Comments on: Online Advertising: Privacy Zealot-Elitists v. Real Consumer Advocates

By: Facebook, Privacy, and Politicians’ Hypocrisy

Facebook, Privacy, and Politicians’ Hypocrisy — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:27:36 +0000

[...] round of privacy changes, implemented last month, spurred stiff backlash — not just from so-called privacy advocates, but also from several U.S. Senators. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shot back with [...]

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By: The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:22:00 +0000

Internet Consolidation Can Be Good for Privacy...

There's been a lot of hand-wringing lately about Google's recent acquisitions of Teracent (ad-personalization) and AdMob (mobile ads), as well as Apple's response, buying AdMob's rival Quattro Wireless. Jeff Chester, true To form, quickly fired off...

By: Internet Consolidation Can Be Good for Privacy — Technology Liberation Front

Internet Consolidation Can Be Good for Privacy — Technology Liberation Front — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:21:25 +0000

[...] privacy policies, decrying “The worst consumer opt-out“—but unlike Chester, an anti-advertising zealot, the PrivacyChoice folks realize that, when big companies like Google and Apple buy small companies [...]

By: The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:58:45 +0000

Google's Privacy Dashboard: Another Major Step Forward in User Empowerment & Transparency...

Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot Privacy Dashboard, so hot, I know of no reason Why the Gunpowder Treason Privacy Dashboard Should ever be forgot. Sorry, I couldn't resist, this being Guy Fawkes day (a......

By: Google’s Privacy Dashboard: Another Major Step Forward in User Empowerment & Transparency — Technology Liberation Front

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:21:08 +0000

[...] couldn’t be much easier to use—yet we can be sure it won’t be good enough for some privacy zealots who arrogantly presume that their fellow homo sapiens are basically vegetables with hair—unable [...]

By: Social Advertising Is Just Around the Corner: Why A Facebook Ad Network Would Benefit Users — Technology Liberation Front

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:11:06 +0000

[...] no other ad network can. If and when this happens, Facebook will likely get a lot of grief from the anti-advertising zealots, but this would actually be a good thing for consumers for five [...]

By: The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:06:23 +0000

FTC Announces Roundtables on "Evolving Consumer Privacy Issues"...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just announced it will be hosting: a series of day-long public roundtable discussions to explore the privacy challenges posed by the vast array of 21st century technology and business practices that collect and us...

By: Google Sued for Trademark Infringement: Technology Liberation Front v. Data Liberation Front — Technology Liberation Front

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:21:53 +0000

[...] appropriated the TLF’s unique mock-Communist iconography, we’re starting to think that Jeff Chester and Scott Cleland may be right: Maybe Google really is trying to take over the [...]

By: The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:26:04 +0000

Will Our Twitter Free Ride End or Will Targeted Advertising Subsidize Us?...

I really appreciate the venture capitalists (VCs) in Silicon Valley subsidizing my soapbox at Twitter. Really, it is an absolutely awesome platform for getting a message out to the masses. But at some point I worry that the gravy train......

By: Will Our Twitter Free Ride End or Will Targeted Advertising Subsidize Us? — Technology Liberation Front

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:19:04 +0000

[...] correct. Of course, that probably won’t stop some people — especially the privacy zealots — from whining about commercial exploitation, mind manipulation, and so on — especially [...]

By: A First-Hand Perspective on Advertising to Kids, Acquisitiveness & Parental Responsibility — Technology Liberation Front

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:23:00 +0000

[...] like paradise for anti-advertising zealots like Jeff Chester and the media reformistas who want to re-create the old media scarcity in the name of “media [...]

By: Privacy War II: A Historical Comparison, Not a Moral Equation — Technology Liberation Front

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:19:34 +0000

[...] at stake in this battle of ideas about the future of the Internet—just as he’s repeatedly questioned the motives of those who challenge him. So before Jeff uses this as a political/fundraising stunt by putting out a press release ascribing [...]

By: The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:52:23 +0000

Privacy War II: A Historical Comparison, Not a Moral Equation...

I noted yesterday that a coalition of self-styled "privacy advocates" chose Monday, September 1, to launch an all-out attack on online advertising--which happened to be 70 years to the day after the start of World War II. Since the term......

By: The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:42:17 +0000

Cutting the Video Cord: US Open Streamed Online for "Free"...

The Tennis Channel and ESPN have teamed up to offer live coverage of the US Open online. Not only is this a wonderful thing for consumers, but it also demonstrates just how easily content creators (including traditional television programming networks)...

By: Cutting the Video Cord: US Open Streamed Online for “Free” — Technology Liberation Front

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:14:21 +0000

[...] the cord to cable and save the expense of a monthly cable subscription, you’d better hope the privacy zealots don’t wipe out advertising model necessary to make Internet video a true substitute for [...]

By: The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:06:17 +0000

Online Advertising: Privacy Zealot-Elitists v. Real Consumer Advocates...

Mediapost has published an interview I gave to Omar Tawakol, founder of the BlueKai registry entitled "User Empowerment, Not Regulation, Is The Answer to Privacy Concerns About Targeted Ads" in which I summarize the arguments Adam Thierer and I have....

By: Kathy Parsons

Kathy Parsons — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:39:38 +0000

Lest you think there are only the three of you reading this, Adam and Berin: please keep up your great works…..Chester: Please sit down until you grow up. (blaze away)

By: Adam Thierer

Adam Thierer — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:52:35 +0000

Please, Jeff, do enlighten us. I would absolutely love for you to explain "how online marketing works." You've made a career of demonizing just about every form of marketing and advertising under the sun, so I look forward to an entertaining explanation of how the online variant works.

[Why do I know the story will likely end with a recommendation that we send all these nefarious capitalist schemers to the Gulag?]

By: chesterj1

chesterj1 — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:34:24 +0000

I honestly don't believe you folks understand how online marketing works. The data is all out there–and believe more is coming. You are looking at the market in such a narrow way that you are–sadly–incapable of seeing both the bigger picture and the details.

By: Kathy Parsons

Kathy Parsons — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:39:38 +0000

Lest you think there are only the three of you reading this, Adam and Berin: please keep up your great works…..Chester: Please sit down until you grow up. (blaze away)

By: Kathy Parsons

Kathy Parsons — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:39:38 +0000

Lest you think there are only the three of you reading this, Adam and Berin: please keep up your great works…..Chester: Please sit down until you grow up. (blaze away)

By: Adam Thierer

Adam Thierer — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:52:35 +0000

By: chesterj1

chesterj1 — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:34:24 +0000

By: Berin Szoka

Berin Szoka — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:00:47 +0000

And, by the way, the links you posted don't work because you put a semi-colon after each of them. I don't want to make too much of a casual mistake, but I do find it more than a little galling that someone who doesn't seem to understand the basics of HTML seems to think he knows best how to restructure the way the Internet works through regulatory mandates. Of course, we all make small mistakes and it would be less than gracious of me to attack you for your ignorance of HTML. So the more important point is that you didn't even bother to check whether your links work.

That same pattern is at work on a much larger scale in debates about regulating the Internet: Most regulatory advocates don't bother to "sweat the technical details" and they're even less interested in going back to "check their work" to see what results their regulations have had—or perhaps thinking ahead to consider the likely effects of those regulations. If you did that, you might actually see that this isn't just about making advertisers rich. As a practical matter, the difference between contextual targeting and behavioral targeting for content publishers and online service providers is enormous: behavioral targeting democratizes, to a significant extent, online advertising by tying the value of content more closely to the amount of time people spend looking at it, rather than the keywords that happen to be associated with it. If you get your way and cripple behavioral targeting, publishers who currently get very little for the content they produce because its keywords have little value to advertisers (say, a news story about North Korea) will lose out on the very significant opportunity to sell advertising next to that content for a price based not on those keywords but on the user's likely interests.

Making policy in a complex world requires a willingness to grapple with technological issues on the most basic level, and to constantly re-check your premises. Have you ever run or bought web ads? If you actually took to the time to experiment with these tools, or to talk to online publishers and advertisers for whom those tools are not simply experiments but critical to staying in business to serve customers, your arguments might have more credibility.

By: Berin Szoka

Berin Szoka — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:48:37 +0000

So.... where's the harm here, Jeff? Please, enlighten us as to what's so scary about these ad companies. If you can't establish some clear harm, then this is just a matter of subjective discomfort. I'm all in favor of empowering users to decide opt-out of targeted advertising for any reason, even if it's totally idiosyncratic, but I deny emphatically that the "ick factor" gives you the right to make pre-emptive decisions for everyone about whether to cripple (e.g., through restrictive defaults like opt-in) or simply ban targeted advertising absent a clear showing of real harm. We also need to recognize that the the "opt-out" comes with a cost and that privacy-sensitive users should not be able to free-ride off the economic value created by targeted advertising delivered to users who just don't care as much as you think they should.

By: chesterj1

chesterj1 — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:53:16 +0000

I'm afraid you are engaged in some form of philosophical rant because you have ended up as defenders of a data collection system that is now subject of such widespread concern (on both sides of the political aisle, for ex). Our filings at the FTC, congressional testimony, and scholarly publications on the issue speak for themselves. I urge you to engage in a more deliberate--and open-minded--investigation of online data collection practices. Why don't you start with the data collection and targeting people who help pay your salaries. Here are some leads:
http://advertising.microsoft.com/home/home;
http://www.doubleclick.com/products/dfa/index.a...
http://www.comcastspotlight.com/sites/Default.a...
http://www.platform-a.com/advertiser-solutions;
https://advertise.myspace.com/targetedadvertisi...