The Value of Privacy

Facebook will never charge its users. They know it would destroy them.

 

Charge to use Facebook, nah, won't happen for that very reason. But I wouldn't write off some paid "extras".

 

Isn't that already true for some of those games on Facebook?

 

Actually I think so, yes.

 

IMO, targeted advertizing should be killed off completely. If regulations or browser vendors won't do it, the users should. The root of the entire issue boils down to one simple question:
Which matters more, our right to control access to our personal info, activity, etc, or their right to profit from it?

This leads to the next question:
Whose decision is this to make?

The ad industry does not own the web. They don't control it's fate regardless of what they claim. People need to understand one simple fact. They need us a lot more than we need them. We and the internet will get by without them. They can't survive without us. That puts the final say in our hands, regardless of what the ad industry, MS, regulators, or browser vendors want. We already have the ability and the right to put an end to this. We've got the tools. We just have to do it.

 

Don't forget there are many legitimate and non-controversial ways to do targeted advertising. The hyper-targeted form that relies upon tracking/profiling individual entities is but a subset of targeted advertising. Neither advertising in general *nor* targeted advertising in general are threatened by do not track/profile type initiatives. I think those fighting against such initiatives try to encourage people to lose sight of that fact because it makes the negative consequences of such initiatives seem far, far more severe than they really would be.

 

But they are. That's directly what DNT tries to address ie: targeted advertising. The question is not whether DNT will break targeted advertising, we already know it does (if enforced) because that's what it aims to do. The question is more about what that means for the internet.

 

Firstly, I believe the Do Not Track initiative(s) are about giving individuals greater awareness of and control over the collection, accumulation, and use of their online browsing information and especially browsing history. Requiring, for example, an entity to refrain from tracking an individual's activity across multiple websites when the individual has expressed the preference to not be tracked in such a way only "breaks" that very specific tracking practice and the use of just that very specific tracking information for targeting advertisements in a context where the individual expressed the preference. IOW, it doesn't outlaw or "break" such tracking in general or for that matter targeted advertising in general.

Secondly, one does not actually have to collect let alone accumulate and correlate information about an individual or their browsing behavior in order to target advertisements. For example, advertisements can be targeted based on the nature of the page or website and without any actual information about the individual who is visiting said page or site. Examples of this would include auto related advertisements placed on auto related sites/pages, local service advertisements placed on community websites, etc.

Such less fine grained forms of targeted advertising combined with the ability of individuals to opt-in to and not opt-out of more fine grained forms of targeted advertising leaves plenty of room for targeted advertising in a DNT world. IMO.

 

My point exactly. Television ads don't track users and both are doing quite well. The internet will do just fine as well.

The argument that it makes their targeting more effective is irrelevant. One could argue that they could target ads even more precisely if they accessed the webcams and microphones connected to PCs, and it would be true. The real questions are:
1, What is and is not acceptable?
2, Who makes that decision?
They can only do what we let them do.

If there was no tracking based targeted ads, the biggest change on the web would be fewer nosy scripts and probably faster loading pages.

 

I strongly suspect that some cable/sat TV advertisements are based on moderately detailed, actual demographic information as well as individuals' viewing habits. I know the industry continues to explore, patent, and test more advanced approaches. Which includes, for example and along the lines of what you mentioned, using imaging devices built into TV's and/or set top boxes to identify individuals and display ads based on their characteristics. I don't think this negates the idea that such levels of targeted advertising are unnecessary in principle and unnecessary in practice at the society level. However, it does demonstrate that "they" will continue to develop ever more sophisticated mechanisms and continue to work to shape our future to fit what they want.

Various powerful forces have aligned to somewhat slowly but very steadily take us further down this extremely disturbing path. They didn't need our permission to start and they don't need our permission to continue. They will push forward along this path unless and until there is sufficient active opposition to significantly impact their bottom line. I think the classic form of consumer opposition... voting with your wallet by not doing business with or no longer doing business with entities that are disrespectful of and harmful to consumers... is highly unlikely to be applied at the scale necessary to achieve that effect. These days, governments are frequently and considerably supportive of the basic infrastructure as they directly and/or indirectly make use of it to achieve their own surveillance. So I strongly suspect that particularly here in the USA that no truly major and effective change will be brought about via government initiatives. Once upon a time, technology savvy and privacy conscious individuals represented a much larger percentage of technology users and decision makers. They are moving beyond their prime and their views have been diluted. A new generation which has no memory of the before times and which has been desensitized to the issues is displacing the older work force and consumers. Whereas one generation significantly opposed something "simple" like CPU ID another generation embraces with little thought and some enthusiasm the massive information security threat posed by cloud XYZ programs, backdoors built into their primary communications/computing devices, etc.

I love the spirit behind "They can only do what we let them do", but practically speaking I think the challenge is: how can a small and for the short term probably decreasing percentage of Internet users and consumers who might be willing to actively participate in something create over the next five to ten years a situation where large powerful companies engaging in the offensive business practices are significantly and negatively financially impacted via reasonably legitimate tactics on our part.

 

I've wondered about those TV/cable boxes as well, but haven't opened one up, yet. Not exactly a priority for me as I almost never watch TV.

I don't expect anything of value (for the users/consumers) in the form of regulation either. IMO, big industry, big business (of all types), and government are one and the same. I'm part of that old school that remembers what it used to be. I haven't let go of those values. If anything, this eroding and constant attack on users privacy has only served to motivate me to push back. The privacy implications are near the top of my reasons for refusing to move to a newer version of Windows.

Stranger things have happened when they start at a grassroots level. I can't completely accept the notion that the number of concerned users is decreasing when the number of privacy related apps, extension, etc is growing, and when even MS supposedly considered making "do not track" the default setting. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if that was little more than a publicity stunt that they never intended to do either. I don't see where we'd really need to create anything or organize in any particular fashion. In one respect, the organization is already there. We're all internet users and victims of these invasive business tactics. We already have the tools to stop most of the tracking, some of which have been around for a long time. Whether we as users could effect any real change overall is debatable, but each of us can change whether they can track us and profit from doing so. Myself, I'd rather try and fail than not try at all.

 

I've also wondered about the cable box monitoring what I am viewing. Apparently it does:

http://www.nielsen.com/content/corporate/us/en/measurement.html

under the television section. I've never thought about imaging though, that's a bit of a disturbing thought.

 

@noone_particular: Not the number of users; the percentage of users. If a company (or industry) rolls out a privacy reducing practice and only a small percentage of consumers oppose it via meaningful action that negatively impacts the corporate bottom line, the company can still come out ahead due to the gains from the majority of consumers who don't oppose it

@focus: Although there are some things there that hint at Nielsen making use of carrier data capture mechanisms and/or carrier captured data, its history of installing its own television viewing monitoring equipment blurs the picture. If you are interested in the subject I'd do some broader searching and reading on television targeted/behavioral advertising and drill down to assess what your particular provider might be up to.

FWIW, I have the barest bones cable service and box only because my overall bill would increase if I got rid of it It isn't even hooked up. Having essentially abandoned TV in favor of other things including rented movies from other parties, I haven't followed the subject very closely. I stumble across related info fairly regularly though. For example, about Intel's plans not long after I posted my last message.

 

There is no way to put a "price" on privacy IMHO.

But the OP said "value" not price right? SO I value my privacy and will do all I can to protect it.

Now the reasons we are attacked and tracked on the www fall into 2 groups, those who wish to steal $ from us and those who wish to sell me things I'm not looking for. I will continue to block these to the maximum.

Would the internet die without advertising? My guess is NO, but it would change. Some companies would die and I for one would not miss any of them.

Online banking and email services and book buying etc would carry on along with B2B activity.

H.ll guys, we are already paying $ to the ISP's for the service so that will continue adverstising or not.