

Digg Founder Kevin Rose's Pownce Raises Privacy Concerns - deramisan
http://www.weburbanist.com/2007/06/27/pownce-kevin-roses-newest-venture-sounds-like-glorified-email/

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deramisan
There is nothing in the article 'claiming' that Pownce advertisements use note
context - the article fully discloses (check the headline for crying out loud)
that there are concerns about privacy, not that user privacy has been
compromised.

There is no claim in the article that Pownce scrapes content, but nor does
Pownce's privacy policy state that they don't. So you tell me: if it makes
them more money, and they haven't said they won't do it, what will they do?

This kind of comment is at least as misleading as a self-professed speculative
article it is reponding to.

P.S. Which do you work for - Google or Pownce?

~~~
willarson
As a quick preface, I usually think its much easier to have a coherent
conversation when we actually reply to the comment we referring to, otherwise
it won't be listed in the threads section and will easily go unseen.

"Moreover, they will "run some small advertisements in your list of notes"
which sounds a lot like GMail., which crawls through emails to find keywords
then uses those to display ads on your GMail pages."

That sentence insinuates that Pownce is--or will--use data context to increase
ad relevancy. I don't believe I am inaccurately representing the article by
saying so. I don't know the details of the Pownce private policy, but I do
know that the excerpt I quoted (the only excerpt of the policy contained in
the article) is meaningless in regards to using context to serve ads.

Sitting back and accepting this sort of speculative commentary is detrimental
because it adds confusion and misinformation without bringing with it any
merit to redeem itself. This article could have been done in a valid way, by
an individual with an understanding of the American legal system, there may
indeed be more than illusionary specters to the issue of Pownce's privacy
policy, but we won't learn anything from the haphazard and speculative inquiry
that this post embodies.

~~~
deramisan
Let's just keep this simple:'

1) We know Kevin Rose isn't a man of principle - he sides with corporations to
save his skin, then the mob if he risks losing his followers (see: Digg HD-DVD
scandal)

2) There is money to be made by targetting ads that used scraped content as a
basis for choosing what to display to who (see: Google)

3) There is nothing in the Pownce privacy policy that says they won't scrape
your content.

So a guy who will do what it takes for his company, right or wrong, has a ton
of content he could scrape to increase ad revenue and he isn't saying that he
won't do that. Is it reasonable or not to then 'be concerned' about ones
privacy? You tell me what part of this you disagree with.

"Many companies offer programs that help you to visit websites anonymously.
While Megatechtronium will not be able to provide you with a personalized
experience if we cannot recognize you, we want you to be aware that these
programs are available." (Pownce.com/privacy)

What do you suppose they mean by a 'personalized experience'?

~~~
willarson
"The personal information you provide may be used for such purposes as
responding to your requests for certain products and services, customizing the
advertising and content you see, and communicating with you about specials,
sales offers and new products."

The privacy policy _clearly states_ that they will do what the article is
insinuating. The article didn't even bother to quote this relevant segment, or
to even mention that it exists. It instead makes it argument based on an
irrelevant quote that doesn't support its insinuation. The article is poorly
done, and fails to make a meaningful point because it builds a foundation on
thin air, even though there was a solid foundation for it to rest upon in the
first five paragraphs of the privacy policy.

That, rather than slandering Kevin Rose, is what quality journalism is based
upon.

As for the personalized experience issue it seems more likely that anonymity
services will impede assignment of cookies and thus the cookie framework used
to maintain persistent user sessions will be rendered non-functioning. This is
a protocol issue, not another mythical infringer of privacy to point fingers
at while screaming hysterically.

The article uses bad evidence deceptively when good evidence is readily
available, and could have been used to make the point cleanly and without
making leaps of faith in the argument. Why would one waste time reading
analysis performed by someone who clearly doesn't even care enough to perform
analysis?

~~~
deramisan
Hahahah awesome. So you basically criticized the article for doing something
it didn't do (make misguided claims), then in the same breath you yourself
made misguided claims. This is almost too funny for words. You wrote:

"Its great to see people who haven't used a service making misguided claims."

Then you wrote:

"The privacy policy clearly states that they will do what the article is
insinuating."

Misguided claims? Now you concede that the article was correct and that its
claims were not misguided. So you made the false claim that the article was
making misguided claims without bothering to make sure your own claims weren't
misguided. What a mouthful! Yes, the article could have had more relevant
direct quotes from Pownce, but it was based on solid fact as you now admit -
unlike your own claims which were patently false. Let me sum it up: the
article was right, and you falsely accused it of being wrong, thereby doing
exactly what the article didn't do and what you criticized it for - making
misguided claims.

~~~
willarson
You're ignoring what I am saying, seemingly because you are focused on mocking
me. As such I'll make a final attempt to explain myself, but it seems likely
that communication will be thwarted yet again.

There was solid and easily locatable evidence that supports the premise of the
article in question. The article did not use that evidence, and instead based
its premise upon an irrelevant quote that did not support its argument.

Thus the article is fundamentally flawed: it arrives at its conclusion by
making a leap from one disconnected idea to a second; there is no chain of
reasoning to follow. Worse than simply making a leap in its reasoning, it
misinterprets a disjoint quote and passes it off as support for its argument.

This method of pseudo-analysis will occasionally render correct segments of
analysis. That doesn't matter. The pseudo-analysis is still flawed,
unreliable, and devoid of value.

~~~
deramisan
I have already conceded that the article could have cited better sources, but
my point remains: you could have as well. You implied that the article author
did not know as much as you did. You suggested that they were not only not
citing sources that didn't help the argument but also making factually
inaccurate claims.

In so doing, you took an implicit position of authority on the matter by
claiming (as a user with insider knowledge) that the author was wrong. That
was wrong, which makes you equally (or more so) guilty of unsound reasoning
and misleading or misguided argument. If you claim to know better and are
wrong, doesn't that make your statements even more misguided than someone who
raises 'concerns' about an issue and says it quote "sounds like Gmail' and
turns about to be justified in these concerns?

The article clearly raises the entire question as a 'concern' as stated in the
headline. Your statements were much closer to being assertions of fact based
on expert opinion. Could the article have cited better sources? Yes. Does that
mean the article author didn't know what he was talking about? No, and the
article turned out to be correct. Could you have cited better sources
yourself? Yes. Did it turn out that the article was right and you were wrong?
Also yes.

You tell me. Seriously. You tell me: what is worse: (1) failing to site the
right source but writing truthful content, or (2) implicitly claiming expert
status and writing false content defaming an accurate source.

------
willarson
Its great to see people who haven't used a service making misguided claims.
Pownce's advertisements are akin to those on Facebook's recent update page:
they are simple text ads.

Nothing about them, and certainly nothing about the quote used in the article,
suggest that they are using note context to target audiences.

This kind of article with haphazard speculation is no signal and all noise.

