RE: [projectvrm] The mother-in-law ad-tech problem

["T.Rob" < >]

> Want to see some moon-high contempt for the lives of the adtech-exploited?
> Check out the new petition to the FCC just filed by attorneys for these
> creeps:

Well, that's horrifying.  I recently took some proof-of-nefarium documents to 
my car dealership to ask how they obtained an email address I never gave 
them.  Eventually we got around to the tracking on their web site and I was 
told by the dealership GM that I should opt out of the tracking whereupon I 
explained how that works.

By default you are opted in.  In order to not be tracked, you have to allow a 
3rd-party cookie that is universally recognized and you have to register and 
put this cookie on every single device or browser. In other words, a 
universal super-cookie capable of correlating you across all your devices is 
the mechanism they require you to use in order to not be tracked at a less 
granular level.  "Sorry we abused your trust in our surveillance marketing, 
install this ultra-beacon and we promise we won't do it again."  

I can't be the only person skeptical of this.  Yet among the dealership 
management and apparently our regulatory agencies and all of the Ad-Tech 
world this makes perfect sense.  


Kind regards,
-- T.Rob

T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner
IoPT Consulting, LLC
+1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/Text
https://ioptconsulting.com
https://twitter.com/tdotrob


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doc Searls 
> [mailto:
 ]
> Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2017 0:16 AM
> To: T.Rob
> Cc: ProjectVRM list
> Subject: Re: [projectvrm] The mother-in-law ad-tech problem
> 
> Thanks, T.Rob.
> 
> Good piece. (Linked below.) And great points. Some comments inline...
> 
> > On Jan 4, 2017, at 7:59 PM, T.Rob 
> > <
 >
> >  wrote:
> >
> > We spent a couple days either side of New Year's Eve in the hospital with
> my father in law.  Afterward my mother-in-law started searching for all the
> conditions and meds mentioned in his discharge paperwork.  Next thing you
> know, she's picked up ransomware which as best as I can tell was delivered
> through an ad rendered while she was reading email in Outlook Live.
> >
> > As I mention in the linked post, I can't ever know for sure that the
> malware specifically targeted sick and elderly people but based on the ads
> she's now seeing it would be hard to win an ad placement bid right now for
> any other criteria.  So right after nearly losing her husband of 60+ years,
> emotionally and physically exhausted and unable to sustain her normal
> levels of web vigilance and security hygiene, she suddenly becomes a ripe
> target for malware delivered in ad-tech that ransoms all her family photos
> and correspondence.  It took hours to recover her PC and she was
> practically in tears the whole time.
> >
> > Which to me is a big part of the problem.  Much of the discussion of ad
> tech and ad blockers centers around tech-savvy mainstream users, not the
> elderly parent or grandparent whose online experience is determined largely
> by default settings of their devices and technology-specific cataracts that
> blind them to how this stuff works.  Designing for the least abled among us
> results in designs that everyone can use.  Designing to the 80th or
> 90thpercentile is much easier but renders millions of people "statistically
> insignificant" even to the point of creating new classes of disability
> where once there were none.
> 
> What we have are discussions among a certain .1% about a different .1%
> taking advantage of 99.9%, thanks to a business model (adtech) that rewards
> anyone producing any kind of “content,” regardless of its value, resulting
> not only in adtech’s fraud- and malware-filled four-dimensional shell game,
> but a giant rolling shitball of “content” rewarded just for being “content”
> that only wants more “content" in the world, all the better to make more
> money from adtech that cares not at all for the lives of that 99.9% or the
> consequences of abuses by the adtech industry and its beneficiaries.
> 
> > I understand that web sites need to make money to deliver high quality
> content but any web property owner or manager who believes the number of
> users who are actually victimized through malvertising is statistically
> insignificant needs to look my mother-in-law in the eye while they explain
> to her just how insignificant she personally is to their revenue stream and
> why. Until ad-tech can be directly accountable to its victims site owners
> don't get to whine about ad blockers.
> >
> > https://medium.com/@tdotrob/dont-claim-your-web-site-depends-on-ads-d1
> > aec0d45b3f#
> 
> In fact they regard your mother in law the way a threshing machine regards
> wheat.
> 
> Want to see some moon-high contempt for the lives of the adtech-exploited?
> Check out the new petition to the FCC just filed by attorneys for these
> creeps:
> 
> Association of National Advertisers
> American Association of Advertising Agencies American Advertising
> Federation Data & Marketing Association Interactive Advertising Bureau
> Network Advertising Initiative
> 
> Here it is: <http://www.ana.net/getfile/24564>
> 
> Their case is against the FCC’s ruling in October
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/10/27/the-fcc-just-
> passed-sweeping-new-rules-to-protect-your-online-privacy> that says
> “consumers’ information” used by others should be “consumers’ choice.” They
> say the ruling “violates First Amendment protections of commercial speech.”
> 
> These creeps want you to have no rights at all on the Internet, which they
> regard as their sovereign and absolute commercial property. They get to
> speak there. You’re just the eyeballs they sell.
> 
> On the positive, I expect this kind of vain and clueless arrogance will
> have the effect of driving some people who had occupied middle ground over
> to our side. Toward that possibility, take a look at what Ev Williams, CEO
> and founder of Medium (and earlier of Blogger and Twitter), just posted:
> <https://blog.medium.com/renewing-mediums-focus-98f374a960be#.7liiy6j0y>.
> 
> I’ll leave out the opener, where he says he’s laying off 50 people, most of
> which have been working, apparently, on an advertising model. Here is most
> of the rest of what he says, with some inline comments...
> 
> > Our vision, when we started in 2012, was ambitious: To build a platform
> that defined a new model for media on the internet. The problem, as we saw
> it, was that the incentives driving the creation and spread of content were
> not serving the people consuming it or creating it — or society as a whole.
> As I wrote at the time, “The current system causes increasing amounts of
> misinformation…and pressure to put out more content more cheaply — depth,
> originality, or quality be damned. It’s unsustainable and unsatisfying for
> producers and consumers alike….We need a new model.”
> >
> > We set out to build a better publishing platform — one that allowed
> anyone to offer their stories and ideas to the world and that helped the
> great ones rise to the top. In 2016, we made big investments in teams and
> technology aimed at attracting and migrating commercial publishers to
> Medium. And in order to get these publishers paid, we built out and started
> selling our first ad products. This strategy worked in terms of driving
> growth, as well as improving the volume and consistency of great content.
> Some of the web’s best publishers are now on Medium, and we’re happy to
> work with them every day. We also saw interest from many big brands and
> promising results from several content marketing campaigns on the platform.
> >
> > However, in building out this model, we realized we didn’t yet have the
> right solution to the big question of driving payment for quality content.
> We had started scaling up the teams to sell and support products that were,
> at best, incremental improvements on the ad-driven publishing model, not
> the transformative model we were aiming for.
> >
> > To continue on this trajectory put us at risk — even if we were
> successful, business-wise — of becoming an extension of a broken system.
> 
> That system isn’t just adtech. It’s the vast avalanche of “content,” which
> was once “editorial” and “journalism,” but now includes every damn thing
> you can publish, regardless of whether it’s worth anything, or even true.
> And which grows bigger and more shit-filled every day, wreaking all kinds
> of damage, including making people hate each other: <http://bit.ly/nvzib>.
> 
> Here comes Ev's pull-quote paragraph:
> 
> > Upon further reflection, it’s clear that the broken system is ad-driven
> media on the internet. It simply doesn’t serve people. In fact, it’s not
> designed to. The vast majority of articles, videos, and other “content” we
> all consume on a daily basis is paid for — directly or indirectly — by
> corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is
> measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period.
> As a result, we get…well, what we get. And it’s getting worse.
> 
> Amen.
> 
> Adtech is a reward system for production of boundless “content,” without
> restraint, and is intellectually, morally and structurally incapable of
> fixing itself. It can barely even help its best high-quality publishers,
> such as the Guardian, the NY Times and the WSJ. As Don Marti started
> pointing out long ago, if an adtech robot can find a reader of one of those
> pubs in some skeevy place, it’ll track them down and throw ads at them
> there. The system doesn’t care, and is designed not to care. Ev and his
> team know that now. The writing was on the wall they just tore down.
> 
> > That’s a big part of why we are making this change today.
> >
> > We decided we needed to take a different — and bolder — approach to this
> problem. We believe people who write and share ideas should be rewarded on
> their ability to enlighten and inform, not simply their ability to attract
> a few seconds of attention. We believe there are millions of thinking
> people who want to deepen their understanding of the world and are
> dissatisfied with what they get from traditional news and their social
> feeds. We believe that a better system — one that serves people — is
> possible. In fact, it’s imperative.
> >
> > So, we are shifting our resources and attention to defining a new model
> for writers and creators to be rewarded, based on the value they’re
> creating for people. And toward building a transformational product for
> curious humans who want to get smarter about the world every day.
> >
> > It is too soon to say exactly what this will look like. This strategy is
> more focused but also less proven. It will require time to get it right, as
> well as some different skills...
> 
> Anybody want to help dust off and update EmanciPay
> <https://cyber.harvard.edu/projectvrm/EmanciPay>?
> 
> Other ideas are welcome too. Key VRM thing... They need to come from our
> side: the individual reader's, viewer's or listener's side. What is the
> easiest and most normalizable way anybody can reward anybody or anything
> that provides value?
> 
> Do we really need separate, arcane and coercive systems (e.g. paywalls) for
> every “content provider” out there? (That’s the current default.) Or can we
> scaffold up something better that starts with *our* ability to operate the
> pricing gun? And to express genuine loyalty?
> 
> I say we can.
> 
> Doc