We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

Re:We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ad... by jchw on Sunday December 10, 2017 @09:29AM (#15891502)

I don't think AI signed our death warrant, it just made for better plausible deniability. I think being able to measure effectiveness fairly concretely even on the micro level is what did it.

What if you couldn't run JavaScript code on a webpage, track every movement and send it to a server? What if you couldn't even tell if someone viewed your webpage? Would AI seem so scary then?

We're giving away too much for too little in return. Better ad tracking isn't worth losing almost all of our privacy on the most important and influential information platform of our time.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ad... by 0x445442 on Sunday December 10, 2017 @09:41AM (#15891556)

I remember a story in Wired back in the 99-00 time frame about two guys that were diamond retailers in Canada. They were enticed by venture capitalists to move to California to dotcom their business.

After a year or so they shut it down and went back to Canada to return to the business they'd built over generations. I forget all the details but there is one detail I remember. They owners were disenchanted with the whole affair and their take was the internet was nothing more than a massive direct marketing platform.

[ Parent | on HN ]