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Introducing ads on Wikipedia would likely do more than show you ads and have ad providers pay Wikipedia; it would also introduce third party tracking. Adding a

by dbieber 13y ago

Introducing ads on Wikipedia would likely do more than show you ads and have ad providers pay Wikipedia; it would also introduce third party tracking. Adding ads to Wikipedia would give ad providers the ability to trace your Wikipedia activity. This would be horrible because the average person would not understand that their wikipedia history was being revealed to third parties and this history is often highly personal. For nontechnical users who do not know about this tracking, this would be deceitful. For nontechnical users who do know of the tracking but do not know how to stop this tracking, having ads would severely compromise their ability to use Wikipedia since they must then become cautious of the way they browse.

davidsmith8900 13y ago
- Great insight dbieber, but why would anyone care about whose tracking their wikipedia history? I could understand about social networks or porn but what about wikipedia? Plus people know that they get tracked on certain sites and yet they still use them. So what is the difference?
- dbieber 13y ago
  One's Wikipedia browsing history is very revealing. For instance people often use Wikipedia to learn about diseases they (or loved ones) have or are concerned they have. One should be able to research such diseases without revealing to advertisers or insurance companies the association between the user and the disease. The amount that can be garnered about an individual from their Wikipedia search history is kind of unbelievable. You can figure out things such as a person's interests, to some degree various aspects of their intelligence, some things about their medical history, if they are pregnant, their religious and political affiliations, if they may be suicidal, if they have surgery coming up, where they live and how old they are, what sort of pastimes they have, the list goes on and on. You can't figure out all of these things about all people, but the tracking has the potential to be very dangerous. The most common way in which this data is used is targeted advertising, which probably doesn't concern you. Historically this type of data has also been used for price discrimination (which you may care about) and this data has the potential to be used in much more nefarious ways. Even if we could somehow ensure the data would only be used in acceptable ways, the fact that the tracking goes on without most people's knowledge or approval seems unethical to me, and would be particularly troublesome on an encyclopedia of everything.
  - davidsmith8900 13y ago
    - Thank you dbieber, for a deeper explanation from your side of view.
caw 13y ago
The tracking is bad, even when you know about it. Sometimes my friends will send me something on Amazon with ridiculous reviews or it's just a crazy item (e.g. the $5 million book on Amazon or the Nissan car). Now Amazon thinks I like that thing and want to see similar items, when all I really did was go to the page, laugh, and go on my way. I know now to open up those links in incognito windows, but every so often I still have to go delete my "viewed items" on the site so the prediction becomes relevant again.

by dbieber 13y ago

davidsmith8900 13y ago

- Great insight dbieber, but why would anyone care about whose tracking their wikipedia history? I could understand about social networks or porn but what about wikipedia? Plus people know that they get tracked on certain sites and yet they still use them. So what is the difference?

dbieber 13y ago
One's Wikipedia browsing history is very revealing. For instance people often use Wikipedia to learn about diseases they (or loved ones) have or are concerned they have. One should be able to research such diseases without revealing to advertisers or insurance companies the association between the user and the disease. The amount that can be garnered about an individual from their Wikipedia search history is kind of unbelievable. You can figure out things such as a person's interests, to some degree various aspects of their intelligence, some things about their medical history, if they are pregnant, their religious and political affiliations, if they may be suicidal, if they have surgery coming up, where they live and how old they are, what sort of pastimes they have, the list goes on and on. You can't figure out all of these things about all people, but the tracking has the potential to be very dangerous. The most common way in which this data is used is targeted advertising, which probably doesn't concern you. Historically this type of data has also been used for price discrimination (which you may care about) and this data has the potential to be used in much more nefarious ways. Even if we could somehow ensure the data would only be used in acceptable ways, the fact that the tracking goes on without most people's knowledge or approval seems unethical to me, and would be particularly troublesome on an encyclopedia of everything.
- davidsmith8900 13y ago
  - Thank you dbieber, for a deeper explanation from your side of view.

caw 13y ago

The tracking is bad, even when you know about it. Sometimes my friends will send me something on Amazon with ridiculous reviews or it's just a crazy item (e.g. the $5 million book on Amazon or the Nissan car). Now Amazon thinks I like that thing and want to see similar items, when all I really did was go to the page, laugh, and go on my way. I know now to open up those links in incognito windows, but every so often I still have to go delete my "viewed items" on the site so the prediction becomes relevant again.