Comment by emacsen
2 months ago
This is IMHO the right angle.
Advertising is virtually impossible to stop, but more than that, is not inherently evil. Most countries include laws on how you can advertise. For example, you can't lie and make a claim that your product can't live up to, you can't use certain words or phrases, and you have to have disclaimers in some situations.
In the mid-90s when Yahoo was a young company, they had a simple advertising model. The ad would be placed next to the section of the site relevant to the category. If you were searching for watches, a watch ad would be next to it. The advertiser would know how many times the ad was served and how many times it was clicked on.
They didn't have deep demographic data like they do today.
The surveillance capitalism model is the predatory model. Advertisement is only one part of that industry.
I do wonder if there is any legitimate societal value this "surveillance capitalism" or is it all just pure net-loss for the society? I get that corporations make money from it and sell data to whatever entities, but is there truly nothing of positive value in it?
There are arguments one can make for benefits of surveillance capitalism, but you used the exact right word, "net". We can't say "Is the a benefit or not?" but "Is there a net positive", and that's a different question from is there any positive.
With that, let me outline where I think proponents would argue there is a benefit
- Consumers get "relevant ads".
If an ad company knows you're in the market for a new grill, it's better for them to show you advertisements for grills than for soap. The argument made here is that the consumer wastes less time, has less of an issue with ads (since they're relevant) and is better informed (arguing that ads are a form of information).
- Advertisers waste less money
The argument here goes that an advertiser who puts out an ad on TV or a magazine only has some vague notion of who the audience is. If they know who they want to target to buy their product, they don't to spend money advertising to people who aren't going to buy their product.
- It lets smaller advertisers come in for a niche audience
Let's imagine that your product or service is very niche. You're likely to have less resources to spend on advertising, and you need to make your ad spending count. With surveillance capitalism and targeted ads, you can reach your target market.
I don't personally view these benefits as outweighing the net negative of the incredible amount of information collected on people and the way this information is used not only to get people to spend more (since that's what advertisement is) but also for psychological and even political manipulation as we saw in the last US election where different people would be shown customized ads to stir up their fears and doubt.
Make a sign up opt-in database where you put your demographic information and a unique disposable identifier per potential customer.
Allow browser plugins that collect allowed data and send it to this database for advertisers to use for targeting. Let local code determine what I send, not an external entity.
Give the web an advertising standard that only shows approved data when you choose to link your unique ID with your current ID. Make this link severable.
Hell, you’d have people signing up for the advertising and targeting if we knew it wasn’t going to be abused and effectively the only digital advertising legally permitted. The problem with the current system is consent.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think you make a great exploration of the concept and manage to show what gains there could be, and how it is not worth it for the society as a whole.