[liberationtech] Flaming Google
Please note the subject change, as the previous subject featured Microsoft - a notable reflection of the tides of history. In short, what price will you pay for your privacy? Google (like Facebook), makes the majority of its money by selling advertisements (I've heard on the order of 95% of Google's revenue is generated by AdWords). Like everything else the Internet touches, advertising has been disrupted by the innovations introduced by companies like Google and Facebook. In this case, the innovation is highly accurate micro-targeting of groups. For example, on Facebook you can place an advertisement that targets only current employees of a particular organization - because individuals document their employment history on Facebook. Disruption of the advertising industry has been enabled by the acquisition and compilation of information on individuals. We, as individuals, voluntarily provide our personal information to these organizations in the process of using the tools and amusements they provide to us - crucially, at no direct financial cost to us. The quantity and accuracy of aggregated personal data largely determines the amount of advertising revenue that can be generated. Therefore these organizations are incentivized to collect more and more personal data. In some circumstances (but not all), these same organizations provide paid versions of their tools which provide privacy guarantees, such as Google Apps for Business which includes GMail. It's worth noting there is no privacy protecting version of Facebook. So this calculus is pretty simple. If your privacy is worth something to you, what will you pay to keep it? Trouble finding privacy protective substitute technologies? Well, that's part of our answer. Technology has a cost for the convenience it provides, and that cost is not just economic. As McLuhan said, every technology is simultaneously an amplification *and an amputation*. And lately, there's a lot of severed personal data being scooped up. gf -- Gregory Foster || gfos...@entersection.org @gregoryfoster http://entersection.com/ -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Flaming Google
I don't know how many people watch Doctor Who, and I hate to use it as my example, but there was a planet where people used items of emotional value as currency. This is kinda how I see the future of the Internet going: People trade various details of their life, and they get various services in return (privacy economy?). I use Google services, while I never fully trust anyone, I trust them more than most with the data they collect about me. You sort of give this same level of trust to merchants when you swipe your credit card, not knowing if they are actually collecting your card number and are going to do bad things with it. Services should have the option (as Google does) to pay for a service, and not have to take part in advertising. I would love to pay Facebook $5 a month, and not have any ads and no tracking. Again, however, it comes down to trust -- every website can collect information about you even if they are not running ads. They can be sharing that information, etc. You wouldn't know unless you worked for the company, and realistically probably only if you were in upper management or a small little team. You don't have to trade your privacy for free services, but I choose to. I don't view a company as evil for it. Gregory Foster wrote: Please note the subject change, as the previous subject featured Microsoft - a notable reflection of the tides of history. In short, what price will you pay for your privacy? Google (like Facebook), makes the majority of its money by selling advertisements (I've heard on the order of 95% of Google's revenue is generated by AdWords). Like everything else the Internet touches, advertising has been disrupted by the innovations introduced by companies like Google and Facebook. In this case, the innovation is highly accurate micro-targeting of groups. For example, on Facebook you can place an advertisement that targets only current employees of a particular organization - because individuals document their employment history on Facebook. Disruption of the advertising industry has been enabled by the acquisition and compilation of information on individuals. We, as individuals, voluntarily provide our personal information to these organizations in the process of using the tools and amusements they provide to us - crucially, at no direct financial cost to us. The quantity and accuracy of aggregated personal data largely determines the amount of advertising revenue that can be generated. Therefore these organizations are incentivized to collect more and more personal data. In some circumstances (but not all), these same organizations provide paid versions of their tools which provide privacy guarantees, such as Google Apps for Business which includes GMail. It's worth noting there is no privacy protecting version of Facebook. So this calculus is pretty simple. If your privacy is worth something to you, what will you pay to keep it? Trouble finding privacy protective substitute technologies? Well, that's part of our answer. Technology has a cost for the convenience it provides, and that cost is not just economic. As McLuhan said, every technology is simultaneously an amplification *and an amputation*. And lately, there's a lot of severed personal data being scooped up. gf -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Flaming Google
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 31/05/13 16:01, Travis McCrea wrote: Services should have the option (as Google does) to pay for a service, and not have to take part in advertising. I would love to pay Facebook $5 a month, and not have any ads and no tracking. Thought experiment: if you paid Facebook $5 to stop tracking you, what information would you expect them to stop collecting? It seems to me that a lot of the information they collect - such as interactions with other Facebook users, or visits to sites displaying Facebook buttons - involves communication between you and other parties. It's not clear that you have a right to prevent those other parties from disclosing that information to Facebook. So even if Facebook were to agree not to collect data _from_ you, they could still collect data _about_ you from those other parties - and thanks very much for the $5. The problem is that much of the information we consider private involves relations between two or more parties, so it can't be treated as any one party's personal property. You can't sell your privacy to Facebook, or stop selling it to Facebook, because there's no distinct entity called your privacy - it's inseparable from the privacy of everyone you interact with. I think we need to move beyond the conception of privacy as an individual property right and recognise it as a collective right and a collective responsibility. We can't buy our privacy back individually. Cheers, Michael -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJRqMqbAAoJEBEET9GfxSfMsZsIAIQYSokPoSBnguSIB6ll9vF6 9VQT5g2HrXsnfKZ7re121DOfPUiGkA2YywIklpBH6kfJ7hOQhB5jjkJrDM2/7xVA Ebb65p0oqkH4h3G2AnwDXYS8gvLqlqWRzYi2dzoheS50bzOeo6t/7SrkzkU9/QxG j0ZOEuTxQ+7EtXjA7TbFHaW8B0cCXH3RX1uzxJ2QHdwSWnJekbCy2X1F26SVzHec cpgL+lrsmBV59Cnt2+0uqCS9G/pGPOlR3L6shw9VJK41o+9xXcl9DXewy6Qz7g8z 4c4UfdQVP+jgXtjFMgryyP8S9DmHMYxvxQvBoQXIo8Gsv9eraA0k0QZWAzBIKrY= =+oK2 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Flaming Google
not tracking is not an option for any company whose business model is based on tracking. Best Regards | Cordiales Saludos | Grato, Andrés L. Pacheco Sanfuentes a...@acm.org +1 (817) 271-9619 On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 11:06 AM, Michael Rogers mich...@briarproject.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 31/05/13 16:01, Travis McCrea wrote: Services should have the option (as Google does) to pay for a service, and not have to take part in advertising. I would love to pay Facebook $5 a month, and not have any ads and no tracking. Thought experiment: if you paid Facebook $5 to stop tracking you, what information would you expect them to stop collecting? It seems to me that a lot of the information they collect - such as interactions with other Facebook users, or visits to sites displaying Facebook buttons - involves communication between you and other parties. It's not clear that you have a right to prevent those other parties from disclosing that information to Facebook. So even if Facebook were to agree not to collect data _from_ you, they could still collect data _about_ you from those other parties - and thanks very much for the $5. The problem is that much of the information we consider private involves relations between two or more parties, so it can't be treated as any one party's personal property. You can't sell your privacy to Facebook, or stop selling it to Facebook, because there's no distinct entity called your privacy - it's inseparable from the privacy of everyone you interact with. I think we need to move beyond the conception of privacy as an individual property right and recognise it as a collective right and a collective responsibility. We can't buy our privacy back individually. Cheers, Michael -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJRqMqbAAoJEBEET9GfxSfMsZsIAIQYSokPoSBnguSIB6ll9vF6 9VQT5g2HrXsnfKZ7re121DOfPUiGkA2YywIklpBH6kfJ7hOQhB5jjkJrDM2/7xVA Ebb65p0oqkH4h3G2AnwDXYS8gvLqlqWRzYi2dzoheS50bzOeo6t/7SrkzkU9/QxG j0ZOEuTxQ+7EtXjA7TbFHaW8B0cCXH3RX1uzxJ2QHdwSWnJekbCy2X1F26SVzHec cpgL+lrsmBV59Cnt2+0uqCS9G/pGPOlR3L6shw9VJK41o+9xXcl9DXewy6Qz7g8z 4c4UfdQVP+jgXtjFMgryyP8S9DmHMYxvxQvBoQXIo8Gsv9eraA0k0QZWAzBIKrY= =+oK2 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
