I’ve worked at both Facebook and Google, and I’d second this sentiment. It is pretty disgusting that anyone with a passable knowledge of how to hide their tracks can basically get all of the information (messages, posts, photos, private information) they want about you. Sure, they might get fired if they’re caught, and maaaaaaaybe (read: probably not) face legal action, but they can do a lot of damage beforehand. And if they’re good enough, they won’t get caught.
I trust the people that I worked with there, but these are big organizations, and a lot more people than I would be comfortable with have essentially administrator access to private data.
Yeah. I work in IT as well. Not in a megacorp like Google or Facebook, but I’ve been in large private companies and government agencies that you would hope would have strict privacy and security policies. Guess what? They don’t.
Nobody in a position of power cares beyond the point of legal requirements, which are mostly shit. It’s kind of like “military grade”; it sounds impressive, but what it actually means is “this is as cheaply made as possible while still meeting the bare minimum legal standard”.
I’ve gotten in actual arguments about how “military grade” means easy to replace, not durable
It just meets a MIL spec. Could mean anything really.
it sounds impressive, but what it actually means is “this is as cheaply made as possible while still meeting the bare minimum legal standard”.
And for 5x the normal cost…
Seems to me that if one was running a spy agency like, say, the CIA or something, it’d be a very useful move to get one of your employees to get a job at one of those companies, so that in addition to ones own spying, one could also piggyback off the spy infrastructure of the ad companies. I imagine the government might get some of that information already, but if you were a foreign government, or trying to get info you weren’t technically supposed to have, I can imagine it might make a lot of sense
They don’t need to “get someone on the inside”, they have been using FISA and Section 702 for decades. Plus the Prism project that got leaked by Snowden.
Yeah that works if it’s a company in your jurisdiction, but for countries like Russia it’s probably an easy win to just have someone on the inside who can look up whatever you want. Probably costs a lot less to maintain as well, if you’re after individual targets and not casting a wide net.
Russia and China have their own versions of fb and similar services. And in any case, for domestic interception you do it via NSA, for foreign individuals you go through the CIA. Also, they bugged directly the under sea cables landing points.
I’d imagine many countries have spies working at all the big tech companies.
IMO it’s less about insiders stealing info. I’ve seen leads lists stolen and sold on the open market, etc. What we should really be concerned about is the above board, legal and absolutely promoted evil of advertising. I’ve worked in social Media and gaming(gambling) and let men tell you: the legal things these advertisers do are diabolical. The whiteboard conversations about how to structure a user journey are exploitation and immoral, unethical and downright evil and they are so by design. You’re doing a poor job if you’re not devising ways to skirt the law and use loopholes to manipulate people.
Can you say more about those whiteboard conversations? What exactly are they doing that’s unethical? I can speculate about dark patterns related to engagement and spend escalation, but I’m curious to hear your more informed perspective.
Youre pretty accurate wrt dark patterns but there’s other stuff like user journeys that map out for instance how much and when to deliver a casino coupon to a user based on research into addictive behavioural patterns.
Hypothetically: how does the glycemic index of typical lunch foods impact mood and when in that cycle is an addict most likely to succumb?
Put it like this: if it can be done, it is being done.
I had a promising career in Datascience very early on (2005 - this was before the CUDA framework was released) and I quickly realised that there was very little good that could come of that work under capitalism. I have friends who had aspirations in aerospace who realised that all they would end up building is weapons. Similar deal. I left it behind and I have a comfortable life in good old fashioned data management now. It isn’t sexy but I can sleep at night.
Doesn’t most people also manupulate each other as well? Like gaslighting and etc.
Sure. Do they do that with the might of Googles advertising platform behind them? Do they do it to millions of people m at a time using automated processes supported but machine learning?
Every thief knows everybody else is also a thief.
Irrelevant, manupulation requires lots of skill. I won’t be able to even if I tried.
I’m glad I’m chronically uninteresting. If I had literally any information of value I’d be much more careful but now I’m just one of many in a massive crowd of more interesting people.
I’m still blocking advertisements though. Fuck that shit.
Uh oh, you just claimed to be uninteresting… I think that trigger language gets you flagged for further follow-up?! You are now on their radar buddy!!!
(/s btw)
Says me, who is totally a spy. Yup, absolutely they should read all of my data.
(but a spy would never say that so…)
Reminds me of the Bill Hicks bit about marketing and advertising. “Oh he’s going for that anti-marketing dollar, that’s a great market!”
Yeah I suppose in this game you only get to choose your side, but the option to not play at all is not left open to you.
Or, you can choose not to play but that basically means rejecting society. That price is too high for 99%+ of people. Some of us try to partially abstain with privacy tools.
You would have to not have an address, phone, or use the internet, nor travel along a roadway that has billboards (even the Amish are not immune!), so yeah, wherever you are they will track you down, basically.:-( Which is on them, while what we choose to do about it is on us:-).
Yeah you’d have to be an off-grid mountain man, basically. That’s why so few do it, but some do!
I mean you consume goods and utilize services, so in the context of advertising, yes you are interesting and valuable.
(Also in the context of being a fellow human being, just so you know ❤️, but that’s a separate topic)
Sure, I meant more in a nefarious sort of way. Also it was more or less a joke…
yay! you worked at facebook and google well knowing they exploit people’s emotions and tech illiteracy. Do you want a cookie?
I hope you’re working at Tiktok now. I can’t wait to praise you about how you tell everyone they’re exploiting teenagers and spying on them that we totally don’t know. 🕵️ 🕵️ 🕵️
It was 12 years ago man, calm down.
This phrasing may have a chilling effect on discussions on our platform. I believe your opinion could still come through a statement which doesn’t attack the commenter as much - discouraging those who may have future job offers while not scaring commenters off in the future.
I work in an advertising-adjacent field (we won’t do any skeevy data-harvesting stuff, but still, ads) and I barely use any of the main social media sites, have an adblocker enabled on my router, use uBlock, GrapheneOS for my phone, Linux with a bunch of hardening, a VPN that’s always on etc.
My work computer doesn’t have any of that 'cause I need to be able to see ads on it, but sometimes if I forget and just browse around on my work computer with no ad protection… holy fuck it always surprises me how awful the internet is.
I don’t understand why companies don’t have network-wide adblockers on their employee systems and intranets. Used to be in the Air Force, ads everywhere. Now work for a contractor, still ads everywhere.
Don’t they know that blocking ads can speed up their networks? That ads track activity and may be revealing sensitive information about employees?
I don’t get it.
More like because this: The NSA and CIA Use Ad Blockers Because Online Advertising Is So Dangerous
I block ads on my work network. Perimeter and endpoints.
I work in an advertising-adjacent field (we won’t do any skeevy data-harvesting stuff, but still, ads)
My pal too; he makes signs.
I feel like internet advertising is way overdue for a crash, its like the matrix I dont even see them anymore.
I just don’t understand how advertising still makes so much money. Who’s watching ads and clicking on them these days? Who sees an ad that isn’t annoying, pandering, or downright infuriating to them? The ad business is so profitable, it’s Google’s main revenue source and Netflix is getting rid of a paid tier just to focus on their ad-supported one.
How is the ad business so profitable?
We try to avoid ads, but there is vast majority who just watches ads and get influenced.
Who’s watching ads and clicking on them…
My wife works in advertising. Online ads are about building brand recognition. It’s affecting it’s primary goal by having you see the advertisement. Clicking on the ad is another metric, but it’s not necessarily the goal, more of icing on the cake.
ad business so profitable?
The companies/govt agencies have huge budgets to get people to see their message. The big reason the house brand of whatever at the store is 10% cheaper is that brand doesn’t advertise. You the consumer are paying for advertising by buying products that are advertised.
The big reason the house brand of whatever at the store is 10% cheaper is that brand doesn’t advertise
That’s what someone in advertising would say. Co-branded (store brands) are cheaper because they are not as good as the brand name. The co-brand manufacturing company intentionally makes them with less quality, even if they are literally made in the same factory as brand names. If they didn’t, the brand name company would complain and pull their business.
Then there are brands like Nabisco that do everything in house. Oreos are way better than most copies because they have better ingredients and quality control.
No I don’t want to hear anyone’s spiel about how they think co-branded food is better than brand names. That’s your opinion. The facts are that co-manufacturing factories literally adjust their quality based on what the brands pay them.
A mid sized company I work with did some in-house analytics on their advertising spending and concluded that 75% was just money wasted
Several million dollars cut from future ad budgets with no negative revenue impact
There’s millions of apps with ads, billions of websites with ads, trillions of hours of videos with ads. Advertising is terrible, but if you can’t see how they make money, your blind.
My point question was not how the companies serving the ads are making money. My question is why companies spend so much to make and serve ads and how they’re getting enough return to continue doing it in such a capacity that it pays for the free Internet services we use.
I click on product ads when I’m looking for generic product categories and don’t have a brand and model in mind.
It’s about 15% of an engaged audience on every successful campaign where advertising really shifts behavior.
Over a few years I realized that it was likely the same subset of an unusually suggestive audience that the advertising was really for.
The industry likes to lie to itself that it’s effective in aggregate, but really it’s just people with poor suggestibility filters that are getting swayed through advertising channels.
Marketing channels are the much more interesting and worthwhile endeavor.
I built software around 2010-2014 around harvesting visitor data.
Shit was scary back then with how much we could predict. We were already laser targeting customers and people. I can only imagine what they’re doing now.
This was before the whole “big data” push when companies were cross-referencing data sources from other harvesters.
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oh rly? then why, after i’ve used facebook daily for 15 years, does it thin my interests include “foot” and and actors ive never heard of? why does google, after about that same amount of usage plus me owning many androids and having an even deeper entanglement with it than with facebook, think i’m the opposite sex (!) and imagine countless interest for me that i don’t have, just like facebook?
iv yet to see any of these companies being very accurate about me.
Sounds like you’re not the only person using your devices, including network and router. And even if you are, if you live with others and not on a VPN you’re very likely sharing an open IP with people of different tastes as well as gender. I get my spouse’s YouTube recommendations all the time, even when not signed in and on a totally different machine, because to YouTube it’s all coming from the same IP.
It’s not a huge mystery.
ah, i am sharing the router and network. i hadn’t considered that, and i’ve wondered and wondered how such inaccurate info commanded so much money and uproar. thanks!
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Have you considered maybe you aren’t worth anything of value?
if not, a lot of business folks sure are delusional 🤣
they arent super obvious about it.
why is this so normalized? every time some guy who knowingly does evil things and comes up and say that their work was evil like and now everyone should praise them… removed STFU, you aren’t revealing anything that’s not public knowledge.
“I spied on billions of people, I would avoid my ex company”
“I previously worked at amazon and made millions, now you should avoid it”
“I got rich by exploiting you, now that i’m out and doing other things, avoid my last company”
“I worked at and oversaw pushing violent narratives in developing countries, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 feet pole”
No Shit Sherlock!!
I worked in a non-decision making ITS adjacent capacity between banks and lawyers during the 2008 downturn. I knew full well our company was contracting with awful banks but I got the job while unemployed for several months when there wasn’t any jobs. People don’t always have a realistic choice in the matter, I was poor and it was entry level $35k cubicle gruntwork. Nothing I did couldn’t be replaced by any idiot with basic MS office skills in a 10 minute interview. Me taking the high road would have just fucked up my life for no reason. I left as soon as the job market recovered.
Anyway, I pulled all of my money out of Wells Fargo and tell anyone who will listen to do the same, out of the 30 big banks we worked with they were leaps and bounds more willfully incompetent then all of the others combined. I don’t claim to be a good person, I just do what I do like anyone else, I think you’re looking at this situation far to ideologically. In corrupt systems we are all complicit on all ends, there is no moral high ground other than starving to death and refusing the system entirely which is nonsense. Nearly all corporations are actively doing evil and a large portion of non-profits are only marginally better.
Just a friendly reminder to everyone that Wells Fargo is a criminal enterprise masquerading as a bank. You have been warned.
“I used to work for the cartel, now I make covers for Lipps inc., avoid the cartel btw.”
Things like this just screams “I’m one of the good guys now” and probably “check my new book/course/patreon/podcast/tweets to read more about shitty things I did.”
money in, money out
I started going DEEP into privacy protection and ad blocking maybe 8 years ago. I noticed that despite the fact that I was completely raw dogging the internet, the ads I was seeing were hilariously not my tempo. I was getting tampon ads, grindr ads, ads in foreign languages, and luxury car ads. So for every data collecting firm connecting the dots on who I am, there seemed to be 10 more than had no idea what they were doing and just casting wide ass nets.
Yeah I agree to some extent.
There’s that target / pregnancy story where basically they found that they would spook customers by revealing how much they actually knew. I don’t think is an adequate explanation though.
Honestly though, even without any nefarious shady tracking techniques, someone like Amazon should be able to figure out what stuff I might want to buy with alarming accuracy just based on previous purchases. They really don’t though, the best they can do is show me stuff I’ve already bought. Like “We see you bought a great coffee machine last month, what about this other coffee machine? Or perhaps we can tempt you with this fancy coffee machine?” I mean - show me some nice coffee mugs or something.
I always assumed that’s what the gambling and “hot women in your area want to meet you!” Ads were: least common denominators when they can’t target you well enough to place more reputable ads
It almost makes me sad that I don’t see those as much anymore. They have me pegged (and not in a fun way)
I agree with him entirely, but the current problem is really that content creators need to get paid, but so do the hosts.
There are places to host that are creator-paid…the creator could also self-host. But if you want your content to be seen, you need to be in the big websites that get most their revenue from ads.
Get Patreon and Nebula bigger than YouTube and maybe more creators would host there. But that’s a bit of a prisoners dilemma.
No, they don’t need to get paid. People can do things for fun and not money.
Is this sarcasm? I don’t understand why they don’t need to get paid. I mean sure the hobbyist creator isn’t thinking about getting paid. But the people with the best content aren’t hobbyist, they are good because that’s all they do.
Those “people with the best content” getting paid through ad money had lead to lots of people optimizing their content not for quality but for ad friendliness and mass compatibility.
Sure they can. But no matter how you slice it, everybody has bills to pay. Servers and bandwidth aren’t cheap. Nor are people to run them, or the massive infrastructure that makes up YouTube (for example).
You host your videos in a computer under your desk, and it doesn’t cost much, but you are highly limited on how much you can serve and how big your audience is. You can grow either of them but that’s going to take time and money. Eventually it goes from a fun thing you do that you enjoy, to an expensive hobby, to a time-consuming money sink.
If you’re lucky you get to stay in one of the first two. You’re not huge, but you’re having fun and you’re not a sellout. Eventually you are faced with a choice…have fun and limit your arts reach, or get bigger and become a sellout. And the move itself to a larger ad supported platform will likely result in losing some of your more virtuous fans.
And people on here have called me excessive for running NoScript + Ublock and actively researching all of the script sources that I enable. If it even has the letters ‘ad’ in it it is permanently forbidden. Along with everything google unless I need to sign in and tag manager is used, then I do it in an isolated environment.
Hmm maybe I’m just desensitized, but what are they going to do with that information? Going to try and sell me stupid shit?
Sell it to people who will manipulate you and your family. Even subtle changes could shape the direction of your life. Or, they could say people with your preferences are in a certain area and fund some other area instead. Could be anything. The less data they have, the better.
Edit: gave->have
“could be anything”, “subtle changes”
I still don’t see cause for anything other than concern
You don’t care if companies shape the future of your life? Of your family’s lives?
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The advertising company you mentioned is Cambridge Analytica, right? If so, and not something else, I’d like to add this shit has come to light and exploded in 2018. We have to wonder how many others went dark after that and what shit they have come up with since then, in these 5 years.
To be fair I do use the basic level of protection, ad blockers and what have you. So if they are trying to influence me with ads, well, I’m not seeing them.
But I don’t go the full 3 layers of ad block with a pihole and a VPN.
Have health insurance?
Big into drinking, lots of bars and going to liquor stores whilst your mobile phone is with you and some apps have location access permissions?
Don’t be surprised if your health insurance goes up on account of being in a higher risk group…
(It’s not exactly hard to cross your location with store locations and it’s probably already done generally to try and determine your consumer habits)
And this is just a mild, mild example. Stuff to do with people’s sex life can have far more entertaining effects, especially in a highly moralistic country (like the US) or if cheating on a spouse.
Think about it this way: if you don’t jump through hops to make it hard to track your location, there is a record, forever of every place you go to with your phone and how long you stay there (and repeat visits with long stays would signal a pattern) as well as of everything you’re interested in enough to look it up and/or visit it on the Internet and it’s all crossed. Further, if you have email via one of the big providers such as Google, every email you sent, received or even just drafted but never sent is tracked.
Why do you think Google started pretty much forcing people to give them their phone number for the Google account that, for example, goes with their Google Mail?! It allows them to link all that sweet information and match it to a single individual.
And this is before we go into crossing data with the kind of physical life data on you: the insurance company records, car onership and rental, financial information and transactions, even public transport use (for those which use modern touch-in touch-out cards).
sell it to police. sell it to a stalker or vengeful ex. sell it to prospective employers, landlords, debt collectors, and scammers. this is just a taste, off the top of my head.
Right now in the US? Not much outside of try to sell you stupid shit.
But the capability in the data is there for an authoritarian regime to do quite a lot to you as a result of the information.
So you know - if there was any pending threat of a narcissistic psychopath upending the government you might be concerned over what insights into individual mindsets can be accomplished with the data available…
Cant we figure out our tracking id and just feed it complete garage? Like is there an app for that?
Adnauseam
I agree with this and yet this seems really contrived
… give them money.
This point though. Do you pay for the content you consume? If not, you contribute to creators gravitating towards advertisement to pay rent with their work.
I hope you understand that services you also pay for are also selling your data.
There are services out there that sell my data, even if I pay for them, such as Netflix or Spotify. There are also content creators out there that I can pay that respect my privacy. Most newspapers work that way, and some podcasts, too.
Use patreon, liberapay, and open collective to pay the creator directly, then aggressively block ads. Thats what I do.
The point is to give creators money, not advertisers
This is the way - avoid ads as much as possible, and support environments/services/creators that respect your privacy directly with money.
The point is, you’re an exception.
Cororations found out long ago that most people value a couple bucks a month more than they value a 1-3 minute chunk of their time a few times an hour while they’re being entertained.
Listen, pay me a dollar and I’ll show you a cool mind trick.
Oh, you dont have/want to spend a dollar? Or you’re skeptical of the trick? Well, you could just listen to me hum a tune for a few seconds and then I’ll show you the trick. In fact, you don’t even have to listen, just let me hum a tune in your presence. Just for a few seconds. Then I’ll show the trick anyway.
Sound better? Cool.
Hmmm Hmm Hmmmm Hmm
That wasn’t so bad.
Ready for the cool trick?
You already missed it. That was the trick. Be sure to smash the bell and hit subscribe.
Image Transcription: Mastodon Post
Brendan, @lactol@kind.social
Hey folks, I’ve seen a lot of talk going around about adblockers lately. I worked in the advertising technology and security industry for five years and the one core piece of advice I have is:
Holy fuck never give an advertiser your data. You cannot believe how bad it is. Don’t. I run three layers of ad block protection and I’d run more if it was feasible. If you want to support creators give them money.
