Philosophy discussion: online ads and the info that drives them

[zabu of nΩd]

This is a topic I've been increasingly interested in lately, mainly because it raises a number of questions in my mind that I don't have easy answers to.

Advertising has gotten really sophisticated on the internet in recent years, as well as the ways that the owners of certain popular websites (Google, Facebook, etc.) work with advertisers to make their ads more valuable to them.

In Google's case, they're actually parsing the content of all our emails to collect info about us, and then charging advertisers for the services they provide based on this data. Google makes fucking bank off of ads. I don't really know that much about how they deliver ads and how widespread their ad services are across the internet, but apparently they're doing a knockout job. And on the bigger scale, of course, they keep developing all these new technologies that give them even greater access to people's personal info -- Chrome, Android, Google Voice, Google Finance, etc.

Long story short: Google probably holds more valuable personal info than any other single organization on earth, and they're only getting better at collecting it. I hear they're even working on their own brand of hard drive ("GDrive" or something) that would store all its contents on Google's servers. Just imagine if PCs started coming standard with that shit installed.

So the more general/philosophical questions that come to my mind from all this are:

1) Is 'spying' on personal info by a company justifiable if they are able to turn that info into profits that drive really useful technological innovations?

2) Given that the trend toward "cloud computing" (i.e. big companies making products that get consumers to put their personal info online) was probably inevitable, are we better off for having a company like Google acting as the "benevolent dictators of personal data", or would it be better to have a regulatory crackdown on such companies?

3) Can these companies actually surpass national governments in power and political influence? Can they become "above the law"? (IIRC Google has a number of data centers in really random parts of the world where taxes and regulations are much fewer than in the U.S.)

4) Are we better off "siding" with a company like Google that may stand a chance of shifting the balance of world power away from corrupt government officials and agencies (or even just the more "evil" megacorporations out there)?

5) Is there any remotely feasible way to "make the internet work" without ads paying the bills?

Discuss!

 

[Master_Yoda77]

tl;dr

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Yeah i'm pretty much waiting for someone with intelligent opinions like Cythraul, Dodens, Zeph or Pessimism to get this thread going

 

[Mountains_of_Mars]

Interesting topic. Im just going to give some really short opinions because im too busy playing Mario Baseball to type out anything coherent

1. Eh, yeah. Im totally fine with letting Google read my emails and my browsing history. If I really want "privacy" an email is about the last thing Im going to use. I mean in the sense that if this is an issue about privacy, then I think the problem is using the wrong medium for the wrong messages.

2) uhhhh ill have to think about that one....

3) I think so. If you think about it, the area that Google greatly surpasses the government is I guess you would say "social influence" like how people feel about said entity. I mean, the government's approval rating probably fucking blows, whereas if you asked people what they thought about Google, you would find that there would be very little negative opinions.

4) Yeah, sure.

5) In theory, thats the way it should be, ads not "paying the bills". I just dont think it would work without it though. I mean, ads are how sites like this stay open.

Edit: tl;dr smoke weed, worship Google

 

[mutantllama]

http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/

All bow down to the mighty google!

 

[skeptik]

Yeah i'm pretty much waiting for someone with intelligent opinions like Cythraul, Dodens, Zeph or Pessimism to get this thread going

Is it wrong that I lolled after I saw that Mountains was the first one to post after this?

Anyway, I would like you to expand a bit on your whole "google superseding governments" theory before I comment on your questions if you don't mind.

 

[Dak]

While I don't trust Google at all, that also doesn't mean I don't use their services. Using "ORM" I have decided currently that the benefit I am recieving outways the useless data they are collecting about me. I am relativily immune to advertising/consumerism at this point, and since I work for the government it's not like I have anything to hide.


The difference between this and Government mandating it is it is optional. I could ditch my droid, use some other email service, etc. I do use another search engine when I can (startpage.com).

At the rate things are going at some point I will probably leave the US/go offgrid. At this point I don't have the means, and it would be counter productive. Things have a ways more to go before they devolve to that point.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Is it wrong that I lolled after I saw that Mountains was the first one to post after this?

Anyway, I would like you to expand a bit on your whole "google superseding governments" theory before I comment on your questions if you don't mind.

Unfortunately i don't have time for a thorough and adequately-researched response today, but generally speaking i was referring to this trend of Google to relocate parts of its business overseas to avoid taxation (and possibly regulation).

Here's an article about Google's alleged plans for "data barges" in international waters (i haven't read this one but i can't find the related one i read a while ago): http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4753389.ece

EDIT: One thing i should add is that Google's influence grows according to how dependent they are able to make people on their products. If governments decide to start cracking down on them, they may withdraw their business like they did in China. China may not have been too hurt by Google's withdrawal back when it happened since it was mainly Google's web apps they lost access to, but now that the Android OS is all over the smartphone market, a Google withdrawal could be a decent blow to a nation's economy. I'm just talking out my ass for the most part here because i don't know all the technical/legal details of Google's control over their products, but presumably you see what i'm getting at.

Google has shown itself on numerous occasions to be a company with strong values on certain ethical issues, as well as a general disregard for regulations that apply to them. If friction increases between them and "The Man", i could imagine them doing some crazy poetic justice shit in retaliation against a government imposition upon their way of doing business.

 

[Mountains_of_Mars]

Is it wrong that I lolled after I saw that Mountains was the first one to post after this?

lol

 

[Blind Guardian]

4) Are we better off "siding" with a company like Google that may stand a chance of shifting the balance of world power away from corrupt government officials and agencies (or even just the more "evil" megacorporations out there)?

If a company like Google turns into some type of perennial Alternative to these corrupt institutions I think it's safe to say that, sooner or later, it would itself join their ranks (because power always corrupts, no?).

I think you need a myriad of politically and economically independent institutions like Google on the scene, for the internet to truly work as a healthy counterweight to the power of governments and big corporations. Perhaps it's even slightly disturbing that Google is now becoming so powerful, gathering information about us like a rolling snowball gathers more snow. However, as you mentioned, other sites like Facebook and Youtube also wield a big world wide influence on people's everyday lives right now, and perhaps that provides a good balance.

 

[Matt]

Data centres consumed 1 per cent of the world’s electricity in 2005. By 2020 the carbon footprint of the computers that run the internet will be larger than that of air travel, a recent study by McKinsey, a consultancy firm, and the Uptime Institute, a think tank, predicted.

I might comment on the original topic more later, but this is alarming. Never would've thought that. Also, the idea of creating a data center navy is really interesting too

 

[mutantllama]

I think a good comparison with Google would be Valve. Valve has been a pretty good video game company with good ethics, and a lot of people put their trust into Valve with Steam hoping that they won't fuck their customers over by doing something with their account and that customer losing tons of games, thus possibly wasting tons of money. Same with Google. I haven't really seen them do anything too fishy, I enjoy using their search engine, and although I haven't used any of their other features, I've heard good things about them. Plus it seems like they have their ethics(as Grant mentioned), so for now I have no problem with them having control, just as long as they don't fuck everyone over, or get hacked by some crazy Russian mafia dudes and end up giving away tons of info about people.

 

[Pessimism]

Google's done some really fucking evil things, specifically in regards to the whole China debacle and their PR spinning to both eastern and western markets.

 

[mutantllama]

Alright then, maybe that's just my ignorance.

 

[Cronopio]

Please. This thread so soon after Deron's pornatorium?

 

[Zephyrus]

Yeah i'm pretty much waiting for someone with intelligent opinions like Cythraul, Dodens, Zeph or Pessimism to get this thread going

Oh gods, such standards to live up to!

1) Is 'spying' on personal info by a company justifiable if they are able to turn that info into profits that drive really useful technological innovations?

In my view it is justified. I see nothing against it. The information you put on the internet, whether static 'about me' info or the content that you post as FB statuses or forum posts, is completely voluntary. If anyone is able to view that information, then it is their right to use that information toward any constitutional end, and that includes collecting demographics for advertising.

2) Given that the trend toward "cloud computing" (i.e. big companies making products that get consumers to put their personal info online) was probably inevitable, are we better off for having a company like Google acting as the "benevolent dictators of personal data", or would it be better to have a regulatory crackdown on such companies?

See above statement. The internet is a phenomenon that happened seconds ago in the grand scheme of history, and the degree to which people expose themselves to it is a weakness rather than a victimization.

3) Can these companies actually surpass national governments in power and political influence? Can they become "above the law"? (IIRC Google has a number of data centers in really random parts of the world where taxes and regulations are much fewer than in the U.S.)

IIRC there's no law that forbids the manipulation of information that citizens willfully input to the public domain.

4) Are we better off "siding" with a company like Google that may stand a chance of shifting the balance of world power away from corrupt government officials and agencies (or even just the more "evil" megacorporations out there)?

You are making unnecessary value judgments.

5) Is there any remotely feasible way to "make the internet work" without ads paying the bills?

Ads are harmless to those with the intelligence to ignore them. Entering information digitally is a willful human act and I am very comfortable drawing the line there, to say that individuals are responsible for the data they input and we shouldn't need laws to curb such behavior.

Laws are in place to restrict human behavior in the real world. It reflects very sadly on the human race if such laws should equally apply to the fantasy world we have created via the internet.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Chilling at an airport atm so i have time to shoot the shit on this for a while longer.

If a company like Google turns into some type of perennial Alternative to these corrupt institutions I think it's safe to say that, sooner or later, it would itself join their ranks (because power always corrupts, no?).

Well the current leaders of google strike me as generally benevolent, but someone has to replace them eventually of course. It's just interesting to think of all the ways that their epic stockpile of data could get into the wrong hands eventually.

I think you need a myriad of politically and economically independent institutions like Google on the scene, for the internet to truly work as a healthy counterweight to the power of governments and big corporations. Perhaps it's even slightly disturbing that Google is now becoming so powerful, gathering information about us like a rolling snowball gathers more snow. However, as you mentioned, other sites like Facebook and Youtube also wield a big world wide influence on people's everyday lives right now, and perhaps that provides a good balance.

Well there's risk involved with just about any centralization of power, but there's also a question of whether the world needs some sort of 'heroic' entity on the world stage to compete with the less benevolent world powers, as opposed to a "myriad of institutions" that may not wield as much collective power. I just don't see how such a collective as you hint at could come about in the world. I'm not sure how much even a company like Google can do ultimately.

Google's done some really fucking evil things, specifically in regards to the whole China debacle and their PR spinning to both eastern and western markets.

Elaborate plz

 

[Pessimism]

When the whole "withdrawal" from China occurred, Google played the whole "we're not evil" card, which of course gave the company some serious bonus points for people who think freedom of speech and press and very important. Hilariously enough though, Google returned services to China like a day later with heavy heavy censorship, all while still reaping in the ethics cred where they could in the Americas. NPR had some massive coverage on the subject during the event. Google's whole flip flopping on net neutrality is also pretty unsettling.

edit: I should mention that Google has done some things that also straight up paradoxes. What also happened during the Chine thing was Google fucking with filters (google.cn vs. google.hk), which was a means to place a wedge in the whole debate between censorship. Of course, while they were uncensoring search results with google.hk, they still (as far as I know) were giving support to censorship via helping build/efficiently implement the great firewall of China.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

IIRC there's no law that forbids the manipulation of information that citizens willfully input to the public domain.

This doesn't really address what i brought up with my question. It's well within the realm of possibility that the U.S. government could one day invent some excuse for subpoenaing some(/most?/all?) of Google's data for "national security reasons", at which point Google's legal obligations (and how well they eventually manage to escape them) could be of great interest to many.

The thing about online communication is that, while it is essentially a voluntary activity, it's still an important part of all of our lives, and it would be much preferable to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in one's personal correspondences (i.e. email) rather than to live in constant paranoia of whose hands those correspondences could fall into.


You are making unnecessary value judgments.

Laws are in place to restrict human behavior in the real world. It reflects very sadly on the human race if such laws should equally apply to the fantasy world we have created via the internet.

I don't really know what you're saying here, but that's a pretty half-baked explanation of the purpose of laws. I wouldn't say laws have any single purpose, but one thing they can do is make the world we live in a safer and fairer place. A law that requires businesses to respect the ownership of information that its consumers send to it, for example, is something that would likely be in the best interest of nearly all of us.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

When the whole "withdrawal" from China occurred, Google played the whole "we're not evil" card, which of course gave the company some serious bonus points for people who think freedom of speech and press and very important. Hilariously enough though, Google returned services to China like a day later with heavy heavy censorship, all while still reaping in the ethics cred where they could in the Americas. NPR had some massive coverage on the subject during the event. Google's whole flip flopping on net neutrality is also pretty unsettling.

Huh, that is pretty shitty. I'll have to read up on that.