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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."
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.
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
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
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
The article is talking about sites where you put information about yourself- myspace, facebook, etc., and how they're worth so much- because of how much infromation people will give out about themselves.
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, that can be edited anonymously, without ads. So few are interested in buying it at an insane price.
I am not a journalist, but how do these guys get their credentials?
Have you seen the white house press briefings? Thats the same question I ask mysef whenever I watch one. Everyone there is too scared about loosing their seat than asking a hard hitting question or two...
Excellent Phoenix AZ Office Space - Thistle Landing
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
True dat. As a memeber of Facebook I can say without fear they can have my info. 95% to 98% is entirely fabricated for comedic effect. The other 2% maybe true but it isn't secret (like who I am friends with). Not only that but say, the rate of indiscriminate *friending* on facebook obscures most true and valuable connections between individuals. To anyone in college, such connections are generally obvious. I say to the data miners: good luck. You might find things of value, but honestly if you just hired teens and college students to tell you about the "know" you would gather the same results with far less resource expenditures. Buying myspace for a gajillion dollars, just to data mine it, to me, seems like a waste of money and time.
There aren't precise delineations between generations of video game consoles, either, but everyone and their mother calls this the seventh thereof. I would argue that the AJAX-enabled web should be called something more like 3.0, where CSS brought 2.0. Web 1.0 is the original HTML-and-images web, where presentation and content are linked, and the web was pull-technology-only. You requested a page, you got something. CSS [theoretically] separated content and presentation and is the first major change on the web. Arguably, the meta refresh tag also gets to be involved somehow, because it's the very first implementation of a push-content model on the web; sure it's based on automated pulls but the user doesn't need to know that. AJAX is the first ubiquitous true push technology on the web - I think flash had that sort of capability first?
There is something to your argument, though; Web 1.0 was Money-for-the-web 1.0, and Web 2.0 is Money-for-the-web 2.0. The only place this naming is coming from is the monetary standpoint.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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?
The term Web 2.0 was coined because people started to notice a fundamental qualitative change in the nature of some of the newer web sites. (Although it should probably have been called Web 3.0, because the move from static to dynamic pages was an even bigger fundamental change.) So there was a legitimate need for the term.
The problem is that the term has a somewhat nebulous definition. (Partly because it's a qualitative change.) And people (especially journalists) like buzzwords. So people now like to throw the Web 2.0 moniker around without thinking how well it actually applies.
Social networking is a part of Web 2.0, but it's not all that's required to be Web 2.0. So the article and title should really be talking about social networking, not Web 2.0.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
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
Next time you make ANY purchase, take a moment to think back to the last time you saw an ad for that product.
The thing is, I honestly can't remember the last time I purchased something I've actually seen an ad for. Maybe the car I bought 5 years ago. You may think I'm vastly overlooking the reality of my advertised-to self. But I really just don't buy Cheetos or Nikes or Bounty or Corning or Dell, or you-name-it. Then again, my mid-20's stupid-consumer phase was about a decade ago.
Part of the definition of Web 2.0 is traditionally, "social networking, user-contributed content, etc". Building your sites not to run off YOUR content, but building it to run off user-submitted content, and user-created connections. I'd guess that's what the author is referencing. It's the more philosophical side of 2.0, separate from the technical details of asynchronous access and client-side functionality.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
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.
I don't think privacy is much of a concern to people like this:
http://livedigital.com/content/321254/
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.
But it is their data. It was put on their servers by their programs while they observered your shopping habits. And with most advertisers, I honestly don't mind. I use Amazon because it pretty much does my shopping for me. It (seems) to know what I like, and it knows what other people like. User reviews are nice, suggestions are nice, and all in all, I don't do much more than type "Java Swing" into their search field to find the three best books on Java Swing.
The same goes for YouTube, Google, MySpace, etc. If they are willing to spend money to serve me, I don't really care. My e-mail address is no different from my street address or mobile phone number. Both public records, and when I go to a B&N, nothing is stopping them from putting employees on the floor to record exactly what I look at, and come up to me with (theoretically good) ideas for a different book.
I, for one, welcome our new bend-over-backwards-to-sell-me-what-I-want overlords.
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.
That's a nice fantasy to rationalize your job, but the fact is that most people are completely unaware of what information is being recorded and when. For instance, cross-site elements are used to track usage among otherwise unrelated sites. Even when cache and cookies are flushed some companies still correlate your data by IP address.
I've accessed the internet through several NATs over time and have noticed many odd coincindences, such as other users (who have entered an email address at some site, say netscape) getting emails with *my* account ids from other sites. Or getting ads clearly reflective of *my* browsing habits. For example, I look for external storage and somebody else on the lan gets an email about "sales on external storage". These incidents simply cannot be explained by coincindence or spam. It's probably more noticeable since I set firefox to clear the cache and cookies ever time it closes.
Maybe you in particular are not involved in it, but taking data from people like this to obtain information that they don't even know they are giving *is* morally equivalent to training spy cameras on them. You, as an alleged advertising executive, may not admit to these practices and call those who do them 'bad apples', but fundamentally your job is to sell not to care about privacy. Would you quit your job if you found out your company was doing this? Highly doubtful considering you have not already done so, as is the veracity of your claims that people know what information they are giving up.
Who cares what their stated income is? When a company advertises its new widget mid-cost widget, that information is basically ignored.
Besides, as other have already pointed out, there is a lot that can be learned by correlating data from various sources. Despite my best efforts to keep my life private from advertisers, somehow some company has associated my sister's name with my address. I know this because I get a lot of junk mail for her. She has a very rare spelling of her name, so it's probably no coincidence. We haven't lived in the same city for almost 10 years. I've never given the name of any family member to any company. My sister claims she has never given my address to anybody (which I believe) nor given my name to any company (which I'm less sure about). But somebody connected the dots anyways.
My speculation as to how it happened: She uses tons of social networking sites/programs. She uses a yahoo account for her email, and we email each other. My email address is publicly listed and associated with my name and the institution I work at (I don't have much of a choice about that). We all know that various companies we do business with share our private information with their "affiliated programs" unless we specifically opt-out in time. Bam! Advertisers know my address and the name of my sister, and one clerical error puts her name with my address.
This is the power of data mining. This is why these social networking sites are worth so much.
(It is also an illustration of why we don't want the government using these techniques on us. Some company has my sister's information wrong. What if that kind of mistake happened on a terrorist watchlist instead of an advertising directory? My roommate is an Iranian who regularly calls Tehran, so I'm sure our phone is monitored by the NSA. Could one small clerical mistake put one of my family members on a no-fly list for suspicious telephone calls?)
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.
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.
But in the longrun, that seems to be the less important thing to learn. I'm much more concerned about people putting up pictures of themselves doing illicit activity (drinking underage, toking, et cetera) or pictures of them just plain looking foolish--which will be archived permanently on the net.
The internet predator menace remains terribly overblown in comparison.