11mo ago

An advertising industry worker's take on adblockers

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I’ve worked at both Facebook and Google, and I’d second this sentiment. It is pretty disgusting that anyone with a passable knowledge of how to hide their tracks can basically get all of the information (messages, posts, photos, private information) they want about you. Sure, they might get fired if they’re caught, and maaaaaaaybe (read: probably not) face legal action, but they can do a lot of damage beforehand. And if they’re good enough, they won’t get caught.
I trust the people that I worked with there, but these are big organizations, and a lot more people than I would be comfortable with have essentially administrator access to private data.
- Yeah. I work in IT as well. Not in a megacorp like Google or Facebook, but I've been in large private companies and government agencies that you would hope would have strict privacy and security policies. Guess what? They don't.
  Nobody in a position of power cares beyond the point of legal requirements, which are mostly shit. It's kind of like "military grade"; it sounds impressive, but what it actually means is "this is as cheaply made as possible while still meeting the bare minimum legal standard".
  
  I've gotten in actual arguments about how "military grade" means easy to replace, not durable
  
  It just meets a MIL spec. Could mean anything really.
  
  it sounds impressive, but what it actually means is "this is as cheaply made as possible while still meeting the bare minimum legal standard".
  And for 5x the normal cost...
- Seems to me that if one was running a spy agency like, say, the CIA or something, it'd be a very useful move to get one of your employees to get a job at one of those companies, so that in addition to ones own spying, one could also piggyback off the spy infrastructure of the ad companies. I imagine the government might get some of that information already, but if you were a foreign government, or trying to get info you weren't technically supposed to have, I can imagine it might make a lot of sense
  
  They don't need to "get someone on the inside", they have been using FISA and Section 702 for decades. Plus the Prism project that got leaked by Snowden.
  
  Yeah that works if it's a company in your jurisdiction, but for countries like Russia it's probably an easy win to just have someone on the inside who can look up whatever you want. Probably costs a lot less to maintain as well, if you're after individual targets and not casting a wide net.
  
  Russia and China have their own versions of fb and similar services. And in any case, for domestic interception you do it via NSA, for foreign individuals you go through the CIA. Also, they bugged directly the under sea cables landing points.
  
  I’d imagine many countries have spies working at all the big tech companies.
- IMO it’s less about insiders stealing info. I’ve seen leads lists stolen and sold on the open market, etc. What we should really be concerned about is the above board, legal and absolutely promoted evil of advertising. I’ve worked in social Media and gaming(gambling) and let men tell you: the legal things these advertisers do are diabolical. The whiteboard conversations about how to structure a user journey are exploitation and immoral, unethical and downright evil and they are so by design. You’re doing a poor job if you’re not devising ways to skirt the law and use loopholes to manipulate people.
  
  Can you say more about those whiteboard conversations? What exactly are they doing that's unethical? I can speculate about dark patterns related to engagement and spend escalation, but I'm curious to hear your more informed perspective.
  
  Youre pretty accurate wrt dark patterns but there’s other stuff like user journeys that map out for instance how much and when to deliver a casino coupon to a user based on research into addictive behavioural patterns.
  Hypothetically: how does the glycemic index of typical lunch foods impact mood and when in that cycle is an addict most likely to succumb?
  Put it like this: if it can be done, it is being done.
  I had a promising career in Datascience very early on (2005 - this was before the CUDA framework was released) and I quickly realised that there was very little good that could come of that work under capitalism. I have friends who had aspirations in aerospace who realised that all they would end up building is weapons. Similar deal. I left it behind and I have a comfortable life in good old fashioned data management now. It isn’t sexy but I can sleep at night.
  
  Doesn't most people also manupulate each other as well? Like gaslighting and etc.
  
  Sure. Do they do that with the might of Googles advertising platform behind them? Do they do it to millions of people m at a time using automated processes supported but machine learning?
  
  Every thief knows everybody else is also a thief.
  
  Irrelevant, manupulation requires lots of skill. I won't be able to even if I tried.
- I'm glad I'm chronically uninteresting. If I had literally any information of value I'd be much more careful but now I'm just one of many in a massive crowd of more interesting people.
  I'm still blocking advertisements though. Fuck that shit.
  
  Uh oh, you just claimed to be uninteresting... I think that trigger language gets you flagged for further follow-up?! You are now on their radar buddy!!!
  (/s btw)
  Says me, who is totally a spy. Yup, absolutely they should read all of my data.
  (but a spy would never say that so...)
  
  Reminds me of the Bill Hicks bit about marketing and advertising. "Oh he's going for that anti-marketing dollar, that's a great market!"
  
  Yeah I suppose in this game you only get to choose your side, but the option to not play at all is not left open to you.
  
  Or, you can choose not to play but that basically means rejecting society. That price is too high for 99%+ of people. Some of us try to partially abstain with privacy tools.
  
  You would have to not have an address, phone, or use the internet, nor travel along a roadway that has billboards (even the Amish are not immune!), so yeah, wherever you are they will track you down, basically.:-( Which is on them, while what we choose to do about it is on us:-).
  
  Yeah you’d have to be an off-grid mountain man, basically. That’s why so few do it, but some do!
  
  Hrm... come to think of it, there are some people who would want to have a list of off-grid mountain men (hunters of potential immortal vampires? or perhaps to ensure that such people have their... ahem "votes" properly counted?), so even then there surely is a list, or rather a few thousand lists, of such people? Perhaps all people who have not bought anything for the last 5 years but for where an obituary has not yet recorded their deaths?
  (Unfortunately) where there is a will, there is a way!
  
  Ugh, you’re right. They may not be able to find you to sell you shit, but they can still piece together the you-shaped hole you left behind.
  
  Bold thought: occasionally visit a website with privacy trackers off? Confuse the fuck out of them too with conflicting input. :-P Don't just protect yourself, protect others by corrupting their databases:-D. Don't just resist culture, counter it! Tbh I don't really care enough to do any of this, but it is fun to think about:-). They can try to characterize me all they want, but meanwhile... uh actually I want & struggle to try to do that too, so I can say good luck with that task MFers! ;-)
  
  I mean you consume goods and utilize services, so in the context of advertising, yes you are interesting and valuable.
  (Also in the context of being a fellow human being, just so you know ❤️, but that's a separate topic)
  
  Sure, I meant more in a nefarious sort of way. Also it was more or less a joke...
- yay! you worked at facebook and google well knowing they exploit people's emotions and tech illiteracy. Do you want a cookie?
  I hope you're working at Tiktok now. I can't wait to praise you about how you tell everyone they're exploiting teenagers and spying on them that we totally don't know. 🕵️ 🕵️ 🕵️
  
  It was 12 years ago man, calm down.
  
  This phrasing may have a chilling effect on discussions on our platform. I believe your opinion could still come through a statement which doesn’t attack the commenter as much - discouraging those who may have future job offers while not scaring commenters off in the future.

126 comments