4 ms·

This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but there is no evidence of some super-advertiser doing. It's not even clear to me th

by nickff 18d ago

This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but there is no evidence of some super-advertiser doing. It's not even clear to me that much of the 'fingerprinting' (past basic re-targeting) actually works.

privong 18d ago
> This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but [...] Isn't this what people said pre-Snowden? Not that NSA spying is the same as corporate "surveillance capitalism", but if companies can make more money off it and the technology exists, it seems prudent to assume companies are trying it.
- nickff 18d ago
  There was evidence of the NSA intercepting international communications before Snowden, but for some reason that didn't seem to make much of a lasting impression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A It's also significant to note that while the government is quite bad at keeping 'problematic' behavior secret, companies are much worse at it.
  - privong 18d ago
    Analogously, there's evidence that companies will make extensive use of available techniques (browser fingerprinting, cookies, etc.) to track and surveil users without their knowledge and often against their will. The exposure of that arguably also hasn't triggered an effective backlash against those companies. So, as with the pre-Snowden evidence for domestic communication interception by the NSA, I think there's ample evidence of the willingness of companies to exploit whatever technologies they can in order to surveil users.
  - structural 18d ago
    The way this is typically handled is through compartmentalization, where no one working has enough of a global view to be able to claim that the behaviour is problematic. There's a lot that's problematic that we suspect that is going on but don't have firm proof, because the organization actually is pretty good at keeping it secret enough. There's some exceptions where things do get leaked/revealed, but how would you know if this was 99% of wrongdoing, or 0.99% of it?

by nickff 18d ago

privong 18d ago

> This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but [...] Isn't this what people said pre-Snowden? Not that NSA spying is the same as corporate "surveillance capitalism", but if companies can make more money off it and the technology exists, it seems prudent to assume companies are trying it.

nickff 18d ago
There was evidence of the NSA intercepting international communications before Snowden, but for some reason that didn't seem to make much of a lasting impression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A It's also significant to note that while the government is quite bad at keeping 'problematic' behavior secret, companies are much worse at it.
- privong 18d ago
  Analogously, there's evidence that companies will make extensive use of available techniques (browser fingerprinting, cookies, etc.) to track and surveil users without their knowledge and often against their will. The exposure of that arguably also hasn't triggered an effective backlash against those companies. So, as with the pre-Snowden evidence for domestic communication interception by the NSA, I think there's ample evidence of the willingness of companies to exploit whatever technologies they can in order to surveil users.
- structural 18d ago
  The way this is typically handled is through compartmentalization, where no one working has enough of a global view to be able to claim that the behaviour is problematic. There's a lot that's problematic that we suspect that is going on but don't have firm proof, because the organization actually is pretty good at keeping it secret enough. There's some exceptions where things do get leaked/revealed, but how would you know if this was 99% of wrongdoing, or 0.99% of it?