Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
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I’m not defending Amazon, in fact the opposite:
@Leo and guests were talking about the tornadoes and the Amazon warehouse being hit and several people killed. They seemed to imply that if employees had had their phones, this might have been avoided.
On the one hand, how many industrial accidents are avoided, because employees can’t daddle on their phones whilst working? We also have a policy about not having phones on the shop floor, it is basic health & safety.
On the other hand, the employees shouldn’t need their phones to warn them about a tornado. That is the job of management, surely somebody somewhere in management had access to a phone, the internet, radio etc. that they received the warning? Certainly in Germany, it is the company’s responsibility to ensure the safety of their workers. If they had been warned of a possible tornado, the management would be culpable, if they had not ordered their staff to evacuate the building / to go to the storm cellar etc.
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Alex mentioned Amazon’s US-East 1. US-East 1 is located in Northern Virginia. This is not just one data center, but at least 20 separate data centers. At least 10 of these were built in the last 2-3 years. Another 10 are currently being built.
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Carolina mentioned that after moving she received mail marketed toward her at her new location. That’s all because she (most likely) had the USPS forward her mail. We recently put in a mail forwarding request for a deceased relative, sending his mail to our house. We’ve received mail addressed to him with our address for local businesses trying to get his business. I assume the USPS is selling his information without his/our permission (maybe it was noted on the forwarding request, I don’t know since I didn’t personally fill it out).
While I know that there really isn’t any way to avoid tracking, I do use Firefox with the privacy setting on Strict, Ublock Origin, DuckDuckGo for searches, and I’m on Android so I’ve also been using DuckDuckGo’s app tracking protection (my mind is blown by how many times DuckDuckGo has blocked the Outlook app from sending data to Facebook, and I don’t use Facebook).
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Since the panel was not too successful to push back on @Leo 's devil’s advocate on that “it’s childish to think that on the internet everything is for free and even your privacy remains protected and what would be wrong about loss of privacy and targeted advertising” (kind of embracing his inner Jeff Jarvis), I wanted to share some perspectives that might help push back:
What has changed in terms of advertising?
Advertising originated as an announcement that you, as a supplier, offer a product. Sure, it was intended to advertise your goods, but it was never intended to follow your customers around, spy on them only to try and jump out of the bushes when the advertising thought the time was ripe and the consumer was at their most inclined. Advertising used to be about the supplier, with time it has turned to be about the consumer - but even more than that: it used to consider its goal to be an announcement, with time this has turned into more and more of a successful advertising being a coercion. This is because advertising used to be communication, today it’s selling.
What has changed in terms of value generation?
In ancient times, we bartered. We knew a bushel of wheat is worth about 10 eggs. Then, we started using money for trade. Many of us are less savvy with using money in trade, ramping up personal debt. Now, on the internet, we are back to bartering, but with data on our consumption behaviour. Consumers have certainly not gotten any smarter, but all of a sudden, everything seems free. Excellent for a society that is based around consumption and getting more for less. Just that the cost is now hidden to consumers and the value is (more or less) palpable to suppliers. Which means that the internet is more or less offering consumption junkies their shots at no immediately perceptible cost. So let’s consume some more, so let’s ramp up the debt some more (just that it’s now conveniently hidden to become as transparent as glass), so let’s think a little less about how value is being generated from me some more.
What has changed in terms of privacy?
Where you used to visit a store, pick an item, go to the cashier, pay and leave, the web more closely resembles a different idea: the shop has no cashier, much of what you can get is free, but you have to enter the store naked and there will be around 423 people (number of the trackers I found while checking the cookies dialogue of my random local newspaper site - yes, there is actual information in there!) following each single step you take, look into where you live, where you came from, what you did that day, where you are going that day, and try to connect all of those information points. So you have your entourage of 423 people following you, looking at you closely, suggesting Viagra, pictures of women in swimsuits, slimming products, insurances, a crappy new plastic product, then you pick your unfinished software service that works half of the time, for free, and you leave the shop. That’s the brave new world. Sure, my google spreadsheet works and it was free, but… was it truly worth undressing and inviting those 423 people into my home? Not sure.
My conclusions
a) Advertising is and should remain to be an announcement by a supplier. It should not follow me around, spy on me, and find what it thinks will be the most promising time to jump out of the bushes. That’s snoopvertising. Most of the time, it’s unsuccessful anyhow since the current way of snoopvertising is just that lame that even though I am walking around naked all the time and have those 423 people following me, they still cannot make up their mind that I am not a middle aged woman from the Netherlands (an ad followed me around in LinkedIn, for crying out loud, for half a year).
b) What on earth has given us the impression from our experience of people consuming with money that the best possible way of improving consumption behaviour is to make the cost seemingly invisible? This seems like trying to put out a fire with a fine mist of gasoline.
c) If 423 cookies / trackers don’t matter much to you, just imagine 423 strangely grey, robotic, and monotonous people following your around, observing you closely, muttering among themselves, taking notes but never sharing them, hiding everywhere around you. And you’re naked (not really anything to protect yourself from it). And they tend to come up with Viagra, cheap stuff, and women in bikinis if you are a guy. So most of the time, they are not only obnoxious but also not that smart in terms of their conclusions. But they can be powerful, when making suppliers decide what to offer you - obnoxious, stupid, and powerful. If that’s fine - excellent. Not for everyone, though. Reads like the stuff of nightmares to me.
Bonus level
If ANYONE promises you the cure for cancer, end of hunger, world peace, or anything else wondrously connected to their business model: run. It’s a whole load of BS intended to make you buy into a profitable scheme. Just combine the two insights often discussed on TWiT: “fiduciary responsibility to shareholders” and “a story to good to be true told to you, the consumer”. Sadly, these two hardly ever meet in the same minute of discussion. 
Bottom line
Sure, it’s childish to think things are free. Very much so. Reflect on that when signing up to the next free service. The value generated on the other side must be enormous. And you’re naked with your 423 robot buddies around you taking notes. This is a Netflix series waiting to happen. Needs many extras, though.
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I wholeheartedly agree. And, interestingly, the NOZ App (local paper, Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung) says there is no Internet connection if the Google tracker is blocked!
Also, the advertisers in the past worked out where best to place their adverts by looking at the paper and its content. Big watch ads next to the financial section, funeral services opposite the obits etc. The Internet advertisers could probably make about as accurate a job by targeting the content as they do by targeting the users.
Amazon only offers me what I’ve just bought anyway, so its “targeted” advertising is patently snake oil.
Likewise, Google/YouTube, they can’t seem to work out whether I am a new parent (I keep getting adverts to vaccinate my baby against meningococcal), I’m in need of a new sports car or I’m a retiree with arteritis and I need Voltaren or a vaccination against shingles.
I am not a new parent, I don’t have a baby.
I am not looking for a new car.
I am not retired and I don’t need a vaccination against shingles, and Voltaren Gel doesn’t do anything at all against pain or inflammation, in my experience.
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I’ve said this before, but I’ll repeat myself. I don’t use an ad blocker because I hate ads. I use an ad blocker because I hate annoying ads.
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I don’t use an ad blocker… But I do block some 2.5 million tracking and known malware sites.
I’m perfectly happy to see adverts, as long as they aren’t tracking me in the process.
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Hey @Leo - I live in Springfield, IL (the capitol) and happen to work in state government. I can’t find anything on this bill that you said was recently introduced to ban Grand Theft Auto.
I did find some articles from back in Feb 2021 about it, but nothing has been introduced recently that I can see. if someone could post a link to the article where this was mentioned, that would be great. It would be a stupid bill to push when we’re dealing with the tragedy down in Edwardsville with the Amazon warehouse.
If you visit the show page, there are a list of links on the bottom. Here’s the relevant link from that page:
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Thanks @PHolder - but when I go to that link, it says Page Not Found. At least - that’s why I get.
EDIT: Well, I’ve tried it again and now the article is coming up. When originally tried the link (before I posted here) - it didn’t work for me, so I was wondering if @Leo had seen it elsewhere - hence my post. But yeah - the date stamp on the article is definitely from Feb 2021.
It is shown for me.
The article is dated February 2021, so somebody didn’t look closely enough when they flagged it up for this weeks show.
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That’s what I was thinking too. I did both a Bing and Google search and the most recent reference I found was from back in Feb 2021.
Illinois has done some pretty stupid things, but I didn’t think we had done this particular stupid thing this recently.
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When @Leo asks “where is the harm”, or asks someone to explain why ads or targeting feels creepy, I have to ask why does anyone need to justify their unease about tracking? Why is it not okay to just feel uncomfortable about it, and to prefer companies not mine you for their profit?
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This is the story we were working from. It says he’s “planning” to introduce the bill. I suspect it’s all just a publicity grab.
But do let me know if Rep. Evans does introduce it. It will be an occasion for further mocking.
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But why dig up a 10 month old story? Surely, if they were going to introduce it, they would have done so by now? Or do the wheels really turn that slowly in the American justice system?