Macek Ceglowski's talk transcript on how internet advertising became more and more intrusive, still doesn't work well, and what we could do about it. And his talk on intrusive spying and advertising which overlaps:
> Recall that advertising is when someone pays you to tell your users they'll be happy if they buy a product or service. Yahoo is an example of a company that runs on advertising. Gawker is a company that runs on advertising. Investor storytime is when someone pays you to tell them how rich they'll get when you finally put ads on your site. Pinterest is a site that runs on investor storytime. Most startups run on investor storytime.
[..] Investor storytime only works if you can argue that advertising in the future is going to be effective and lucrative in ways it just isn't today. If the investors stop believing this, the money will dry up.
to make it work, to keep the edifice of promises from tumbling down, companies have to constantly find ways to make advertising more invasive and ubiquitous.
And that's the motor destroying our online privacy. [..] We're addicted to 'big data' not because it's effective now, but because we need it to tell better stories.
[..] Of course, for ad sellers, the crappiness of targeted ads is a feature! It means there's vast room for improvement. So many stories to tell the investors.
This ghost of a business model propels us to ever greater extremes of surveillance. If the algorithms don't work, that's a sign we need more data. If the algorithms do work, then imagine how much better they'll work with more data. There's only one outcome allowed: collect more data.
Macek Ceglowski's talk transcript on how internet advertising became more and more intrusive, still doesn't work well, and what we could do about it. And his talk on intrusive spying and advertising which overlaps:
http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm
> Recall that advertising is when someone pays you to tell your users they'll be happy if they buy a product or service. Yahoo is an example of a company that runs on advertising. Gawker is a company that runs on advertising. Investor storytime is when someone pays you to tell them how rich they'll get when you finally put ads on your site. Pinterest is a site that runs on investor storytime. Most startups run on investor storytime.
[..] Investor storytime only works if you can argue that advertising in the future is going to be effective and lucrative in ways it just isn't today. If the investors stop believing this, the money will dry up.
to make it work, to keep the edifice of promises from tumbling down, companies have to constantly find ways to make advertising more invasive and ubiquitous.
And that's the motor destroying our online privacy. [..] We're addicted to 'big data' not because it's effective now, but because we need it to tell better stories.
[..] Of course, for ad sellers, the crappiness of targeted ads is a feature! It means there's vast room for improvement. So many stories to tell the investors.
This ghost of a business model propels us to ever greater extremes of surveillance. If the algorithms don't work, that's a sign we need more data. If the algorithms do work, then imagine how much better they'll work with more data. There's only one outcome allowed: collect more data.