Slashdot Mirror
Smartphone Surveillance Tech Used To Target Anti-Abortion Ads At Pregnant Women (rewire.news)
VoiceOfDoom writes: Rewire reports: "Last year, an enterprising advertising executive based in Boston, Massachusetts, had an idea: Instead of using his sophisticated mobile surveillance techniques to figure out which consumers might be interested in buying shoes, cars, or any of the other products typically advertised online, what if he used the same technology to figure out which women were potentially contemplating abortion, and send them ads on behalf of anti-choice organizations?"
Regardless of one's personal stance on the pro-choice/anti-abortion debate, the unfettered use of tracking and ad-targeting technology which makes this kind of application possible is surely a cause for concern. In Europe, Canada and many other parts of the world, the use of a person's data in this way would be illegal thanks to strict privacy laws. Is it time for the U.S. to consider a similar approach to protect its citizens? Google has been reportedly tracking users on around 80 percent of all 'Top 1 Million' domains. Facebook is doing something similar. A recent report shows that Facebook uses smartphone microphones to identify the things users are listening to or watching based on the music and TV shows its able to identify. Facebook says the feature must be turned on, and that "it's only active when you're writing a status update."
Regardless of one's personal stance on the pro-choice/anti-abortion debate, the unfettered use of tracking and ad-targeting technology which makes this kind of application possible is surely a cause for concern. In Europe, Canada and many other parts of the world, the use of a person's data in this way would be illegal thanks to strict privacy laws. Is it time for the U.S. to consider a similar approach to protect its citizens? Google has been reportedly tracking users on around 80 percent of all 'Top 1 Million' domains. Facebook is doing something similar. A recent report shows that Facebook uses smartphone microphones to identify the things users are listening to or watching based on the music and TV shows its able to identify. Facebook says the feature must be turned on, and that "it's only active when you're writing a status update."
Telling women to not do abortions is nothing bad IMO. Its what ads are about: telling us to do different stuff. Its what made google rich.
What IS bad though is to forbid abortions, because this will just lead to women who want to abort their child to use more dangerous methods.
I realize that people are emotional about abortion, but objectively this is no more creepy or unethical than anything else in the advertising industry.
TFA:
Fuck you, VoiceOfDoom
What is the fucking point of inserting an inflammatory / accusatory 'anti-choice' label in the article?
This is Slashdot, not some pro-choice / pro-life forum
VoiceOfDoom, go fuck youself !
Yep, TFA is about convincing women to make the right choice. But for "progressives" some choices are more equal than others.
Choosing to have a baby makes you "anti-choice".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It has just as much meaning as the term "pro-choice". Which choice? What are the options?
That of a human fetus. Which — to millions of people world-wide — is already a human being. The choice, which you and VoiceOfDoom wish to preserve, has two options in these millions' opinion:
Because they consider abortion to be murder, they don't view this particular choice as legitimate.
Not sure, whether the organizations mentioned in TFA think so, or simply wish to increase the birth-rates in USA. But even in the former case, they are not "anti-choice" in general — they are against offering this particular choice.
No doubt, there are a lot of things you think ought to be illegal — even if abortion is not among them. That makes you "ant-choice" too, whenever the choice is between doing and not doing one of those things...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Is it wrong to target a problem drinker with ads for AA? How about targeting problem drinkers with free booze? What about targeting young mothers with ads for 'family planning' services, or as the article suggests pregnant women with 'pro-life' services? I'm sure there is a line there somewhere. Morality is a funny, fuzzy deeply personal thing... and I guess the line will vary from person to person.
Disclaimer: I am very strongly pro-choice (where choice is the right for a woman to seek an abortion if she wants).
The inflammatory title is meant to get attention. However, I also believe it’s true (for most cases).
We find it distasteful to force arbitary morals onto people or bombard them with propaganda and ads. Privacy violations are wrong too, and that’s what this article is really about. But the abortion issue itself is something that can be looked at objectively. And I want to understand how some people can claim to value human life on the one hand and then blithely throw it awas on the other hand.
There are situations where abortions are medically necessary (like when the mother’s life is threatened by the pregnancy), and there are some gray areas when it comes to serious developmental defects that are often terminal anyway. But a lot of the time, abortion is used as retroactive contraception. People with no self-control or forward planning ability have sex, and pregnancy happens. There are lots of ways to prevent pregnancy in the first place, not the least of which is to find a partner of the same sex, which is something we honestly need to push our society into taking advantage of more.
But hey, let’s just terminate human life willy-nilly because it’s fucking convenient for us! As someone who is liberal about most things, I see abortion (most of the time) as a massive shirking of personal responsibility. CHOICES have consequences, and you should have to deal with them and not force others to pay for your mistakes or, say, murder someone over it.
This is what I really don’t get about the “pro choice” people. A human fetus does indeed have an underdeveloped nervous system, so killing it is not the same as torture. At the same time, you can also kill adults painlessly, yet we don’t have clinics where you can take your office enemies to have them euthanized. A human fetus is definitely alive, and it’s definitely human. So why do people make some arbitrary distinction that because it hasn’t been BORN yet, it’s okay to murder it? (I’m using the word “murder” because I don’t want to hide behind euphamisms. Deal with it. Abortion is killing someone who is not threatening your life, which makes it at least manslaughter.)
Hey, maybe you want to live in a society ruled by social darwinism, where there’s are no rules against killing people. Most slashdotters would have been killed by now by bullies in highschool in that case, so you should appreciate the systems of laws and morals that protect you. I don’t care if you’re devoutly religious or an atheist, we have solid grounds for human societies to have ethics. And we as humans have decided that killing your fellow humans is wrong. Interestingly, I find atheists to often have a stronger sense of morality, because they don’t have religious fervor to tell them when it’s okay to break their own rules to force someone else to live by their bizarre and arbitrary religious tennets. So just to be clear, this is not a religious issue.
Indeed, putting stupid religions aside, most people find murder to be objectively wrong. We value human life, instinctively, unless we’re psychopaths. It doesn’t matter if Christians tell you murder is wrong because Christians have been known to murder in the name of their God. The same is true of Muslims. When wars are fought and terrorists bomb airports, the rest of the world stands aghast at the needless loss of human life over stupid idiological issues.
So don’t distort the abortion issue into a right vs. left thing or a stupid religious issue. 99% of religion is bullshit, and we don't get the idea of murder being wrong from religion.
Often single mothers are vilified, especially if they’re in high school. (Although most abortions, I think, are not had by high school girls.) And the fathers frequently skip town or deny responsibility. A girl who has a baby before she can finish her college degree is typically screwed in more ways th