2018-03-26

osewalrus: (Default)
2018-03-26 01:37 pm

Depends on the meaning of the word "access"

I am fairly sure that the average user of average intelligence and literacy would not interpret the request: "The Facebook ap wants to access your phone and text contact records" to mean "you hereby grant us a perpetual right to record all of your call and text metadata and do whatever the heck we want with it."

But maybe that is just me.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/25/17160944/facebook-call-history-sms-data-collection-android ;
osewalrus: (Default)
2018-03-26 04:10 pm

An important distinction

I often hear that if we tamper with the ability of advertising-based websites to collect personal information, it will destroy their business model. This is hogwash. Advertising has been a multi-billion dollar business since well before we had the capacity to do targeted advertising.

It may make the sale of online advertising less profitable, but I am skeptical even of this claim. Advertisers go to FB and Google because of the Willie Sutton Rule. i.e., That's where the people are. Just as advertising on broadcast networks got more valuable with the rise of cable and the fragmentation of cable audiences (because broadcast networks, while providing a smaller audience than previously, still provided an overwhelmingly huge audience compared to any cable outlet), advertising on Google platforms (notably search and Youtube) and on Facebook will muddle along just fine based on things like key words and other content that does not require accumulating my life history.