Big Advertising Brother

Sometimes, the fun times and the free ride abruptly comes to a halt.

I've been wondering for the last 12 years, ever since the dot com bubble, how some of these internet companies make any money. It seemed to me that they weren't really selling anything, and they weren't charging me for the use of their work, so I could not figure out how it worked. There has been a lot of really cool free websites to choose from. The same is true for podcasts. It seems crazy (but somehow right) to me that so many excellent podcasts are available for free online.

Well, we increasingly see where these companies get their money. Facebook recently incurred the anger and ... well, I was going to say wrath, but actually no one is doing anything against them. They supposedly released a great deal of private information to third party advertisers. However, the general public is posting their private photographs and inane comments on the site all day without any regard for who sees it.

Now Google has started mining the search habits of people to target advertising at them. Not just casual and average Google using web searchers, but particularly the users of gmail, their popular (and FREE! see the pattern?) email service provider. The gmail program was reading the public's emails and targeting popup ads to people based on things they mentioned in private messages. That is kind of creepy, like a stalker staring in through your curtains at night. You can opt out at http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/opt-out.html

There is another site called Criteo that watches where you go browsing on the web and then targets personalized ads back at you about sites you've already been to. The banner ads on the sides of the screen reveal what the person has looked at before & offer ads targeted at that, serving as constant reminders to go back to the site later. This can be disabled, once you notice it, through a site at http://www.criteo.com/us/privacy-policy

The reaction is not universally bad. Some say it's not all Big Brother but potentially something that can make web browsing more personalized. Some can easily ignore the privacy concerns. They think this is OK if the computer sorts through your web browsing habits and just show them the things they are interested in. After all, if you're going to be exposed to ads, wouldn't it be nice if it was something you were probably interested in? There was a recent Science Friday episode where this was discussed, but the supporter of the ads was in the industry themselves.

I feel strangely ambivalent to this. In one view, you could say that the death of privacy would be great if you could not be discriminated by public disclosures of private facts. There is a certain honesty and surrender to not worrying what anyone might find out about you. And knowing that you are constantly being monitored could be exactly what some people need to help behave honestly and ethically. On the other hand, it sure seems that the potential for harm when someone has the ability to look at your private activities is something that cannot be denied.