeated even in conservative states yet the legislators go out of their way to work around the people’s will. The same is true about legalized weed in conservative states or expanding Medicaid. I can much easier not fall under the influence of Google than the government. The government is the only force that has a “monopoly on violence”. A powerful government can do much more harm than an adTech company. As far as the government having the “public good as a motivator”, are we talking about the same government? The one that goes out of its way not to be answerable to people? The one that funds the “War on Drugs”, “civil forfeiture”, “eminent domain” to take property to give it to another business, etc?
callalex 3y ago
You’re right, two things can be bad at the same time.
vlovich123 3y ago
I don’t understand what you’re disagreeing with me here. You’ve just shown why the village grocer making this recommendation is different than the credit card company doing this at scale using algorithms. Also, not sure if you’re aware, but the data that the credit card company gets is really horrible. The category information is often wrong, the business name being billed is often different than the name of the business you’re buying things at, etc. They do have your credit score and probably more accurate financial situation. Google has far better information about you and your behaviors though than the CC company in general.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  It depends on what level of data they get…. https://www.checkout.com/blog/level-2-and-level-3-data-in-credit-card-processing https://www.checkout.com/blog/level-2-and-level-3-data-in-cr...