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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.
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.
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.
Title: Why Web 2.0 will end your privacy
... no real content.
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... 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
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.