
Toronto is surveillance capitalism’s new frontier - dotcoma
https://torontolife.com/city/toronto-is-surveillance-capitalisms-new-frontier/
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jariel
The language is indirect and the issue is overstated.

She gives no examples really of how such activities are menacing, just spooky
language concerning it i.e. 'monitoring' /'actualisation'.

In fact it's surprising how _little_ Google et. al. are able to do with 'all
my data'. Google fails to show me relevant ads 99% of the time, and I miss all
the cool stuff I want do find out about.

That said, this: " To this end, the company unilaterally declares that all
public and private experience occurring within this experimental zone would be
deemed “urban data” available for monitoring and actuation."

Is obviously problematic, and the issue in general, is real.

Most people are not hugely worried that Google has some magic power to control
us due to data capture, at the same time, a lot of this does represent a
material invasion of privacy.

~~~
dylkil
>Google fails to show me relevant ads 99% of the time

either this or the people targeting you have their audience completely wrong

~~~
jariel
So I spend a lot on ads, I'm a little bit familiar:

Most 'search' ads are 'relevant' to the search, but they're not necessarily
relevant to me.

In particular, banner ads, which are very crudely targeted, tend to be of 'low
relevance' in marketing lingo, but in real terms, extremely low relevance.

For example, I don't live in the US, and I see an astonishing number of ads
for US-centric content, and for products that are not even available where I
live.

Consider the ad in the article itself: it's for a special night at the 'ROM'
(Royal Ontario Museum) in Toronto. But I don't live anywhere near Toronto!

Scrolling down I see an add for the IDS 'Interior Design Show' in Toronto. Not
only do I have absolutely no interest in the subject, but I don't live in
Toronto.

I don't know if those are Google ad displays or not, but the it's basically
the same, ad nauseam: the ad market is an astonishingly inefficient
marketplace.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity for 'relevance' might be on Facebook -
because they have such a massive base, and a real means to captured nuance
behaviour. I run ads on that platform which score way above average in terms
of relevance and performance, but I know for certain I'm not getting the kind
of material relevance that I want.

Honestly it's a strange paradox to me: Google has everything at their
fingertips and can't figure out who wants to buy a lawn mower and who has
definitely no interest.

~~~
sandworm101
Because google doesn't sell lawnmowers. It sells advertising space. That space
doesnt have to be actually effective so long as it sounds convincing enough to
you.

~~~
jariel
"That space doesn't have to be actually effective so long as it sounds
convincing enough to you."

?

Advertisers will spend a fortune on ads that work for them, and will cut their
spending on ads that don't work.

There generally is no "sounds convincing" \- it's in the numbers.

If Google doesn't help lawn mower makers sell lawn mowers, then they can't get
money from lawn mower makers.

~~~
Nasrudith
Yes but they seldom know /which/ ads are successfully the source and barring
coupon codes and immediate click theough direct purchases most customers will
be repelled by constant irrelevant to them probing about where they saw the
ads first.

Advertisers technically only need to sell to those with a sustainable revenue
stream and/or a sustainable stream of new customers who cannot indefinitely
sustain advertised.

The odds are low but it is entirely possible for a very successful advertiser
to be successful on pure "superstition" wrongly attributing the sales to them.
Ironically the reverse is also possible where a successful advertiser is
wrongly believed to not be doing anything and their prior boosts mere
coincidences.

The Pokemon "Press B to boost catch chance" urban legend was widely believed
for instance until discredited by data mining and testing as people saw a
pattern not truly there.

~~~
jariel
Yes, absolutely, there's a lot of grey around marketing campaigns, but a lot
of them are direct as well. To the extent Google can provide direct value,
they want to do that.

Google is not 'selling ad space' \- they are trying to help you sell your
product.

Hence the fact they punish low-quality ads.

The very nature of Google ads, and the reason they make so much money relates
to the 'relevance' of search terms. It's not great, but it's better than
nothing.

If Google could do more for direct conversions, they would because the value
of their product would rise quite a lot.

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dlkf
I never cease to be impressed by how effortlessly humanities academics are
able to write hundreds of words while saying literally nothing at all. The
entire essay could be replaced with "Google wants to measure things in
Toronto." Would this be a bad thing? Quite possibly! But there needs to be an
argument as to why, and Zuboff doesn't have one.

Broadly speaking, _measuring things_ is _good_. The previous Canadian
government tried to kill our long form census, and this was met with
widespread public disapproval. How is the government supposed to draft
evidence-based policy if they don't have any evidence? The current government
brought it back, and we all spent an afternoon filling it out.

Obviously it's different when the body doing the measuring and optimizing is a
private entity, and there are legitimate concerns about a misalignment of
incentives. But instead of offering _a single concrete example_ , the author
leans on the tired CAPITALISM == BAD trope, content in the knowledge that
there's enough unnuanced leftists out there that she can hit solid sales
numbers without even trying.

I'm grateful for the article, because I was on the fence about reading her
book. Toronto Life just saved me $35.

~~~
jstanley
Everyone acts as if "evidence-based policy" is a good way to govern, but I
actually don't think it is.

Laws should be decided based on _principles_ , not evidence. There's a great
Mitchell and Webb sketch to this effect: Kill the Poor -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg)

~~~
Arkhaine_kupo
I mean, the evidence is meant to be used to back some principles. For example,
I am proponent of evidence based policy and I am also an advocate of mental
health help. There is a lot of pseudo science and easy feel good stuff but
there is also a lot of really good behaviour therapy out there. One works, one
is muck, and I think tax dollars should be used to fund the one that works
because people deserve to not be depressed

