advertising
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The Future of Now
There is latency to everything. Pain, for example. Nerve impulses from pain sensors travel at about two feet per second. That’s why we wait for the pain when we stub a toe. The crack of a bat on a playing field takes half a second before we hear it in the watching crowd. The sunlight we… Continue reading
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So far, privacy isn’t a debate
Remember the dot com boom? Doesn’t matter if you don’t. What does matter is that it ended. All business manias do. That’s why we can expect the “platform economy” and “surveillance capitalism” to end. Sure, it’s hard to imagine that when we’re in the midst of the mania, but the end will come. When it… Continue reading
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The GDPR’s biggest fail
If the GDPR did what it promised to do, we’d be celebrating Privmas today. Because, two years after the GDPR became enforceable, privacy would now be the norm rather than the exception in the online world. That hasn’t happened, but it’s not just because the GDPR is poorly enforced. It’s because it’s too easy for… Continue reading
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Zoom’s new privacy policy
Yesterday (March 29), Zoom updated its privacy policy with a major rewrite. The new language is far more clear than what it replaced, and which had caused the concerns I detailed in my previous three posts: Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act, More on Zoom and privacy, and Helping Zoom Those concerns were shared… Continue reading
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Helping Zoom
[This is the third of four posts. The last of those, Zoom’s new privacy policy, visits the company’s positive response to input such as mine here. So you might want to start with that post (because it’s the latest) and look at the other three, including this one, after that.] I really don’t want to… Continue reading
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Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act
[21 April 2020—Hundreds of people are arriving here from this tweet, which calls me a “Harvard researcher” and suggests that this post and the three that follow are about “the full list of the issues, exploits, oversights, and dubious choices Zoom has made.” So, two things. First, while I run a project at Harvard’s Berkman… Continue reading
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Do you really need all this personal information, @RollingStone?
Here’s the popover that greets visitors on arrival at Rolling Stone‘s website: Our Privacy Policy has been revised as of January 1, 2020. This policy outlines how we use your information. By using our site and products, you are agreeing to the policy. That policy is supplied by Rolling Stone’s parent (PMC) and weighs more than 10,000 words. In… Continue reading
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There are better ways to save journalism
In a Columbia Journalism Review op-ed, Bernie Sanders presents a plan to save journalism that begins, WALTER CRONKITE ONCE SAID that “journalism is what we need to make democracy work.” He was absolutely right, which is why today’s assault on journalism by Wall Street, billionaire businessmen, Silicon Valley, and Donald Trump presents a crisis—and why we… Continue reading
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On Linux Journal
[16 August 2019…] Had a reassuring call yesterday with Ted Kim, CEO of London Trust Media. He told me the company plans to keep the site up as an archive at the LinuxJournal.com domain, and that if any problems develop around that, he’ll let us know. I told him we appreciate it very much—and that’s… Continue reading
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Without aligning incentives, we can’t kill fake news or save journalism
It’s time to move past the toxic and destructive business called adtech: surveillance-based advertising. Adtech is the Agent Smith of digital advertising: a rogue programmatic approach to digital advertising that rationalizes tracking people like marked animals. Today adtech is the main business model for nearly all of online publishing, including nearly all the news sites reporting endlessly and ironically on how… Continue reading
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Dear @WashingtonPost
This is wrong: Because I’m not blocking ads. I’m blocking tracking. In fact I welcome ads—especially ones that sponsor The Washington Post and other fine publishers. I’ll also be glad to subscribe to the Post once it stops trying to track me off their site. Same goes for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal… Continue reading
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Where Public Radio Rocks
Where does public radio rock—or even rule? And why? To start answering those questions, I looked through Nielsen‘s radio station ratings, which are on the Radio Online site. I dug down through all the surveyed markets, from #1 (New York NY) through #269 (Las Cruces-Deming NM), and pulled out the top 31 markets for public… Continue reading
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Is ad blocking past 2 billion worldwide?
The answer is, we don’t know. Also, we may never know, because— It’s too hard to measure (especially if you’re talking about the entire Net). Too so much of the usage is in mobile devices of too many different kinds. The browser makers are approaching ad blocking and tracking protection in different and new ways… Continue reading
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The Spinner’s hack on journalism
The Spinner* (with the asterisk) is “a service that enables you to subconsciously influence a specific person, by controlling the content on the websites he or she usually visits.” Meaning you can hire The Spinner* to hack another person. It works like this: You pay The Spinner* $29. For example, to urge a friend to… Continue reading
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On renting cars
I came up with that law in the last millennium and it applied until Chevy discontinued the Cavalier in 2005. Now it should say, “You’re going to get whatever they’ve got.” The difference is that every car rental agency in days of yore tended to get their cars from a single car maker, and now… Continue reading
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Is this a turning point for publishing?
Publishing and advertising both need to bend back toward where they came from, and what works. I see hope for that in the news today. In Refinery29 Lays Off 10% of Staff as 2018 Revenue Comes Up Short, by Todd Spangler, (@xpangler) of Variety reports, Digital media company Refinery29, facing a 5% revenue shortfall for the year, is… Continue reading
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We can do better than selling our data
If personal data is actually a commodity, can you buy some from another person, as if that person were a fruit stand? Would you want to? Not yet. Or maybe not really. Either way, that’s the idea behind the urge by some lately to claim personal data as personal property, and then to make money (in… Continue reading
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A helpful approach to personal data protection regulation
Enforcing Data Protection: A Model for Risk-Based Supervision Using Responsive Regulatory Tools, a post by Dvara Research, summarizes Effective Enforcement of a Data Protection Regime, a deeply thought and researched paper by Beni Chugh (@BeniChugh), Malavika Raghavan (@teninthemorning), Nishanth Kumar (@beamboybeamboy) and Sansiddha Pani (@julupani). While it addresses proximal concerns in India, it provides useful guidance for… Continue reading