To blag or not to blag. And targeted advertising.

StumbleUpon has been bought by ebay, so I think I’ll take this as an opportunity to start posting more stuff here then there. Not because I care, not because I think SU sold out (which I don’t), but because I figure since I’d rather keep my online scrapbook on my own site. I hadn’t decided until just now what this blog is even for.

It’s to blog! We blog because we can Really it’s just a scrapbook online. Who needs a good reason to keep a scrapbook?

And really I don’t give a shit that stumbleupon was bought by ebay. Google already knows everything about my habits, a lot more then SU does. Ebay probably only bought SU for the data. They want to make more intelligent targeted ads. I’m against that on principle, but in practice I don’t give a shit. It just doesn’t spark any anger. Maybe somewhere someone’s written a good article on why it’s bad, I’d possible look at it.

Taking things to their Sci Fi conclusion… There is the argument that maybe then our ads would be more tasteful. It’s not a very good one, when privacy and abuse of information are at stake. Still, imagine a world where we wouldn’t get horrible banner ads for finding high school friends (I never want to see any of them again), etc etc. Surely intelligent advertising would know that I don’t give a shit about most of the things they try to push. But… If this was possible it still wouldn’t happen, ad networks would instead use their power to push on us unreasonable wants and desires, whether we want them or not.

Imagine if an ad network knew you were against the war, and bombarded you with propaganda which pretended to be left, but was really just soft right (aka BBC, ABC), but not only that, it was targeted, specifically crafted to persuade you based on the way you think. If advertising networks became that sophisticated there is no way that they wouldn’t used politically. Explicitly or implicitly.

I guess I answered that question myself. Targeted ads are a bad idea, but as long as there is still distributed accessible communication channels, aka blogs, indie news, Democracy TV, etc, I’ll continue to ingore the ads. If ads get more sophisticated in their manipulation, I’m positive I’ll get better at ignoring them.

I still don’t give a shit about Ebay/SU though. I don’t have an emotional investment in it.