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Why Web 2.0 Will End Your Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "This is a pretty good insight into some of the dangers of social networking and website customisation -- marketing and loss of privacy. When marketeers know who your friends are and what you are all into, it makes their advertising a lot more effective. From the article: "Why are the companies worth so much money? Why is MySpace worth over half a billion dollars without a proper revenue model? Why is Digg allegedly pitched at over $20m (at the last count) without any idea of where money is going to be pulled from? The answer is - data. Information. Marketing. Every detail about you and me. That is where the money is."
Meeeoooowwwww!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I am not a journalist, but how do these guys get their credentials? Wil forwards an interesting thesis about the advent of loss of privacy as more people jump on the internet, but he forwards this under the aegis of Web 2.0.
Give Wil credit, he actually tries to define Web 2.0, but it's probably the 10th definition I've seen. (For the record, my definition more typically aligns with the advent of more desktop-like and agile web/browser applications that start to look and feel like desktop.)
However, I don't see the increased loss of privacy correlated much at all to Web 2.0, unless you just consider that, over time, people have less privacy, and that, over time, Web 2.0 continues to evolve (whatever that means). For example, Wil cites: "The one thing the Web 2.0 sites have in common is that they are furiously mining information about you and your buddies. What you like." Again, this has little to do with Web 2.0. That "Web 2.0" is the current buzzword is the only relationship to increased data-mining. Data-mining has been available, happening, and increasing in the internet domain for years.
I think privacy has changed and evolved as a result of increased communications networks... Web 2.0 has little to do with that and is only a small part of it. As databases get larger, networks get faster, data-mining gets smarter, computer processors get faster, an end result is there is more data than ever about more people than ever in more places than ever.
Whether that results in loss of privacy is an interesting debate, but in my opinion not an assumption/axiom. For example, the more data out there, the more it becomes environmental noise. Interesting perhaps at first, and maybe for longer to specially interested parties, but something we will adapt to. (As an aside, I do think there's a learning curve for young people and their interaction on sites like MySpace, they need to learn not to put voluntarily so much personal information out there as to make themselves vulnerable to predators, a lesson I think they're learning.
Another result I find useful is that I get much more directly targeted advertising than ever before. It's nice now, no more tampax fliers in my mailbox, but it's handy to know Staples has a new SD 1G card available for my camera at less than $100.
Stories like this remind me of why I don't get involved in "social networking" and all that mess. The closest anyone can come to knowing anything about me is by tracking my book purchases, which are all IT-related. There is an alarming amount of information about us available to a lot of people right now, I don't understand why so many people are so quick to jump out there and put their entire lives on the internet.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
What is wikipedia worth then? All that and a bag of potato chips?
You mean that posting intimate details of my life on the web may be an affront to my privacy?
Say it ain't so!!!
I have to ask; how much is the data worth when a good part of the data is fake?
I think that myspace is a cesspool, but everyone my age has one. I'll give you a hint: They aren't in their mid thirties earning 250k+ a year.
No matter how much data you have, if it isn't true it;s worthless.
> Why are the companies worth so much money? Why
> is MySpace worth over half a billion dollars
> without a proper revenue model?
Because nobody learned a damn thing from the dot-bomb.
Last week the EU declared the information sharing of people of flights to be illegal because the US GOVERMENT couldn't guarentee the privacy of the information. What is becoming very clear is that in the privacy v terrorism war there will be more business friendly legislation in the US which makes such private information more readily available.
Put it this way, can you imagine George W Bush NOT saying that My Space needs all this information to PROTECT its users from threats from crimial scary group X and to PREVENT My Space being used by terrorists to plan attacks....
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
As long as I'm going to be inundated with advertising, I see no reason to complain if it is at least advertising for stuff I actually care about. [shrug]
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Might we see the formation of groups who create false profiles with these sites, so as to distort any marketing analysis that might be done, in an attempt to protect privacy?
For instance, they might write a blog as a 75-year-old goth who's into snowboarding and hip hop. Or as a 13-year-old girl who likes shuffleboard and orthopaedic shoe inserts. If done enough, it's possible that such profiles could significantly skew the data obtained from such sites. Marketing towards people who don't exist isn't exactly of much benefit.
Privacy has always been an issue with computers, specially since the first inception of a network protocol. There's really nothing new about website and webapps tracking usage, it's been done forever. Why do marketroids and "journalists" have to keep coming back to this overloaded "web 2.0" term?
The internet doesn't have a version number, get over it people.
- sigs are for wimps.
Pervasive advertising, no matter how relevant to my needs, gets a little annoying, but on the whole I'd rather pretty-much see Dell ads over "Get the Facts" any day.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I have no problem with effective, targeted marketing. Actually, I prefer it to ineffective, non-targeted marketing. I'm really into foosball, I'd rather see adds for foosball related stuff than for products I have absolutely no interest in.
That said, what I do have a problem is invasive or disruptive marketing. Stuff that fills up my inbox. Stuff that obscures webpages I'm trying to view, and forces me to find a miniscule "X" in order to close the advertisement. You get the picture.
But the new layout does not render correctly on Konqueror. I also had problems with it freezing the Opera 9 beta on my Windows box at work. Are these teething problems that will be sorted or will I be forced to use firefox? A feedback mechanism to report these problems would be cool. Sorry for the off-topic post. feel free to mod me down, but give it a while so this post is seen. Cheers
Yeah right, Like Im gonna write a sig.
Been saying this for awhile now. But it's a good thing, not a bad thing. As Clay Shirky wisely said, "The advantages of anonymity grow linearly with the population; the disadvantages grow with the square of the population."
Anyone who is part of WAYN, HI5, MySpace, Digg, Slashdot [has friends and foes too you know], Stumbleupon, or has blogrolls, is really set up to be data mined rather completely. Either you have to not give a rat's patootie and do it anyway [like I do with some services], or you wear your foil hat and react with hostility to every "Hi :-)" email you get from a distant friend.
If you have matured and realize you really don't NEED that SUV, or Sony laptop to have a high quality daily life, then targetted marketing won't matter. But if you're letting your 10 year old play on the Internet, you should really wonder what Mattel and Disney/ABC knows about your child by now.
Oh You POS
I think buzzwords are annoying.. But now they also threat my privacy???
Gimme a break...
""This is a pretty good insight into some of the dangers of social networking and website customisation -- marketing and loss of privacy. When marketeers know who your friends are and what you are all into, it makes their advertising a lot more effective. "
Take your pick. Effective advertising and therefore less of it. Or less-effective advertising and lots more of it. No advertising isn't even on the table.
It's not really "privacy" if it's information that you as a user enter into a public website. I mean, I don't put my home address on my home page and get upset if someone comes along and gets this "private" information; in the same token, someone who posts their cell phone # on FaceBook (which many do) shouldn't expect that info to stay "private" either, especially to the company running the site.
Let's assume that Web2.0 had something to do with social networking for the sake of discussin the article...
The thesis that advertising becomes "more effective" is without evidence. Advertisers might hope it is more effective, but historically, it's only proven to be more annoying (both by being more plentiful, and by making hopelessly silly demographic conclusions). I'm guessing that this sort of targeted advertising will go over like Jalapeno-flavored toilet paper.
The writer of that article is making a lot of assumptions. Innovation will come to a grinding halt? Oh come on, this is just a cynical look at the situation.
Personally, I think it's a great trade we're making -- we're looking at a lot of things that could otherwise be filled to the brim with popup ads like they used to, but instead they have an ad or two in exchange for some information about the kind of things people are into. Besides, this isn't really new; focus groups have been around for ages, this just brings it to a mass market level.
Excuse me for saying, but I think Wil Harris is overreacting.
It's wrong to attach this issue exclusively to the technology called Web 2.0; whatever that term really means anyway - but that's another rant.
The picture is much broader than that, the assault on our privacy is being conducted on many fronts and motivated by the same desire: To waste less money on marketing.
Someone once said: "I know I'm wasting half my money on advertising. The problem is that I don't know which half that is"
The Internet, it seems, is providing a solution to this conundrum. Suddenly, advertisers have the ability to only pay for advertising only when someone responds the advertising. This makes such adverts far more valuable than something that isn't interactive like a billboard or TV advertisement.
But this is just the beginning. In the next few years, we will see the development of schemes where you pay for advertising only when you make a direct sale off the back of it. The scheme will track you from the moment you click, to the moment you get the confirmation e-mail. The problem with this is that in order to audit it properly you need to link that click through to a real person. And there-in lies the privacy problem.
The solution to this problem is fairly easy: Just block all the advertising. People, like the owners of Slashdot might decry this solution because sites such as theirs might not be able to survive without this revenue. I put my money where my mouth was. I like Slashdot so I paid for it directly.Imagine how much higher the standard of Slashdot would be if all it's revenues came from subscribes. Suddenly, quality matters much more than page views. Remember, it took Digg to motivate Slashdot to change, because its cash cow was the advertsing and Digg was starting to threaten that. If we took out this source of revenue, the quality of the web would surely increase.
Only the people who make lucid enough points to attract paying subscribers would be able to sustain a high traffic site. As a result, natural selection would weed out the trash and reward the good. A future without advertising is a future where the user comes first.
Simon.
If you don't participate in this stuff you can't lose your privacy. I don't contribute, visit or have an account on any of the stuff that is mentioned. Why? Don't care. I use the web in the way I want, not the way the advertisers think I should.
Just as if you clear your cookies every time you're done surfing the marketers will always treat you as a new visitor even if you visit every day. In other words, the sites statistics are skewed and will burn money because of inflated figures.
Yeah sure, most people don't care about privacy. Witness the reaction to people when you tell them that their phone messages might be recorded by the government or that the police can search their home without a warrant; "I have nothing to hide so what's the big deal?"
Yet, amazingly, people are paranoid about identity theft. Um folks, just how do you think some of you lost your identity? Naw, it couldn't have been that long winded, detailed bio you posted on MySpace now could it? You know, the one where you posted your first and last name, your hometown, what school you went/go to, where you hang out and all the other useless cruft that people just have to know about you.
While the author does have a point, data mining is the new wave in online transactions, if people don't participate the advertisers will just be burning money for little reward.
Kind of like commercials. I don't watch/listen/read them so the money that is spent to get me to buy a product or service is wasted.
Don't want to lose your privacy? Don't participate in things that could affect you in that way. It's that simple.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
This comment in the summary caught me, especially how it carried a negative/alarmist connotation: "advertising a lot more effective."
I, for one, am really looking forward to "better" advertising. Advertising isn't a bad thing, it can be an informative help to find the projects/services I'm looking for. It's shitty advertising that just fires shotgun marketing in the dark hoping for a hit that sucks. I've actually clicked on a number of Google advertisements when searching for products/services, because they were relevant to what I was looking for and I wanted more information.
It's the huge pop-over, pop-under, flashy, sound making (grraah!) advertisements trying to sell a 24 year old college student home owners insurance or pull me into a pyramid scheme that are the bane of internet existance. (yes, I use firefox, flashblock, etc to lower my exposure, but still.)
If the information that I have voluntarily made public on social networks leads to advertisements for things that I'm actually interested in or even actively searching, I'm all for it. As long as I'm making all the information public myself, I'm not involuntarily losing any privacy either.
It's kind of a bummer, I think, that all the horrible advertising through time has created so many people that just knee-jerk hate the stuff. Maybe in time with relevent advertisements they could turn that around so that they seem useful instead of annoying.
This article is nonsense. Myspace and Digg don't represent the end of your privacy. The Government has already ended your privacy. (Apologies to non USA /.ers). Myspace and the like only post information you voluntarily divulge. You are not obliged to give up your info. The government, however, does not require your explicit permission.
i refused to make a myspace for a long time, for a reason somewhat similar to this.
with a little deception through social engineering, you could really find out anything
you want to know about someone, without them knowing, through sites like myspace/facebook/makeoutclub/etc/etc
and not at all limited to the little bits of personal information they may post..
limited more to how naive their listed friends are...
the internet has gotten out of hand.
did the guy that took down 7 of the root dns servers ever get caught?
he needs to start thinking outside the box.
What's worse is people who put too much information online, without realizing that the very same information can be used against them. For example, people like to put personal details on their user pages, whether they're on Slashdot, Flickr, MySpace, or Wikipedia. Unthinkingly, that very same information can be dug up by people and used to threaten your job or your personal life. Wikipedia keeps a record of every iteration of your user page, so that anyone can troll through the personal information you (idiotically) put on the internet. If you are editing an article that's also edited by someone with an agenda, they can dig up your personal information and send an email (or worse) to your employer. This is not unique to Wikipedia's history-versioning, as nearly any user page can be dug up through Google caches or the Internet Archive. If you use the same (or similar) username across multiple sites, someone with a malicious agenda can find out a whole lot about you. Just think of all the information and dumb things you've said on Slashdot, your blog, your Flickr page, your Last.fm/Audioscrobbler page, etc. etc.
The problem is that these online communities work because of personal information: dynamically connecting people with similar interest and opinions is what Web 2.0 is all about (inasmuch as a buzzword can be "all about" something). If we can't trust that the information and content we put online can't be used against us, then Web 2.0 will eventually fail, once enough people get burned.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
IF MySpace, Digg, Flickr or whatever "web 2.0" company gives costumer info to the advertisers is up to them, much like it was with Web 1.0, Web 0.95 and Web 0.001. I dont think that must be a correlation between Web 2.0, targetted ads and massive loss of privacy.
Does this mean companies are hoping to sell more than "You looked better on MySpace" t-shirts http://www.hottopic.com/store/product.asp?LS=0&ITE M=299338 ?
Seriously though, how is this any worse than dataminers like Axciom http://www.acxiom.com/, or Wal-Mart having the world's larget database http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1675960,00.as p of point-of-sale data? I can't imagine the trash you'd have to wade through to get some reliable marketing data. And if that happens, we'll just see bots that create fake MySpace pages to inflate the numbers-- the same way we now see blog spam and fake blogs with product information.
This sig is exempt from disclosure under the privacy Act of 1974.
Do "Web 2.0" sites give marketers more information about users? Yes.
Is this an invasion of your privacy? Absolutely not.
You are WILLINGLY entering this data into these sites and if you read their privacy policies they clearly state how it will be used. Don't want to share this info about yourself? Don't use the site. There is no invasion going on here. They are not hiding spy cameras in your room watching what you do on the computer.
Also, better targeted advertising != more advertising. Unfortunately, what happens is that many of these Web 2.0 sites rely on advertising revenue for their business model, thus why sites with large subscriber bases are worth a lot.
Lots of eyeballs = $$$$
So the owners of the sites then realize, "hmmm...I can make more money if I put more ads on the site!" and thus you have ad creep. However advertising that is more narrowly targeted is actually a good thing. Unless you have adblockers running, you WILL see ads on the internet, and rather than bitch and moan about how you want nothing to do with those sites that are being advertised, ads that are more highly targeted will have a better chance of showing something relevant to you that you might actually appreciate an ad for.
And for those of you who claim advertising is useless and it never affects you....you are liars. Period. Next time you make ANY purchase, take a moment to think back to the last time you saw an ad for that product. If you can remember seeing an ad for it, then you were subconsciously influenced by that ad (even if it was by a tiny amount) and your brand awareness increased when you saw the ad. This isn't something that is debateable, it is a logical fact.
Bottom line? If you don't want advertisers to show you more relevant ads, don't use Web 2.0 sites that collect and share this data. If you don't want more ads install an adblocker or blame the owners of the sites whose business models rely on advertising and thus fall victim to ad creep.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Hear the sheeps? Can you hear it? The unmistakable sound of people pulling shit out of their ASSES. Marketing speak from the clueless boards of disinformation. :(( ).
Speaking as someone who runs a bunch of sites for a, my firm netting midrange xx,xxx usd this year based on about 2½ years work. This income is from my traffic. Not my super ideas, not my uber talent at coding, especially not my elite design skills. Especially not from me doing web2.0. However, the only requirement from my income is that I work like a hour a day keeping things flowing + make sure servers are up (not like now, when the main hdd in one of my servers is down..
Digg is ranked #153 in the world according to alexa. That means there are 152 sites bigger than it, and about 3294823094820934 sites smaller. Digg is HUGE in terms of traffic. Traffic equals ad dollars. It is that simple. You can run a highly specialised site on medical advice and get high paying vistors, or you can run a generic flash-game-arcade site that gives a couple of cents per 1000 impression. Regardless of what type of site you run, a visitor equals income.
Digg doesnt do anything particular at this moment for different users, neither do I. Sure, you can probably increase your CPM if you can direct ads, but it is what makes the site it's worth? No its not. Without traffic any site is NOTHING. It's not about smart ad systems, its not about web2.0.
It's traffic.
Would it be better to have a ton of ads that mean nothing to you and basically say little other than "CLICK HERE", or have ads that reflect what you might actually take intrest in?
But I suppose both types are still better than Jamster.
It's always confirmation bias!
When marketeers know who your friends are and what you are all into
For example by looking at their friends/foes lists, or tracking which tags they tend to add to articles...
Oh, and I am pretty sure that Slashdot has started tracking which articles its users read, because after I look at a couple Games or Developers articles I start seeing little mini-headers for Games and Developers on the front page...
Just a question. Who will actually pay a lot of money for that data? And what do they think they'll be able to get from it?
Get your own free personal location tracker
That guy was basically describing doubleclick's antics back in Web1.0 days. Web2.0(tm) is going to be far more invasive and when the bubble bursts it will fracture the internet. The sky isn't quite falling, put everything in perspective and disable javascript to marvel at the folks who still haven't got web0.1 right.
Help.. I'm trapped inside a Web 2.0 BUBBLE! And I can't get out!
Perhaps why MySpace is worth half a billion dollars without any proper revenue model is because... oh lets be radical here.. perhaps because it's ALL HYPE?
The problem is there is lots of room for advertisers to throw their money away and a lot of companies have been catching onto that for the past ~5 years.
The problem with MySpace as their gleaming example is they'd somehow need to be able to re-coup $100 USD from every member (assuming there are ~5 million of them) via advertising, subscribed services etc. I see this as highly doubtful, and looking at examples only 6 or 7 years ago of businesses apparently worth in the range of 10 to 500 million of dollars, but with those estimations based entirely on hype, bullshit, naivety, or just an all-out view to make a quick buck while the newcomers are still gullable.
Tell me when MySpace has a real business model that doesn't rely on click-happy 13 year olds or balding 40 year paedophiles who want to win an Xbox.
Title: Why Web 2.0 will end your privacy
... no real content.
...
... even when those websites don't make money. Welcome to 1999 already!
... but not because of MySpace. Because too many companies are posting your private data on the 'web and allowing anyone with the money to search through it.
Paragraph #1: MySpace, Digg, Flickr
#2: One sentence stating what he believes. Then a lead in to
#3: A "definition". No explanation that was promised in #2.
#4: Back to Digg (see #1).
#5: Back to MySpace (see #1).
#6: Google has ads.
#7: Back to MySpace, again (see #5 & #1)
#8: Why does he belive that Gmail is anything near Outlook in functionality?
#9: Yeah, "neat". Whatever.
#10: Websites don't make money. Welcome to 1999. Don't forget to party.
#11: Companies pay lots of money for popular websites
#12: YouTube. See #11 and #10.
#13: Back to the top of the page. Again, they don't make money. 1999.
#14: Why do companies want to pay so much money for websites that aren't making money? It's like it's 1999 all over again.
#15: The companies paying the money want data.
#16: Even he sees that it's 1999.
#17: Well, it is 1999. But he'll call it "Web 2.0".
#18: All those companies are compiling data on the the people who post pictures of their cats.
#19: Yahoo! knows nothing about me except the news groups I subscribe to through them.
#20: Companies will pay lots of money for "data" on "individuals" and "groups". Even if the "data" is "OMG!!1 U R A QT!!! UR cat is funee"
#21: Web 2.0 has a "bubble" and it will burst. Yeah, whatever.
#22: Free photo hosting.
That's all there is. Toss in "Web 2.0" and name some popular sites and then claim that "privacy" is going away.
Well, "privacy" does not really exist on the 'web and what you did have is vanishing
I think I'll stick to web 1.0
We all should partcipate in a mass suicide; then, all that data will be worthless. That will show 'em! I'm not going first, though.
"Patience is not a virtue, it's a waste of time."
Duh!
Apparently the objective of journalism is to state the obvious in such a way as to make oneself look intellectual.
This kind of thing has been going on since the first web sites. You put up a personal web site, you link to the web sites of your friends, they link to theirs and so on. Nothing new here -- salesmen use this all the time when they ask clients for "the names of three friends who might be interested in our services." It's time consuming, but you write a robot script and pretty soon your mining your way to free contacts, if people are dumb enough to put live contact information on their web sites.
So now you have some site like MySpace, which takes all the work out of, since all the information is right there, ripe for the plucking. These social networking sites are gold mines for now, but once the new Web generation gets hip to what's going on, they'll start filling MySpace and the like with a lot of bogus data and taking their act underground.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
oh, if only...
I am having a hard time believing that a body who puts personal information about themselves and their friends online would expect any privacy. A MySpace user has no privacy -- both the site's privacy policy and common sense should show us this. The "Web 2.0" (this is retarded moniker, btw) is not going to take privacy from the rest of us any more than the "Web 1.0" (sigh) did. Loss of privacy is not really what TFA was about -- just a little submitter fear-mongering.
What this article is about, mainly, is the business model these places make with your information. This part I believe. I am sure there is money there, but I don't think that this sort of data is going to be the marketing panacea that the submitter seems to indicate. For data from so many people to be effective for marketing, the company has to have an automated system for analyzing each user's data algorithmically. Scanning text for keywords does not necessarily tell an algorithm what a user would be willing to buy. If I could write such a thing, I would be a billionaire. Until then, marketing companies are going to use the same old, inelegant, brute force techniques to get their spam into our mailboxes.
Hell, I have had a site with a blog, photos, and even a list of favorite links, and I still get spam that makes no sense nearly 100% of the time. I do not yet see how this version 2.0 of the Web is going to change that.
Just because Slashdot doesn't have snazzy AJAX code makes it exempt from the fudmongering feardoctoring spin being applied to Digg? Sounds like a load of crap to me. Slashdot has "social networking", friends/foes, journals, and comments. More than what Digg offers even.
/. with adblock.
I'm sick of the yellow journalism. Btw, i browse
When you buy a bottle of milk in a supermarket, you diminish your privacy by letting the retailer know, that you need a bottle of milk. When you hire a maid to clean up your flat, you let her know a lot about your dirty laundry (literally and otherwise). And when you buy a book at a bookstore (or a video), the proprietor could offer you another one on your next visit (like Amazon does).
That's how it all begins — computers, WEB-2.0, and other technological advances simply enable us to trade even more privacy for convenience.
When the choice is volunteer, that's perfectly Ok. At least, MySpace and others don't force you to reveal your real name on the site. If the solicitations get too much, all you need is to do is close the account. Government-imposed things, however, are much worse. EZ-Pass — increasingly mandated at toll plazas — is not anonymous at all.
Sadly, nobody seems to care... The worst a marketeer can do to you is spam. Government has much bigger abuse potential.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Seriously, since when was the fact that companies do everything in their power to find information about what customers want a new thing? They've been doing it since they existed. The internet just makes it easier.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I spent the latter half of the nineties watching people wring their hands lamenting 'how are we going to make money using the web?' crying into their triple lattes. We now have the answer - create something as obnoxious as myspace, get half a million fourteen-year olds using it, and sell the company. If my privacy has to be sacrificed to see their little faces beam, so be it.
i got ball this is my adress 108 20 37 av corona come n do it iam give u the sidekick so I can hit you wit it
Alarmists, the lot of you! The shit won't hit the fan till Web 3.11.
This is YOU using "Web 2.0" to end your privacy.
Make friends with every random bozo on MySpace and completely destroy the quality of their demographic analysis.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
I would prefer to see advertising for products that interest me, as opposed to all the mindless drivel about things I would never buy. I mean, we're going to have advertising no matter what. Why not make it for stuff I might actually buy? That seems to be a win-win to me. I get to learn about stuff I can buy, and advertisers save money by targeting people who might actually buy their products and services.
Perhaps there might be a problem when advertisers start targeting me for Viagra, or some other product for some embarrassing condition I have. But as many others have pointed out, social networking is built upon user-contributed data. So if I don't want to tell people I have ED, I don't see how the advertisers would be able to figure it out. If they went and got my address from my doctor, then I would be concerned.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
What is so "dangerous" about advertising actually being interesting to me? For crying out loud: if an advertiser knows what I'm interested in, and NOT interested in, maybe I'll stop getting ads for viagra and start getting ads for discounts on software. Ooh, I'm so scared of the "dangers"...!
I already get pissed at the BS these scumbags pull on their websites. Even many of the slashdot advertisers slow down slashdot loading so bad that I have started blocking them.
A good squid proxy at home goes a long way to throw a nice big money wrench into these marketing and webmasters plans. and if companies add good proxies to their corperate lan and even ISP's start offering filtering proxies then this trend will simply only bother the undereducated consumer that is stuck with an ISP that is not interested in making the web a better place for their customers.
When I read articles like this, besides giving me a good chuckle, it makes me wonder. If big business is really going through all these lengths to find out more about all of us, are they really doing it to know who to target ads to? Is it really that hard to figure out who to show the life insurance ads to and who to show the ads for the new rock album to? If that is the case, I find it pretty sad. That's a problem Google figured out years ago.
Conspiracy theories aside (I could cook up a few but I'm fresh out of the stinky green), it really sounds like big business is trying to figure us out for a larger purpose than just which ads to show us. It sounds more like they're out of ideas for new products and are examining the needs of the public to figure out what we want that doesn't already exist as opposed to what we want that they already have to sell. I think its fairly obvious that MySpace is the equivilant of 1,000,000 monkies typing at 1,000,000 typewriters with Murdoch hoping that one day a monkey will come up with the next Seinfeld, Friends, Simpsons, American Idol etc. which he instantly has the rights to.
I guess its because I'm not as out of touch with reality as these rich ass execs in buying up all these web apps, but is it really hard to tell what the American public likes? And if not, why is that information so valuable?
When the Web 2.0 bubble bursts - when the massive buyouts are done, the millionaires are made and the sites we love today are in the hands of big business - the innovation will grind to a halt, and what's left will be the endless grinding of the marketeering machine.
I find it interesting that ever since the tech bubble burst in 2000, that everyone thinks that everything else is a bubble. Web 2.0 is so young. Last time I checked, mom and pop day traders are not buying and selling Digg.com. I think it's a little premature and presumptive to think that web 2.0 is a bubble. I don't think it deserves that distinction yet. For comparison, Pets.com raised $175 million in an IPO Febuary 2000 and was bankrupt by the end of the year. These companies are being bought by media companies. It's not a bubble until the public gets involved.
No Sigs!
The computers will alert the store, "Jane Q has stopped renewing her pills prescription, order diapers in June". Web 2.0, a threat to privacy? Come on, they aint got nothing compared to your local grocery store or your credit card. Funny thing is they dont even try to be coy. BP visa card sent me an year end statement running over several pages, summarizing how much I spent on grocery stores, restaraunts, gas stations, auto-repair shops etc etc. I cancelled that card immediately, but I am sure all the cards collect the data. They just dont tell you.
They know my purchasing habits down pat, they dont have to track me in Web2.0.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
there are more like 100 million MySpace users.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
I think you're putting too much faith in the EU. Granted they have better data protection than the US in some ways. However, if you read the stories regarding the EU decision, it is not over. The EU said the current legal justification would not work, and told the parties involved to try again. The US Ambassador has already stated that the US will work with the afflected parties to come up with an acceptable justificiation.
If this is all true, then why, oh why, do I get nothing but ads from True.com whenever I go to my MySpace page even though I've clearly indicated that I'm married?
I've wondered if it's a sign of just how corrupt they are, preying upon the institution of marriage, but that defies Hanlon's Razor.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Marketing works, even the stuff you hate. The problem is that these marketing companies are spending billions of dollars a year on researching and presenting new marketing techniques to sell you stuff you didn't know you needed. Then people have the smug arrogance to say, "Well, it doesn't effect me.". Really? Why then does the average American spend 103% of what they make? The truth is that marketing companies are very very good a getting you to think you need something and that somehow this company finally came out with what you are looking for. Whiter whites, iPods, new drugs, and a Coke. And the more data they can grab on what you do, the better they can get at making you need stuff. So you lie when people ask you for information? Well, a little thing called the laws of large numbers and demographics means that what you aren't saying about yourself, someone else is. Using even basic 101 level stats you can tell who is lieing and who is telling the truth once your sample size is big enough... and once the sample size is big enough they can pick out the truth and scrap the rest with the stroke of a key and come out with a probability of your profile, what products you would like and how you would like them presented. Maybe they aren't quite their yet, but this isn't sci-fi, this is just basic stats.
Mod abcd1234 Up for "voluntarily giving it up"
so true.
I don't think privacy is much of a concern to people like this:
http://livedigital.com/content/321254/
Maybe you should ask these guys whome are Information Brokers. I'm not kidding, it's a serious industry. In fact, no doubt there will be college courses in the future providing degrees on the topic.
So yes, data is worth money depending on where, when, and whome you pan it from.
Life is not for the lazy.
I hate being marketed at as much as the next one, but I do have to think something along the lines of "at least they won't be trying to sell me things I'll never want ever"... it's sad, but that would actually be better.
-----------------------------------------
Remove the Greed which plagues mankind.
I can't locate the name right now, but there's an interesting short story featured in one of the
earlier edition's of David G. Hartwell's _Year's Best SF_ series about this. People whom go out
of the way to purchase materials for their hobbies in untrackable ways to avoid being targeted by
marketers, and having it become a fad.
Were that I say, pancakes?
How about we all get together and lynch the Web 2.0 people and their invasion of privacy, along with the TCPA people and make Web 3.0. At the rate we are going, we have the web 2.0 people invading every inch of our privacy, and then we have the TCPA people invading our freedom. I havn't seen an offical timeline for TPM brain implants, but already we are shaping up the very 1984 like world.
I suggest Web 3.0: Free of morons, hype, marketing, and Microsoft, Sony, Intel, AMD, RIAA, MPAA, del.icio.us, Technorati, Flickr, and digg.
That's right. I never use public transport because of all the advertisements. When I'm driving, I close my eyes if I see a billboard ahead. If I keep my speed and hands steady, I know I'll have passed it within a few seconds and I can open my eyes again. Sure, I've caused a few accidents that way, but it's worth it to know I've avoided the advertisement.
Whenever I go to the mall, I carry a white cane and wear blinders. Some places are also playing the radio, which I don't listen to because of all the advertising, so I wear earplugs, too. I communicate with store owners using deafblind sign language. So long as they aren't trying to sell me something.
If I see a blimp, I start shooting at it until it goes away. Same with people handing out fliers.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/29/137212.shtm
And
So SEVEN YEARS AGO, this very site met the "Web 2.0" criteria that is the next wave
No, seriously, this is just like it was back in 1999. By definition, in fact.
There is no easy anonymity if your ISP has a feed to the NSA, or somebody steals your credit information at some point of transmission or storage. Participating in a very open online community is not something I would recommend to teenagers, because they might be prone to carelessness or naivety. Fun can get you in trouble Buy crap online, well you pays your money and you takes your chances. I don't care if Amazon keeps a record of my purchases to suggest books I might like. I would prefer that a court order be needed to turn that information over to the authorities. People who have a political passion of any stripe have to worry, because The Man can find out who you are, and now they apparently want to.
MySpace was created, in part, to bring new independant music to folks who might like it. It continues to do that very well. It is not all teenagers and the old men. Connections made on MySpace have provided me with significant opportunities, press, and sales. I have information about who listens to my music that is highly valuable to me (and useful as I negotiate deals with labels and plan tour stops). I rely on other people finding me there throught their networks and do not send unwelcome advertisements. The site is open to abuse and traditional mass marketing, however. Friend-request bots, scrapers, and other automated marketing tools allow for the equivalent of MySpam. All media eventually become advertising venues, and the big fish come on-board eventually. So, no surprise there. I think MySpace is a viable marketing tool. To me there is a difference between the "customer" supporting independant musicians and the customer being a part of a large corporate database used for mass marketing and who knows what else. I doubt the government will ever ask me for my mailing list. Speaking with little to no background in advertising, it seems that perhaps the real value of the site is that it provides a clear visual model of how people share information socially online. Perhaps it even holds the key to the mystery of why dumbass film shorts become must-see "viral videos." Regardless, I predict that MySpace will be gone before we know it, especially if it is, indeed, largely populated by teenage girls. If there is one thing I remember about them is that they have a very short attention span (ok, there are two things I remember... they also aren't interested in freshman boys who play the clarinet and wear Hound Dog Taylor t-shirts).
This should of been titled "Privacy hasn't gone far enough?" A majority of consumers will not care until a major breech of their info has happened. The other majority still wont care because they are still too young to be concerned with their privacy. On a personal note none of the MySpace breeches would of been news in the first place if they hadn't in the beginning started asking such personal information, and allowing the users to post what ever they felt like posting including videos and pictures that one day could come back to haunt them. Notice a majority of them are young? Some of the crap there is just plain sick. The ones putting such crap up, I believe a most of them will wish they had not done it years to come. Don't worry though it will come back to haunt them.
Sites like Myspace are not violating our privacy by collecting information about what we like, etc. If the only information they have is WHAT WE VOLUNTARILY GIVE THEM, then it's not a privacy issue. I don't have an account at one of these sites, but those that do GIVE them the information so that the users can better take advantage of the service. Of course, I expect the sites to honor their own privacy agreements with the users, but if I post on Myspace that I like hockey... and all of a sudden Myspace knows I like hockey... I really shouldn't be too surprised. I agree there are tons of privacy issues in the world today that scare me, but if I fill information out and send it to a company, I shouldn't be surprised or concerned that they have that information.
The problem is the same age old problem that dates back to when the mases got net access: the problem is stupid users giving too much fucking info to the wrong people!
This story is flaimbait!
web 2.0 is the next DRM step for world domination
*Subject to all possible authorisations, positive credit references, thorough anti-terrorist screening, and a good reaming from the border guards at your favourite holiday destination, before you finally give up the notion of ever having a single original (and non-actionable) thought ever again.
Personally, I preferred web 1.0, or just plain old freedom of thought and action.
it makes their advertising a lot more effective.
And this is a bad thing? The amount of advertising rampant on the net is partially a problem due to the fact that it is untargeted and largely (percentage-wise) ineffective. Sure, 1% sales out of millions of viewers (and that is an optimistic number) is good in terms of sales, but effectiveness... no.
Now if they increased their effectiveness, and managed to snake me into the proper categories:
(for example, not necessarily applicable to myself)
Geek
20-30 age group
Male
$40-50k income
Homeowner
etc
Then maybe rather than showing me an advertisement for the newest Martha Stuart book or whatever, but rather for a wireless home automation system... well it's more interesting to me and a better chance of a sale for them. Now if they were so targetted as to find that
(again an example, not actual data)
a) My sister likes Anne Rice novels
b) Her birthday is next week
etc
They could throw up an add for the newest Anne Rice novel... and I might say "gee, that sounds like a good idea a present. Sale for them
The implications of targetted advertising (vs the currently less targetted model) are not so bad. The implications that more and more people will get my email address to send me crap, especially since, targetted or no, I wouldn't buy from spam, though I might from those sites I've bought at that now send me catalogues.
I didn't mean to say that you did. Sorry about that.
/. and all, I decided that it would make a good example.
I've just seen that "definition" in other posts and articles and since this is
Yep, the websites that are the most popular are the ones where users can contribute/comment. And this works with newspapers and magazines as well. You're right that the users can find more content than any single site maintainer can. And it goes even further than that. The more people commenting, the more depth and variety there is.
First of all Web 2.0 is a huge hype and there is hardly and content behind the term.Also how exactly is a forum considered loss of privacy? Most sites have a policy to not disclose your personal information and it's actually a lot easier to get information about someone from say Slashdot and linux maling lists than it is from digg.com. Also digg.com is hardly a web2.0 site. Other than ajax there is nothing web 2.0 like there. It's basicly a huge forum with topics in every area of interest imaginable. Yes it's slightly different than everything else but still not web 2.0. As far as privacy goes well if you talk with a friend on the street you also give up your privacy and everyone arround can listen to what you are saying. Yes on the Internet you have a lot more potential easedroppers but it's still the same thing. If you want to talk to someone privatelly there is email chat etc.
Don't worry, it will be fixed in Web 3.0
Kaetemi
Will you please stop calling these applications Web 2.0? This is a meaningless and uninformative name. Why not call them Web Applications, or Dynamic Sites, or something that actually describes what these sites have in common.
I wasn't aware that I had privacy to lose still.
The point of the semantic web is to allow user agents to make these connections, rather than forcing/allowing any single server (application) to do it.
They used advertising to promote body hair as, 'dirty' and 'un feminine'.
Sexuality is a moving target, and beyond basic, observable health, people can easily be programmed to think of certain traits in humans as sexy or not.
If you like shaved legs and armpits on your women, then your psyche has been successfully molded by advertising.
It doesn't even have to do with what you see or what you consent to. Advertising affects us all, even if it happens indirectly.
-FL
They can do (almost) the same by simply following me down the street. Storekeepers know that I visit electronic stores and game stores. Police know where I work because a police station is one block away from me. Restaurant owners know what kind of lunches I like to order. All these real-life people can potentially unite and create a database of facts about me.
Yes, interestingly enough, living in a city makes you a target for social observation. There's a phrase, "people-watching", that turns into "monitoring" when used for online content. And suddenly this sturs a panic among some who believe in the first place that the Internet is a dim and anonymous place. Probably, they also believe that no one sees them when they are out on a street.
...about what "Web 2.0" is doing to fonts...
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
anyone who "doesn't contribute" but uses credit cards for purchases, store cards for the discounts, orders from Amazon is kidding themselves. Social sites have some information but the real value comes from Amazon and credit card comapnies.
Remember Pointcast?
- sigs are for wimps.
Giving up on privacy are we?
Giving up on electronic voting are we?
Giving up on the United States are we?
Giving up on seperation of powers are we?
Look if AT&T has parallel between your microphone/modem and the web, your privacy is fucked.
We may as well PISS on WEB 2.0!
A PISS STORM
Perhaps a more extreme example is YouTube. It is reportedly burning $1m a day in bandwidth costs to serve the amount of video being put up there. How on earth are they going to find cash to cover that?
I ain't sure about that. But it does sell cd's and dvd's.
It seems like people call any information they post a "privacy violation." Well you posted it, you put it in the public view. You have a right to do that.
It's important to remember that originally privacy was just about information that you meant to have private that gets put in the public... but web 2.0 has nothing to do with that.
I bet the same people who are not even able to figure out that advertising for something is the key to enter my "never by from them" list won't be able to imagine what my tastes are either. I mean, I regularly repeat on various forums that I hate advertising, mass marketting, TV, and more, and well, they keep on going. People establishing customers lists need to claim that their lists are valuable, but honestly, I do not think it's so valuable. It's the same old story of that guy buying a 100 million emails list, full of garbage and of innocent people who never asked to be listed on it. These practices will maybe generate a few more million dollars and annoy web users, but as long as privacy is concerned, I think they do not have the manpower nor knowledge to data-mine all the informations they have, not to mention that these informations can be bogus. I usually use a special profile to connect on sites that require authentication and most organizations still did not figure that I'm a super heroe, see http://www.superdebile.com/ . IMHO the best way to protect our privacy is to fill those files with lots of junk. I regularly claim that I'm 50 years old, then 15, then I'm a woman, it's easy to mess up all these databases. I even used to have a Ben Laden related signature in my emails, just to "add noise".
To prevent others from seeing you, you can try and become the invisible man, but another option is just to spray fog all arround. I think the latter is easier to achieve, and almost as efficient.
"you diminish your privacy by letting the retailer know, that you need a bottle of milk."
Well, what other option is there? Would you rather me have a cow in my back yard? Sometimes, if we truly require something, there is no option other than to make some information available to another party (absolute self-sufficiency is almost impossible in a modern society).
Not sure if anyone else cares, but check out the time stamp of the parent post and check the link. It is currently 6:39 am (eastern) and Google has found another 3 million MySpace profiles since last night.
How often does the Googlebot swing past MySpace? Can this really be accurate?
barack to the future?
There is not really another convenient option, which which was my whole point.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What's more, said acceptable justification is a piece of cake to come up with. The agreement/rule was struck down for formal reasons only. The governments involved can have a second try simply by following the correct procedure this time around. For doing so, they need to unanimously agree to the measure, something that they didn't need to for the procudure used the first time round). The snag is that 1) the unanimity was there already even then, it just was not exploited; 2) once the EU commission does follow the correct procedure, the EU parliament has no say in the matter whatsoever. And remember: the only thing that allowed the EU court to intervene in the first place was a complaint by parliament.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Clearing your cookies should work. Or do they store them server-side?
"Why are the companies worth so much money? Why is MySpace worth over half a billion dollars without a proper revenue model? Why is Digg allegedly pitched at over $20m ....?"
It's volume man volume you know what three percent of one hunderd and fity million is?
Yea it's four and one half million, but four and one half million what?
Yea, that varies with the marketing models, there are several in eval right now, one hundred and fifty million, don't you just love it?
Four and one half million what? can you show me some of these models?
Yea let me fire up excel here, here one, here another, and heres..
The models look mostly the same to me except for a few variables in R 21 and R34 and S37 on the last one, where did you get those variables?
The specifics are confidential, I was not supposed to show you this much, don't you get it? One hundred and fifty million...
If I place 0 here and a -.5 here and 2 and hit recalc.
Woah man don't muck up the sheet, what the hell did you do? -$7,500,000? Now you did it, what... where did you do that, man , man, your messed up man, you old school types just don't get it, one hundred and fifty million, sheez. Jusy forget it man, you blew your chance.
Matthew
Who cares if they know all this stuff about my online persona (note, not about ME, just whatevery rubbish I choose to feed them)? At the end of the day, it will all be AdBlocked anyway.
Advertisers don't get it: annoying ads put me off. Making ads "targetted" doesn't make them less annoying, in fact it tends to make the more-so.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
... you think the "push" stuff in AJAX is new.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointcast
- sigs are for wimps.