[wsetchell]

I hear this point frequently, but never really understood it. Can you explain? Here's the flow as I understand it.

1) Advertiser tells tech company "please show this ad to people you think are interested in X"

2) Tech company uses its private data to figure out who to show the ad to.

3) If you don't click the ad, end of story. No data leaves the tech companies servers to tell anyone anything about you.

4) If you click the ad, the place that ad directs to will know the ad you came from. Åt most, they can use referral source to infer some data about you.

To me, data is sold means that large amounts of personal data are shared about me without my consent. What am I misunderstanding?

[aserafini]

Why does selling information mean 'large amounts of data must be shared'?

The explanation is in your point (4). Let's expand on it:

I click an ad targeted at African-American, Christian homosexuals, over 40 years old, living in Boston, earning >$100,0000 with a custom audience set consisting of 100 email addresses the advertiser scraped from a forum.

By the way, I never told Facebook my sexual orientation, salary or religion, it was inferred based on other sites I visit.

When I click the ad, Facebook reveals to the advertiser that I match this description: and this is exactly what the advertiser pays them for.

[wsetchell]

Thanks for the explanation!

Short of turning off ads or ad targeting, do you have any ideas about how to make this better?

[aserafini]

I'd like to see the 'Wikipedia' of social media emerge: a centrally managed, decentrally moderated, non-profit, 'nagware' funded social media.

Most users don't care about federation or decentralisation. They want low-cost and convenience but they're starting to realise they don't want it at the expense of their mental health or privacy.

Nothing can be simpler for the end user than a centrally managed service: I just go to wikipedia.org and start reading/writing. Censorship issues are avoided because moderation is decentralised: the site has a governance framework.

So I believe there's a space for a similar concept in social media. There's no question social media fulfils a genuine human need. But the profit motive inevitably forces commercial social medias to make decisions that detriment the user. For example, 'engagement': a santised term for addiction. Is it good for the user that social media should be continually engineered to increase 'engagement'? A non-profit has no such conflict of interest. It may even take steps to reduce engagement if it believes users are at risk of depression, addiction, anxiety etc.

I would love to talk to anyone who has ideas about bootstrapping something like that (email address in profile).