| > Can we reduce “surveillance capitalism” by reducing the incentive to collect personal data? Reduce? Sure. Reduce in a meaningful way? Ambiguous, but the cynic in me says probably not. > Personal data is primarily collected and used by the advertising industry This is just one (and in my opinion, the most benign) facet of surveillance capitalism. You also have to consider these companies like Taser[1] and Amazon[2] that sell facial recognition software to the police. It's not fair to say surveillance capitalism is primarily/mainly/only an ad-tech problem. That type of talk can actually be quite deceiving because the iceberg (surveillance capitalism) is much bigger underneath the surface (when you go further than just ad-tech). > If we were to simply ban the use of personal data beyond a few key items like age, gender and zip code for delivering ads there would be less reason to collect more data But what is "personal data"? We're talking quintillions of bytes pinging and ponging on a daily basis. The idea that we could have surgical precision in determining what is/isn't personal data (or even a rough idea) is kinda laughable. In theory could we do it? Absolutely of course. But in reality? I'll let you have a good laugh just thinking about the powers that be working to "make the world a better place". > Advertising companies will still earn ample profit from their ads with contextual targeting (e.g. showing ads related to search terms or related to the topic of a post or news item being displayed on the screen) and coarse grained targeting Ad-tech companies don't want "ample" profit. They want _all_ the profit. That's capitalism. Your question/statement is a bit of "having your cake and eating it too". You think Zuckerberg (as an example) would be happy with say...10 billion dollars of net worth? No. He wants it all. > This creates a more level playing field between large and small companies perhaps enabling increased competition. As long as we have entry portals owned by monopolistic walled gardens (e.g., the Apple app store, Chrome web browser, Facebook (and its subsidiaries)) there is no such thing as a leveled playing field. You're asking team Google to play basketball "fairly", but team Google owns the officials, the ball, the hoop, the court, the stadium, and the concession stands - they can do whatever they want. IMO If we want to stop surveillance capitalism we have the most daunting task there ever was or could be - educating the public. If people knew "hey that's your data and you're not making any money off of it" they'd be much more inclined to give a damn. Only when we can find a way to make people realize "Hey Jon Doe, you could've made $300 last month off of your data, but $LARGE_COMPANY is keeping it all for themselves. Get what you deserve!", can start to make a dent in people's minds. steps off soapbox [1] https://www.wired.com/story/taser-maker-wont-use-facial-reco... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/10/21287101/amazon-rekogniti... |
> But what is "personal data"? This is where I think current legislation goes awry. By going with a whitelist (e.g. age, gender, zip code) as the only allowed data for targeting ads we an avoid the debate of what is personal data.
> Ad-tech companies don't want "ample" profit. They want _all_ the profit. Agree that the online ad companies won't want this legislation. But they'll have a hard time arguing that this will put them out of business. I think the general population likes these companies and wants them to continue to operate and be successful (as do I) but within reasonable bounds.