"Entrenched protocols" like slavery got disrupted precisely because a moral dimension was brought into play.
Everybody has weaknesses and exploiting them to sell ads is no more an art - it's a science - that is working at a speed and scale that we have never witnessed before. Advertising is more than just selling body spray. It's about selling anything to us - from our leaders to wars to taxes. I wont be surprised if ISIS is buying FB ads - target muslim youths in low income downtown areas - ad tech can do that for you today.
The same BMW in Europe is marketing car clubs and car pooling to save the planet, while in China and India the message is total opposite about aspiration and horsepower.
I almost feel like you are saying that forcibly exfiltrating someone from their land, packing them into a ship where ~15-30% die before even getting the "privilege" of being sold onto bondage[0] and serve the rest of their lives as property is remotely comparable to a person using gmail for free but retaining any right for such a company to profit from that data(which you freely give them)?
> Morality has to be talked about.
Logic has to be talked about. Your privacy and attention are your own imperative and outsourcing that is a fatal mistake. You will see adverts on a few trashcans but that is the price you pay for living in society. The choice is yours whether you want to sell your information to companies, you provide it, you have agency, stop.
> Even someone who supports slavery would likely be against kidnapping and mistreatment.
I mean, they didn't just show up one day. But yeah, I just met hyperbole with hyperbole.
> But why are you suddenly talking about corporate data use? Advertising happens with or without that data.
I think you can opt out of a lot of ads. I don't watch television often and as stated have a large amount of blocking software installed. I don't read magazines and have limited exposure to billboards as I live in a rural areas.
Data is the scary bit and it was mentioned in the article. Selling user data is morally ambiguous. Gun to my head, I come down on the side that it is probably wrong. Seeing an ad briefly while you steal a taylor swift song off youtube is different than the permanence of someone owning a silo of your personal intimate data.
Also, this data is used to create a profile of you which (outside of the 1984 scenario) is used to sell you adverts. This is pretty shitty. Once again, I try to maintain my own privacy on the internet and try to safeguard my data as much as possible and while I think it is a shitty practice, I think people should be responsible for themselves.
I'd argue that coal and steam power had far more to do with the end of slavery than moral arguments. Though those also held some sway.
When you can provide the work of tens, hundreds, or hundreds of thousands of people through fuel and capital, you can dispense with a great deal of uncompensated labour.
Of course, then there's the decline of that abundant fuel to consider....
Everybody has weaknesses and exploiting them to sell ads is no more an art - it's a science - that is working at a speed and scale that we have never witnessed before. Advertising is more than just selling body spray. It's about selling anything to us - from our leaders to wars to taxes. I wont be surprised if ISIS is buying FB ads - target muslim youths in low income downtown areas - ad tech can do that for you today.
The same BMW in Europe is marketing car clubs and car pooling to save the planet, while in China and India the message is total opposite about aspiration and horsepower.
Morality has to be talked about.