Killing online surveillance with contextual ads
For chrissakes, can we stop talking about who the product is?
The internet has ushered in an era of unprecedented invasive surveillance. Commercial operators large and small spy on us in every way and sell and give away and leak our data to criminals, cops, spies, advertisers and stalkers.
This isn’t because you’re not paying for “the product,” which makes you the product. Companies that can abuse you do.
John Deere will sell you a $800,000 tractor and then lock you out of getting it fixed so they can charge you a fortune for repairs. You’re paying for the product, but you’re still the product.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/09/pig-pedometer-blaze/#huskerdont
Apple wants you to think that paying $1,000 for an Iphone means you’re not the product, but you are. Apple runs the same repair racket as John Deere, and then they rake 15–30% off of every dime you spend in an app. Apple’s selling you to app makers: you’re the product.
https://www.ft.com/content/44e93ede-60b5-4eb2-8548-61ad13a7550e
The biggest predictor of whether a company will treat you as the product is whether anyone will stop them. Sometimes you can stop them — by shopping elsewhere, say (though it’s damned hard to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism!). More often, the thing that stops companies from abusing you is laws that ban abuse, and regulators who enforce the laws vigorously.
Back to online surveillance. The ad-tech industry (and, ironically, many of its critics) say that spying on you all the time and in every way makes ads vastly more effective. We shouldn’t take their word for it. Ad-tech is a giant scam, a vast accounting fraud of fake ads shown to fake users with fake billings producing trillions in real profits:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost
Paying for media doesn’t mean that companies won’t abuse you. Not paying for media doesn’t mean they will. The determinant of your abuse is whether companies will suffer consequences for it. While there are some problems with ad-supported media, they’re completely separate from the problems of surveillance — and the problems…
