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The thing that most people don't seem to understand is that surveillance capitalism means that the systems of ad tech can be very good at tracking you individually, great for use by cops, pretty nifty for propoganda, and still terrible for satisfying standard marketing outcomes.
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If they can't take a stand for privacy on ethical terms then at least Brands should be more upset that they are the majority of funding for a panopticon that serves their interests less effectively than any other participant.
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I mean, except users. It definetly serves users the worst.
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I find it incredibly frustrating when the type of folks who might call me a "privacy absolutist" are like 'you're always talking about how tracking users for ads are bad BUT ALSO saying ads are incredibly inefficient/ineffective GOTCHA' because that's not at all a contradiction.
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For one thing, a situation can be *both* unjust and ineffective. Not to Go There but a good example might be: The H*locaust would not have been closer to justice if only IBM hadn't sold the Naz*s some accounting machines and camps had worse records. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
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Also the very act of being observed changes us and challenges our will. Putting aside questions of how the data gets used, how humans can be manipulated, etc... surveillance fundamentally dis-empowers us. This is my fav link to understand this argument: youtube.com/watch?v=fCUTX1jurJ4
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When someone says "privacy is a human right" this is what they are referencing. They are also referencing article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights ...
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Even before a question of how the data is being used, non-consented surveillance is widely recognized as inhumane by the types of people who spend their whole lives thinking about ethics and humanity instead of marketing outcomes...
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Once we get to the question of how the data of "surveillance capitalism" is used, it can be incredibly effective and useful... for creating gates around our actions that can be made difficult to negotiate. A succinct and effective explanation of this: berjon.com/principled-privacy/
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The crowd who goes around nah-nahing privacy advocates will often point at this discussion & go 'ahhh so Privacy Absolutists claim humans don't have free will, that's dumb & I have now broken their argument by mentioning this'. Grow up. Obviously not what's being talked about.
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As robinberjon notes in his post, "asymmetries of power" created by some people owning all the data around you and you owning one of theirs is always going to create inhumane outcomes that manipulate and push people in particular directions.
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OBVIOUSLY we can have free will and still have our choices limited, our lives curtailed, and our choices manipulated by systems of power. These are not contradictory. This isn't college debate club, you're not trying to win points w/a sudden Gotcha like you're Phoenix Wright.
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The thing is the way and methods this data gets used have little to do with marketing. The truth of the matter is that, although the systems that enable NYT reporters to buy a dataset and track individuals are built for ads, they don't serve ads well. nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html?ref=oembed
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An ad targeter that wants to sell you a boat really has nothing that they're going to do with that level of detail. Marketers are mostly looking for broad demographics to target and for the most part are just going to be confused and likely unable to manage this level of detail.
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BUT the people who want to rip off advertising budgets ARE well served. They can figure out what makes a high value user & use precision in reverse to create automated tools that can take on or acquire the appearance of the individuals that comprise commonly targeted demographics
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More precise targeting of smaller groups is generally higher competition because of how they are also overlapping with other broader groups and creating competition and therefore more valuable and surprisingly easy to exploit. gizmodo.com/this-devious-and-mostly-legal-ad-scam-is-bleeding-small-1844633313
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So the lack of privacy in the ad tech ecosystem better serves the fraudsters than the advertisers. It is better for feeding back into systems of power and UX that limit us than it is for selling us things. And, political ad or not, it separates us theconversation.com/targeted-ads-isolate-and-divide-us-even-when-theyre-not-political-new-research-163669
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The data feedback at the level of detail currently in the system actually serves to reinforce bad biases marketers have and further remove them from potential audiences they have or could grow into, as I detail in this thread: Chronotope/1270503970142904320
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The struggles many of us have w/privacy right now are a tax on our capabilities, our time, & our ability to achieve. The time we spend on selecting browsers, negotiating VPNs, dodging pop ups, etc... is a tax on our time and further stratifies our society fastcompany.com/90317495/another-tax-on-the-poor-surrendering-privacy-for-survival
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You can call it precision targeting or surveillance capitalism, but arguing over the name is silly. What's clear is that it a system that serves advertisers and users worst of all. Why should a system that is bad for its most valued participants be allowed to persist as is? ...
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The black box in the center of ad tech is taking our information and using it in ways not justifiable for the people who pay for it or the users it is supposed to serve ads to.
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Billions of dollars are lost to fraud and governments have a way to bypass laws *we put in place* to limit their surveillance capabilities. Who wouldn't want to fix that except the types of folks who already hoard power beyond 99.999999999% of us?
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Real privacy, enacted broadly, will be better for advertisers and better for users, but, importantly, it is the right thing to do in a healthy society.
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So let's drop this high school debate club bullshit and talk about the issues, tactics to resolve them, and the obstacles ahead. The only points you are scoring are on yourself.
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If you'd like to read more on this, here are my sources: context.center/topics/privacy/
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And if you'd like to read about how the cops misuse broad data collection, here are the sources on that: context.center/topics/law-enforcement-and-data/
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A really good thread on this topic WolfieChristl/1370109411943927810