Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday February 13 2018, @11:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the hit-the-hate-button dept.

According to The Guardian, one of world’s biggest advertisers — Unilever — says it will avoid platforms that ‘create division’. It further threatens to take its ad purchases off Facebook and Google, if they cannot reign in hate and protect children. Their chief marketing officer says their online spending sometimes is "little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency".

If this finally is it, I say good riddance to surveillance capitalism.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 13 2018, @04:05PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday February 13 2018, @04:05PM (#637170)

    The process of social networking tools works something like this:
    1. They start off with a specific small community and purpose, and enable people to easily communicate with each other without having to, say, run their own webservers. This is very convenient and useful.
    2. Because it's convenient and useful and free of charge, millions of people sign up. It eventually reaches the point where you won't know basic social dynamics without reading through your real-life friends' presence on that social network.
    3. Also as it grows, the time and expense of running it grows. And that causes whoever started it to, possibly in combination with investors, seek out sources of revenue.
    4. As they seek to "monetize their user base", they add in heavy advertising, spying on users, and other things the users don't like at all. The site becomes a horrible bloated mess that people are using only because their friends are using it and you won't know the basic social dynamics without reading through it.
    5. Eventually, somebody has the idea of "Why don't I set up my own social network, without all the horrible bloated mess." They do so, and the cycle starts all over again.

    This cycle has already played out a couple of times, which is why, for instance, we're not talking about MySpace right now. Facebook has had a better run than most at step 4, but there's no reason to think it's immune to step 5.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5