FaceBook logging IP
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Let me start by saying that I know FB logs the IP that are used to access the site, this is not uncommon and I'm not the kind of people that cares much about this because I don't have a social life so I don't have a single public page on the internet with my full name or any meaningful information about me.
However I had to test something a couple days ago and for that I created a test account full of fake information. I was surprised then when the page suggested as possible friends people I actually knew. The only way I guess this could happen is if the site check for users with the same IP and assume you know them.
So it is possible by spoofing the IP to know the name of everybody that has ever used that IP to connect to FB, interesting isn't it?
I read the Privacy Policy and this use of the IP information was not listed, so...
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Facebook associates you to other people based on a complete list of IP's you've been detected from (including IP block), a complete list of sites you've gone to with facebook integration (even if you didn't USE the facebook integration, it still dropped a cookie - and EVERYTHING has facebook integration now), your email address (if your email address was in somebody's address book and they gave Facebook the login to their email accouont to 'check their contact list for friends'), your phone number (if your phone number appears in the phonebook of ANY phone with a facebook mobile app installed), random guesses based on geolocation, etc.
They're the only company I'm aware of that's more information-hungry than Google.
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And people are ok with this? Crap, the little faith I had in hummanity has evaporated.
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@serguey123 said:
And people are ok with this? Crap, the little faith I had in hummanity has evaporated.
I had a similar interesting/scary incident when I made my facebook account. I deliberately did not use the "friend finder" when registering, because of all the talk about facebook storing adresses of people that aren't on facebook. I never entered my mail password into anything remotely connected with facebook. And yet, as soon as I was done, Facebook presented me with half of my contact list as "friend suggestions".
Interestingly, some of the suggested contacts were people I hadn't ever heard of and neither, I can imagine, had my friends. The solution: At some time in the past, those people had been on the same mailing list as me.
My theory is that this was indeed a demonstration of the "friend finder" in action. When that mailing list was active, their mail client had probably auto-stored all addresses that ever appeared in an email. When they registered at facebook some time later, the friend finder might have collected those adresses and - voila - the connection was made. And because my actual friends used the friend finder too, facebook already had a detailed profile of me, long before I had even thought about registering there.
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@serguey123 said:
People are not only ok with this, they LOVE IT.And people are ok with this? Crap, the little faith I had in hummanity has evaporated.
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@PSWorx said:
@serguey123 said:
And people are ok with this? Crap, the little faith I had in hummanity has evaporated.
I had a similar interesting/scary incident when I made my facebook account. I deliberately did not use the "friend finder" when registering, because of all the talk about facebook storing adresses of people that aren't on facebook. I never entered my mail password into anything remotely connected with facebook. And yet, as soon as I was done, Facebook presented me with half of my contact list as "friend suggestions".
Interestingly, some of the suggested contacts were people I hadn't ever heard of and neither, I can imagine, had my friends. The solution: At some time in the past, those people had been on the same mailing list as me.
My theory is that this was indeed a demonstration of the "friend finder" in action. When that mailing list was active, their mail client had probably auto-stored all addresses that ever appeared in an email. When they registered at facebook some time later, the friend finder might have collected those adresses and - voila - the connection was made. And because my actual friends used the friend finder too, facebook already had a detailed profile of me, long before I had even thought about registering there.
Yeah, but in my case, I used a throw away email, freshly made with no conection whatsoever to me and I don't have friends, some of the people listed there I know because they are coworkers but they don't have my personal email adress, even less my just created totally fake one and the whole information in the profile was fake as well
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@Weng said:
@serguey123 said:
People are not only ok with this, they LOVE IT.And people are ok with this? Crap, the little faith I had in hummanity has evaporated.
Then people deserve what they get
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And the rest of it get it, too, because the people that love it handily give them tons of information about us.
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@Weng said:
And the rest of it get it, too, because the people that love it handily give them tons of information about us.
That is why not having friends rock
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And never subscribing to a mailing list. Or using a forum. Or reading virtually anything on virtually any site. Or buying a phone where the carrier "helpfully" preinstalled a Facebook application.
You have to be COMPLETELY off the grid to keep Facebook from getting their sticky mits on information about you.
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@Weng said:
And never subscribing to a mailing list. Or using a forum. Or reading virtually anything on virtually any site. Or buying a phone where the carrier "helpfully" preinstalled a Facebook application.
You have to be COMPLETELY off the grid to keep Facebook from getting their sticky mits on information about you.
Ha, that is me all the way, any information I provide is fake anyways
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@serguey123 said:
@Weng said:
@serguey123 said:
People are not only ok with this, they LOVE IT.And people are ok with this? Crap, the little faith I had in hummanity has evaporated.
Then people deserve what they get
Which is what? Accurate profiling will benefit us, not harm us. If Facebook or Google can accurately target me with ads for things I actually want to know about, it'll be mutually beneficial. Not that I use Facebook anyway.
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@intertravel said:
Accurate profiling will benefit us, not harm us. If Facebook or Google can accurately target me with ads for things I actually want to know about, it'll be mutually beneficial. Not that I use Facebook anyway.
Hmm, I don't watch any add, why would I? There is not such thing as mutually beneficial, at least not in the same proportion, but that is hardly my point. My point is that the information they collect is somewhat easy to steal and they are not responsable for it.
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@intertravel said:
Accurate profiling will benefit us, not harm us. If Facebook or Google can accurately target me with ads for things I actually want to know about, it'll be mutually beneficial. Not that I use Facebook anyway.
Ditto. I've never figured out the panic over this. It seems like much ado about nothing. And, as has been mentioned, most people don't care. (Whether they don't care because they aren't aware of it, or just don't care, I dunno.)
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@serguey123 said:
Hmm, I don't watch any add, why would I?
Don't you ever buy anything? Wouldn't you like to know that whatever you were about to buy is on special with another retailer? Or that your favourite band just put tickets on sale for an extra gig in your home town? Google wants to be your personal shopper - but instead of paying through the nose for the service (as some very rich people do), you'll get it free. Bear in mind that the industry is still in its infancy. Imagine in a few years time that Google has tracked your browsing, work and purchasing habits in the short and long term, noticed that you've increasingly been spending long hours at work recently, that your emails increasingly contain the words 'completion' and 'deadline' and the same date in close proximity, that you've seen the doctor several times in the last few weeks, and haven't been going out as much as usual at weekends, that you've previously bought/looked at bikes/surfboards/culture guides/whatnots - and before you even quite realise you need a holiday, suggests a holiday you'd actually like to go on, at a time that's convenient, at a price you're likely to be willing to pay -- and a couple of books you'd actually like to read on holiday, and so-on.
@serguey123 said:
the information they collect is somewhat easy to steal and they are not responsable for it
Granted that you may not trust them to hold the data, but they are bound by law in major jurisdictions - EU, US - to protect it - with stiff penalties for breach. It's their business-critical data, so they have a strong incentive to protect it in any case.
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@intertravel said:
@serguey123 said:
Hmm, I don't watch any add, why would I?
Don't you ever buy anything? Wouldn't you like to know that whatever you were about to buy is on special with another retailer? Or that your favourite band just put tickets on sale for an extra gig in your home town? Google wants to be your personal shopper - but instead of paying through the nose for the service (as some very rich people do), you'll get it free. Bear in mind that the industry is still in its infancy. Imagine in a few years time that Google has tracked your browsing, work and purchasing habits in the short and long term, noticed that you've increasingly been spending long hours at work recently, that your emails increasingly contain the words 'completion' and 'deadline' and the same date in close proximity, that you've seen the doctor several times in the last few weeks, and haven't been going out as much as usual at weekends, that you've previously bought/looked at bikes/surfboards/culture guides/whatnots - and before you even quite realise you need a holiday, suggests a holiday you'd actually like to go on, at a time that's convenient, at a price you're likely to be willing to pay -- and a couple of books you'd actually like to read on holiday, and so-on.Err, there are tools and websites that tells you the lowest price of stuff and can even let you know when something drops to your target price. Anyways, look I'm a bad example, as I don't shop online, have no record of myself, owns very little stuff, not even a credit card or cellphone and rarely takes holidays as I don't have much of a personal life. However I see how it could be useful for other people, what I don't like is the inability to choose how this information collected is used if at all.
Different example, let us say that I have been browsing for articles about an incurable disease, wouldn't my HMO or whatever start charging me extra. A non issue for me because health care is free in my country
@intertravel said:
@serguey123 said:
the information they collect is somewhat easy to steal and they are not responsable for it
Granted that you may not trust them to hold the data, but they are bound by law in major jurisdictions - EU, US - to protect it - with stiff penalties for breach. It's their business-critical data, so they have a strong incentive to protect it in any case.Yeah, read their Privacy statement, is enlightening, the small print foremost, when they say they are not liable for it
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@blakeyrat said:
@intertravel said:
Okay. Let's assume for a moment that some hypothetical organization has a complete profile of me and insight into every transaction and interaction I carry out, and hypertargets ads through every medium they can get access to (and all mediums are available, because hypertargeted ads make the most money). That's the "ideal" endgame for this business plan anyway.Accurate profiling will benefit us, not harm us. If Facebook or Google can accurately target me with ads for things I actually want to know about, it'll be mutually beneficial. Not that I use Facebook anyway.
Ditto. I've never figured out the panic over this. It seems like much ado about nothing. And, as has been mentioned, most people don't care. (Whether they don't care because they aren't aware of it, or just don't care, I dunno.)
So hypothetical-Weng has a lot of diverse interests. Racing cars, shooting guns, macho shit like that. So they know what race series I participate in (You can Google my real name and find it) - it gives me ads for hotels near the next race in the series, car parts for the car I race, equipment suppliers, coupon codes for $10 off my next $100 purchase of premium at the gas station right outside the track, that sort of stuff. It plasters this on the side of buses that happen to be driving by, billboards I happen to pass, websites I'm viewing, TV channels I'm watching, etc. Okay, cool. That's kind of helpful. Sort of.
Now let's say I buy a shiny AK-47 at the gun show - so it's not immediately available to their system. A friend posts a picture of me with it to their facebook account. They can now deduce that I'll probably want to buy 7.62x39 - and based on how often my friend goes shooting and that he's in the picture with me, they figure I'll need a few hundred rounds. Now they can start advertising that to me, despite the fact that I never once made that purchase public knowledge. Kinda creepy, but whatever.
Now I start dating this girl. She posts about it on Facebook. This girl is rather kinky and isn't afraid to share it - she's into BDSM and she says as much on her profile. So the ad provider, in their infinite wisdom, decides I might need some supplies. So I go look at this video on CNN's website showing some serious damage from an earthquake in Asskrakistan. I call over a cow-orker and say "You've got to see this" - and restart the video. CNN are assholes and preroll a hypertargeted ad before you can see the content you requested. Suddenly, my cow-orker is watching a video ad for EdenFantasies. Since everybody knows all about hypertargeted ads now, it's quite clear that I'm some sort of sexual deviant whether or not I even share that girl's fetish. The potential for damage is HUGE.
Even if we assume that all sex-related ads are banished from the hypertargeting service (they won't be) any given person may want to keep any given thing a secret. What if you just bought an engagement ring? Do you really want to be surrounded by wedding planner advertisements before you even pop the question?
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@Weng said:
Now I start dating this girl. She posts about it on Facebook. This girl is rather kinky and isn't afraid to share it - she's into BDSM and she says as much on her profile. So the ad provider, in their infinite wisdom, decides I might need some supplies. So I go look at this video on CNN's website showing some serious damage from an earthquake in Asskrakistan. I call over a cow-orker and say "You've got to see this" - and restart the video. CNN are assholes and preroll a hypertargeted ad before you can see the content you requested. Suddenly, my cow-orker is watching a video ad for EdenFantasies. Since everybody knows all about hypertargeted ads now, it's quite clear that I'm some sort of sexual deviant whether or not I even share that girl's fetish. The potential for damage is HUGE.
Yeah. How about we worry about that scenario when it actually happens?
I hate "slippery slope" arguments, because you can come up with a ridiculously exaggerated "slippery slope" for *everything*.
@Weng said:
Even if we assume that all sex-related ads are banished from the hypertargeting service (they won't be)
Sex-related ads are already banned on all of the bigger networks now. Why would you assume this would change with more targeting? Oh I guess you're just knee-jerking out of ignorance... right.
@Weng said:
What if you just bought an engagement ring? Do you really want to be surrounded by wedding planner advertisements before you even pop the question?
How does that differ from your race series or AK-47 example?
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@Weng said:
Now I start dating this girl. She posts about it on Facebook. This girl is rather kinky and isn't afraid to share it - she's into BDSM and she says as much on her profile. So the ad provider, in their infinite wisdom, decides I might need some supplies. So I go look at this video on CNN's website showing some serious damage from an earthquake in Asskrakistan. I call over a cow-orker and say "You've got to see this" - and restart the video. CNN are assholes and preroll a hypertargeted ad before you can see the content you requested. Suddenly, my cow-orker is watching a video ad for EdenFantasies.
That doesn't really make sense. In such a hyper-targeted world, they know when you're at work, and have no incentive to embarrass you. They would also notice that your browsing habits don't include the same things as your girlfriend, so presumably would only advertise her preferences to you when you appeared to be searching for a gift for her.
Of course, the problem is that logically, if adverts are perfectly targeted - 'everybody knows all about hypertargeted ads now' - then damaging mistakes wouldn't happen. If they're not perfectly targeted, then the mistakes wouldn't be damaging because no-one would put much weight on them.
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@blakeyrat said:
@intertravel said:
And people are ok with this? Crap, the little faith I had in hummanity has evaporated.Accurate profiling will benefit us, not harm us. If Facebook or Google can accurately target me with ads for things I actually want to know about, it'll be mutually beneficial. Not that I use Facebook anyway.
Ditto. I've never figured out the panic over this. It seems like much ado about nothing. And, as has been mentioned, most people don't care. (Whether they don't care because they aren't aware of it, or just don't care, I dunno.)
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@toshir0 said:
@blakeyrat said:
@intertravel said:
And people are ok with this? Crap, the little faith I had in hummanity has evaporated.Accurate profiling will benefit us, not harm us. If Facebook or Google can accurately target me with ads for things I actually want to know about, it'll be mutually beneficial. Not that I use Facebook anyway.
Ditto. I've never figured out the panic over this. It seems like much ado about nothing. And, as has been mentioned, most people don't care. (Whether they don't care because they aren't aware of it, or just don't care, I dunno.)
Oh I'm not defending Facebook. They suck.
But I don't see how a company knowing what sites I visit on the Internet hurts me in any way.
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@blakeyrat said:
Yeah. How about we worry about that scenario when it actually happens?
If you'd like to wait, that's fine. However, I prefer to think ahead a bit. All the data to fully realize any one of those scenarios is alreadyin some database somewhere, someone just has to decide they really want all that money and negotiate their way into using it. I can't have been the only person who watched the Jeopardy IBM challenge and said "Medicine? That thing would be AWESOME for serving up ads"@blakeyrat said:
Sex-related ads are already banned on all of the bigger networks now. Why would you assume this would change with more targeting?
Why would it not change? If there's money in it, that decision will be reevaluated. Sex ads are currently banned because the targeting isn't good enough - porn would wind up being advertised next to news stories about pedophiles, or offending people who are offended by that sort of thing. If you can present those ads to people who are guaranteed NOT to be offended, I see no reason why not to. At any rate, it's not really about sex - that was just the first one I grabbe because it was easy. This all applies to anything one would prefer not to share publicly which can be inferred through the actions or words of others, or through one's papertrail.Frankly, I wouldn't mind really, really good targeted ads if they came in a handy daily digest (especially if they throw in discounts) - it would be really handy at times. I just don't trust the people in charge to go down that route instead of the all-pervasive bullshit that seems to be the favored model now.
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@Weng said:
@blakeyrat said:
Yeah. How about we worry about that scenario when it actually happens?
If you'd like to wait, that's fine. However, I prefer to think ahead a bit.If by "think ahead" you mean "pull uber-paranoid scenarios out of your ass", then I guess you're welcome to it. It sounds like the exact opposite of rational decision-making to me, though.
@Weng said:
I can't have been the only person who watched the Jeopardy IBM challenge and said "Medicine? That thing would be AWESOME for serving up ads"
I have no idea what this sentence means.
@Weng said:
@blakeyrat said:
Sex-related ads are already banned on all of the bigger networks now. Why would you assume this would change with more targeting?
Why would it not change?You're the one proposing it would. Actually, more accurately you said "they won't be" as if it were already a done-deal. Either way, the burden of proof is on you.
@Weng said:
Sex ads are currently banned because the targeting isn't good enough
Wrong.
@Weng said:
If you can present those ads to people who are guaranteed NOT to be offended, I see no reason why not to.
Disney and Wal-Mart spend a lot on advertising-- significantly more than any sex-based business does. (Yes, even on the Internet.)
@Weng said:
At any rate, it's not really about sex - that was just the first one I grabbe because it was easy.
Oh, well, do you have any more plausible scenarios then?
@Weng said:
I just don't trust the people in charge to go down that route instead of the all-pervasive bullshit that seems to be the favored model now.
Targeting is the #1 most important tool to make the "all-pervasive bullshit" go away. If you really cared about improving the state of advertising on the web, you'd support targeting.
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@blakeyrat said:
But I don't see how a company knowing what sites I visit on the Internet hurts me in any way.
If a company knows it, everyone potentially knows it. It could mean lots of bad things. For example, if you are a human rights defender in Lybia, or a muslim in Texas or a free-speaking woman in Iran or .... and so on.About advertising ?
I, for one, hope for all advertising to be forbidden in the name of human rights in a more or less distant future. Unless someone can find just one benefit for humanity in advertising. Which won't ever happen.
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@toshir0 said:
About advertising ?
I, for one, hope for all advertising to be forbidden in the name of human rights in a more or less distant future. Unless someone can find just one benefit for humanity in advertising. Which won't ever happen.
Are you completely insane?
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Abandoning the admittedly weaker (and paranoia-fueled) parts of my argument to concentrate on this interesting point.
@blakeyrat said:
Targeting is the #1 most important tool to make the "all-pervasive bullshit" go away. If you really cared about improving the state of advertising on the web, you'd support targeting.
The problem is that the pervasiveness of advertising is because EVERYBODY wants the financial benefits of distributing the ads - you can't get rid of pervasive advertising until you stop paying the people that own the website, bus stop, building with a billboard glued to the side, TV station, whatever. The advertiser would get the same daily conversion rate whether the consumer sees 20 ads per day or 2000.The ad network has incentive to pare down the size of the distribution network because it costs them money to operate it and potentially alienates consumers through overexposure. However, that leaves everyone else who "depends" on ad revenue high and dry. Another ad network would emerge to fill that demand. As a result, we STILL have all-pervasive advertising. Their targeting is likely to be worse (because they have to operate on slimmer margins) and their advertisers worse (because they're stupid enough to think that quantity=quality, or they can't afford the 'good' ad network)
The only way to remove the need for that second network is to change the business model of thousands if not millions of other organizations ranging from websites like TDWTF to government agencies in charge of mass transit.
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Okay, here's the thing.
I want to be notified of stuff that maybe I like. I would like it if something like that would be brought to my attention.
-> advertising
But it's not an optimal solution, because advertising is everywhere even when I'm not asking for it.
An example of things that I really like are the product suggestions that most online shops have now.
At the same time, I ordered a book when it was advertised here on TDWTF's front page.
So yeah, I don't really have a solution, but I do have a problem.
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@Weng said:
Abandoning the admittedly weaker (and paranoia-fueled) parts of my argument to concentrate on this interesting point.
I read that as, "Blakeyrat, your genius has shown me the error of my bullshit-spewing ways! God bless you for saving me from my dark pit of ignorance and making-stuff-up-itude! Now I will write a check to you for all of my cash money!"
@Weng said:
The problem is that the pervasiveness of advertising is because EVERYBODY wants the financial benefits of distributing the ads - you can't get rid of pervasive advertising until you stop paying the people that own the website, bus stop, building with a billboard glued to the side, TV station, whatever.
I can't speak for any advertising except Internet. Personally, I think all non-tracked ads (buses, magazines, newspapers, TV) are complete bullshit-- since there's no way to truly measure performance of the creatives. (This is changing in TV, of course, as it becomes IP-based.)
@Weng said:
The ad network has incentive to pare down the size of the distribution network because it costs them money to operate it and potentially alienates consumers through overexposure. However, that leaves everyone else who "depends" on ad revenue high and dry.
Depending on how alienating the ads were, it might leave the "everybody else" in better shape. I mean, none of those old pop-up based ad networks are still around on legitimate sites-- they all either went out of business, or moved to porn ads.
New ad networks spring up all the time, usually with a narrow industry-focus. If they're serving their own ads, then yeah, their targeting might be weak. If they're using one of the big ad exchanges, Atlas or DoubleClick, then their targeting is just as good as anybody else using Atlas or DoubleClick. (Of course, they might not be able to afford the staff/expertise to effectively make use of it.) So don't assume "small network" means "less targeting."
@Weng said:
and their advertisers worse (because they're stupid enough to think that quantity=quality, or they can't afford the 'good' ad network)
This is an actual problem.
@Weng said:
The only way to remove the need for that second network is to change the business model of thousands if not millions of other organizations ranging from websites like TDWTF to government agencies in charge of mass transit.
How do you figure?
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@blakeyrat said:
Are you completely insane?
Doubting of the contradictor's sanity is a well known way to avoid answering. Disagree as much as you want, but, hey, leave my sanity out of this.
Difficult to believe I'm the first ad-hater you have met. But I guess I'm not the last.
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@toshir0 said:
@blakeyrat said:
Are you completely insane?
Doubting of the contradictor's sanity is a well known way to avoid answering. Disagree as much as you want, but, hey, leave my sanity out of this.
Difficult to believe I'm the first ad-hater you have met. But I guess I'm not the last.
You're welcome to be an ad-hater. Just as you're welcome to believe in a flat earth.
The "are you crazy" was more a, "do you actually need somebody to explain how advertising benefits industry? Seriously?"
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@intertravel said:
Don't you ever buy anything? Wouldn't you like to know that whatever you were about to buy is on special with another retailer? Or that your favourite band just put tickets on sale for an extra gig in your home town? Google wants to be your personal shopper
This has been a claim that people have been making since the earliest days of the worldwide web -- the ability to get all sorts of information (shopping, news, etc) specifically customized just for you. The problem with targetted advertsing is that it's only based on your past actions, which is the only thing advertisers can do since they can't read your mnd. But 99.9% of the world consists of stuff I don't know anything about. In a world where everything is "targetted" you are never exposed to anything new. Most of my favorite books and CDs were found by browsing in a store (or now mostly online) and looking at something and saying "hmmm .... I've never heard of this but it looks interesting". I've come across news articles that were really interesting even though they concern a subject that I don't normally think much about. OK so I missed out on those tickets for that band I like. But I discovered a great new band, or book or website that I've never heard of.
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@blakeyrat said:
do you actually need somebody to explain how advertising benefits industry? Seriously?
@toshir0 said:
Unless someone can find just one benefit for humanity in advertising
Oh I see... just a reading issue on your part. Nothing to worry about, so.
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@El_Heffe said:
But 99.9% of the world consists of stuff I don't know anything about. In a world where everything is "targetted" you are never exposed to anything new. Most of my favorite books and CDs were found by browsing in a store (or now mostly online) and looking at something and saying "hmmm .... I've never heard of this but it looks interesting".
Hey, I didn't say we were good at targeting, yet. In fact, I said the precise opposite. I've been of the opinion for a while now that various dimensions are being overlooked. The uniqueness of your choices may be more important than the slight congruence with others' choices. That you have a wide range of interests, and would rather see something new than more of the same, is in itself a characteristic that could be used in targeting/profiling. If I look at your music choices and observe that your library has little in common with other libraries, that doesn't help much - but if I also observe that the bands you like are (each) liked by just 1% of the population, I can infer an interest in non-mainstream music, and look at others with a similar profile to suggest bands you might like.
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@Weng said:
The problem is that the pervasiveness of advertising is because EVERYBODY wants the financial benefits of distributing the ads
I think you have to look deeper into what advertising actually is. Let's separate advertising that is basically just about branding and name recognition - washing powder ads, for example - from advertising where the object is to inform - perhaps a gig from an already well-known band. Ads on billboards will still be of the first type, because they're untargeted, but the more precisely an ad can be targeted, the less need there is to persuade people to buy. At the moment, web ads are treated much like billboards - they're expected to be seen by many people, of whom only a few will be in any way interested in what is being advertised. The further we get from that model, the less annoying those adverts will be. Concomitantly, the effectiveness, and hence value, will increase, so hopefully we would see fewer adverts of higher quality. Of course, the profiling would also show how people respond to ads, so there would be no incentive to show persuasive branding ads to those who don't respond to them.
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@toshir0 said:
I, for one, hope for all advertising to be forbidden in the name of human rights in a more or less distant future. Unless someone can find just one benefit for humanity in advertising.
Er, it promotes economic growth and reduces market inefficiencies. Those are two benefits right there. Sharing of high quality information - not that much advertising is such - is surely a good thing as well.
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@toshir0 said:
@blakeyrat said:
do you actually need somebody to explain how advertising benefits industry? Seriously?
@toshir0 said:
Unless someone can find just one benefit for humanity in advertising
Oh I see... just a reading issue on your part. Nothing to worry about, so.Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were an anarcho-communist, or whatever the fuck your broken-ass political philosophy is. Carry on.
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Facebook found a guy I'd been looking to get back in touch with for years. I had given up ever finding him again and then bam, he was on my "suggested friends" list one day.
Targeted advertising pros: I'm planning a wedding. I would very much like to see ads targeted at people in my region of my state involving catering, locations, bakeries, dress shops, and whatnot - it saves me time having to hunt them down on google. Facebook has been serving me a good deal of them while I go about my daily business, and Google is right behind.
Cons: Before I was engaged, I kept getting ads for rings like every goddamn day which was irritating as shit. They should be pushing that shit on my boyfriend so he'd get off his ass and propose. Now that he has, I'm getting all kinds of "new mom" and "baby" type ads. WTF? So Facebook assumes the only reason I'm getting married is because I'm knocked up?! Algorithm needs serious work.
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@yamikuronue said:
So Facebook assumes the only reason I'm getting married is because I'm knocked up?! Algorithm needs serious work.
Nono, you're putting the horse before the cart.
Culture needs to change first, then we'll talk algorithms.
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@intertravel said:
@toshir0 said:
And economic growth leads to happiness, right ? hmm, right ? OK then, keep playing and sleeping, rich boy.I, for one, hope for all advertising to be forbidden in the name of human rights in a more or less distant future. Unless someone can find just one benefit for humanity in advertising.
Er, it promotes economic growth and reduces market inefficiencies
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@toshir0 said:
And economic growth leads to happiness, right ?
Well, we know that econimic shrinkage and a static economy do not lead to happiness, so...
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@dhromed said:
...so ? so nothing.@toshir0 said:
And economic growth leads to happiness, right ?
Well, we know that econimic shrinkage and a static economy do not lead to happiness, so...
I don't say that economic growth automatically leads to unhappiness, nor that economic degrowth in itself leads to happiness.
But the growth-employment-consumption model is now deprecated. Let's try out something else.
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@toshir0 said:
@intertravel said:
@toshir0 said:
And economic growth leads to happiness, right ? hmm, right ? OK then, keep playing and sleeping, rich boy.I, for one, hope for all advertising to be forbidden in the name of human rights in a more or less distant future. Unless someone can find just one benefit for humanity in advertising.
Er, it promotes economic growth and reduces market inefficiencies
Happiness? When did that come into things. Economic growth makes societies wealthier. Compare the poorest citizens in the UK or US to the poorest in Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, India, and so-on. If you want to put it in terms of current events, you believe there's no point in rebuilding Japan after the recent earthquake, right? That people's lives would be better if they starve to death in the ruins, die of epidemic diseases, and so-on? Basically, you're saying that you can't see any difference between the effects of the massive quake in Haiti, and the even bigger one in Japan.
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@toshir0 said:
But the growth-employment-consumption model is now deprecated. Let's try out something else.
Hey, I know! Let's try out Communis-- oh wait.
Let's hear your genius plan for human society.
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@blakeyrat said:
Let's hear your genius plan for human society.
Difficult to sum up here all possible good answers to your demand. But here's some base hints to help you figure out :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth
Try to read also Thoreau, Illich or Georgescu-Roegen if you read books sometimes.
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@toshir0 said:
Try reading Maynard Keynes. He actually had a rational, coherent set of thoughts about this stuff. Degrowth is either meaningless, religious, or evil, depending on how you look at it - personally, I find any 'solution' to current 'problems' that involves the death through starvation and disease of 99.999% of the population of this planet to be simply evil, although it's pretty obvious that most proponents are merely stupid, not malicious. (Of course a world with a small, happy population would be nice, but you can't get there from where we are now without basically wiping out humanity wholesale.) As the Wiki article says, Georgescu-Roegen's theories were based on a misunderstanding of thermodynamics - the Earth is not a closed system, it's powered by the sun. Keynes, on the other hand, wrote about how economic growth could allow movement away from focussing on economic activity - he expected that economic growth would lead to a reduction in working hours rather than a growth in living standards. He might still be right, we're just working on a longer timescale than he envisaged.@blakeyrat said:
Let's hear your genius plan for human society.
Difficult to sum up here all possible good answers to your demand. But here's some base hints to help you figure out :Try to read also Thoreau, Illich or Georgescu-Roegen if you read books sometimes.
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@toshir0 said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth
@Wiki said:
The reduced availability of energy sources (see peak oil)
Bunk.
@Wiki said:
The declining quality of the environment (see global warming, pollution)
Bunk.
@Wiki said:
The decline in the health of flora and fauna, and humans themselves
So retarded I can't even imagine who could possibly think that.
@Wiki said:
The ever-expanding use of resources by first-world countries to satisfy lifestyles that consume more food and energy, and produce greater waste, at the expense of the third world (see neocolonialism)
Potentially not bunk.
Maybe you should read Malthus, toshir0. Because it sounds like you're just echoing his wrong-ass ideas all over again.
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@blakeyrat said:
Maybe you should read Malthus, toshir0. Because it sounds like you're just echoing his wrong-ass ideas all over again.
From my political point of view, Malthus has always clearly been an enemy. That elitist and misantropist bastard is no humanist, just a privilegied being who did not want to share goods with too much people. Who talked about demographic degrowth ? Not me.@blakeyrat said:
Bunk.
I don't understand "bunk". Sorry but if you can explain that slang term / meme...
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@toshir0 said:
I don't understand "bunk". Sorry but if you can explain that slang term / meme...
Short for "bunkum". A somewhat nicer way to say "bullshit."
Degrowth - Wikipedia