The 70th Block: Tech companies are not directly selling your data
In marketing, it's called channel sales
This week…
School is rough.
Here’s a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
What does it actually mean when a company says, “We do not sell your data”?
Alfred Ng for The Markup:
Even though companies like Facebook and Google aren’t directly selling your data, they are using it for targeted advertising, which creates plenty of opportunities for advertisers to pay and get your personal information in return.
The simplest way is through an ad that links to a website with its own trackers embedded, which can gather information on visitors including their IP address and their device IDs.
Advertising companies are quick to point out that they sell ads, not data, but don’t disclose that clicking on these ads often results in a website collecting personal data. In other words, you can easily give away your information to companies that have paid to get an ad in front of you.
Twitter plans new privacy tools to get more people tweeting ($)
Kurt Wagner for Bloomberg:
The tools are related to what Twitter executives call “social privacy,” or how users manage their reputations and identities on the service. This includes information like a person’s list of followers, the tweets they like, and whether their accounts are public or private.
Among features being considered is the ability to edit follower lists, and a tool to archive old tweets so that they’re no longer visible to others after a specific amount of time designated by the user. Hiding past tweets could be a popular feature with people who don’t want their posts to exist online forever, offering an easier solution than manually deleting posts or combing through years-old messages to find those you wish you hadn’t sent.
Yahoo! version if Bloomberg hits you with a paywall can be accessed here.
Misinformation on Twitter adversely affects adults’ health decisions
“UK and US adult smokers who were considering using e-cigarettes were deterred when exposed to tweets falsely implying the devices are more harmful than conventional cigarettes,” according to a study by the University of Bristol and the University of Pennsylvania published in BMJ Open.
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading Mathematics for Gamblers by Catalin Barboianu on Aeon. It starts like this: “A mathematician, a philosopher and a gambler walk into a bar. As the barman pulls each of them a beer, he decides to stir up a bit of trouble.” Ay, ay, ay, I’m already addicted.
I’m watching two GPT-3 AIs talking to each other.
I’m listening to mashups on RaveDJ, a music mixer that uses AI to mix songs on YouTube and Spotify. Hit or miss.
Chart of the week
From CBC’s poll tracker, captured on September 4th:
Close friends and family already know my projection and hope. It’s a long game in a short election campaign period. But let’s hear yours.