For a long time, part of the selling point for the super bowl has been the ads.
I hear people talk bout “great ads”, If I try to point out that those ads are not trying to entertain them, but rather, part them from their money, they become defensive.
Ads can become water cooler talk and knowing and commenting on them can be signifiers of cool.
I don’t think people like ads, but we are so used to them and are resigned to their ubiquity that if we’re going to suffer through them, we might as well enjoy them.
But then you get this, anybody asking for better ads must, MUST be trying to sell you something.
If we could get to objective truth, I’d agree with you, he’s an idiot. Since he actually has people listening to him, he must be some sort of brilliant, I’m starting to think that actually calling out his genius in trolling people calling for sanity is the most damning thing you can say about him, the only thing he could possibly resent. Failing to troll.
Why do I think he’s a troll, Wikipedia helps:
There’s a picture of him shilling longhorn for Microsoft.
He’s described as a “technological evangelist” which in my experience means paid shill.
I’m no longer a technical evangelist for Microsoft. I work for Rackspace and build relationships with startups for it, amongst other tasks. My answer is here: Robert Scoble “so tired of the privacy advocates”
Tired of Robert Scoble? This is the first time in years that I’ve been on Boing Boing. Maybe just unfollow me? Or maybe you like being tired of me. Hah!
You are talking about other people on your computer, a valid argument, for another conversation, not for this one.
Arguments could be made for the pursuit of privacy being both dumb and/or a waste of time, you’ve made neither though.
But a distraction from legitimate internet security issues?
Given that the only way these breaches of privacy happen is because of lack of proper internet security, I don’t actually know who you’re addressing and with what argument.
I get it, you have an opinion, valid as any other persons opinion, its just that it’s not convincing given that you don’t actually need to argue for your opinion, not hiding stuff is the default, you have what you want.
Asking other people to want something different than you? That’s just odd.
Maybe I was cracking wise and my actual state regarding Robert Scoble has been “shits given: none” for all the time I’ve been seeing links to you on the net, maybe with an eye rolling side of “wow what a privileged asshole”? Nah. Nobody who reads Boing Boing ever consumes any other Internet. And nobody is ever utterly lacking in a passionately held opinion of the one and only Robert Scoble.
Yes, it was mentioned in the article. Former technological evangelist then.
Your opinion is that other people should not take actions that they believe to be in their best interest. You backed this up by saying that you like the way things are. (A valid opinion but a non argument)
I am still of the opinion that you are not a dumb person, so offering this comment which leads to polarization in discourse if taken seriously must have an ulterior motive in order to avoid being pointless.
Of course, maybe its just that, an opinion and nothing worth getting riled up about, unless you feel the need to defend it.
Ads are never good, but people who advertise confuse the idea that advertising is “necessary” (for some businesses advertising is necessary) with advertising being “virtuous” (which advertising never is). For anything to do with the quality of the product or the customer’s experience of the product, advertising always makes things crappier. Many products make up for this by being good enough that the net sum is substantially positive for some people (and some of those people are even customers or people in the customers’ lives), but there is no product for which advertising doesn’t degrade the value of the product or the value of that product to the customer. Period.
But because in America bizniss must be wholly virtuous or fall from its divine role of dominance, all bizniss endeavors must be retconned into the virtuous column. This is how people are persuaded to buy into even the dumbest forms of libretardianism.
Man I wish I was so jealous of Scobleizers popularity and the sheer lack of my unknow to troll him on here but my self esteems pretty healthy. Rock on Scoble!! Love your work! hehe He’s also a really fun guy to have beers with - try it sometime.
My first point is that privacy is not, fundamentally, a technical problem; it’s a problem of social organization and social power. My second is that we’re approaching the present social conflict with entirely the wrong strategy: a defensive strategy, not an offensive strategy. If we were successful in encrypting all communications, we’d be succeeding in isolating ourselves and eliminating open public discourse – which is exactly what we’re afraid mass surveillance is intended to accomplish.
The NSA, for example, is a massive operation, with a staff of tens of thousands, a budget of tens of billions of dollars, and extensive complexes of offices, datacenters, and other capital resources:
That’s all very intimidating – but it also reveals many obvious vulnerabilities. What happens if the staff of the NSA becomes demoralized? What if the NSA’s budget is cut off? What if communities shut the NSA out of the electrical grid? What if the access roads to NSA facilities are blocked? The NSA depends upon the cooperation of corporations and other government agencies. What if those other entities moved to passively or actively resisting the NSA, instead of cheerfully cooperating with it? What if technicians and clerical workers dragged their heels in honoring requests, refusing to process them until every “i” is dotted and every “t” crossed?
Some of this is already going on, of course. But I think we need more of it, and enabling such actions is a much more valuable use of time, I believe, then trying to organize key-signing parties. The NSA is very unpopular right now, and by extension, so are other entities that are associated with it, so we should also make a point of taking every opportunity to mock eye douches who think surveillance is fun.
Thank you for acknowledging my possession of an opinion. That may be the least generous compliment possible.
Let me be clearer with my non-argument for you. Tor, Tails and the other tools for anonymous web browsing, chatting and emailing are a waste of time for 99% of Americans because they are not serving a useful purpose. Learning about those tools and consistently implementing them is a serious time commitment, and there are better things to do with your time.
Privacy in order to thwart NSA surveillance is perhaps an understandable knee-jerk reaction to the news reports, but not very useful for government reform.
Those same tools are a distraction from legitimate security concerns because there are real issues like software updating, password practices, unencrypted webforms or phishing that people need to actually be more informed about.
Privacy in order to opt of advertising is dumb. Good advertising is trying to show you relevant, useful information based on the things that you buy and enjoy. The current effectiveness may be debatable, but I should mention—for some of the folks here who seem to have such a rabid philosophical opposition to advertising—that advertising runs the internet services that we all enjoy (exhibit A: http://rcs.seerinteractive.com/money/).
There are quick, effective and easy-to-use tools for small-scale anonymity that fit my needs. The same may be true for others. I.e. Chrome Incognito mode removes cookies and browsing history.
Clear enough?
It’s true, I am happy with the status quo of not having complete internet anonymity. But I’m not happy about constantly hearing about internet anonymity from otherwise interesting news sources. So I guess that I’m arguing for people to move on. Find better things to care about. Stop clogging Reddit and Wired and Boing Boing with this kind of privacy-obsessive stuff.
I am trans, live in a state where it’s legal to fire me for my gender identity (and legal to ignore workplace bullying), have stalkers from my days as a fundamentalist despite how long ago that was, am subject to enough harassment from my family members as it is without being out about my gender and sexuality, and–as a writer–search the internet for strange shit as a part of research that doesn’t pertain to actions I plan to take in real life.
I agree… I think that’s the whole key here, choice. We should be able to choose how much we have online and how much we don’t. the ability to choose should be clear and easy to figure out, even for those who aren’t technologically literate (your gramma, for example), since we’re all online. As far as I’m concerned, if you share a picture online of your kids, it shouldn’t necessarily end up as someone’s meme…
And some non-commercial space online would be fan-fucking-tastic!
You know… that’s as good an argument as any for online privacy, if not the best one. A broken bank account or the like can be fixed a hell of a lot easier than a broken heart.
I think that the rash of online bullying suicides of teenagers should give us all pause, but of course, it’s deeper than just us having a strong online presence, it’s also about our larger culture, which seeks to hammer people into conformity. I’d like if incidents like that made us all think harder about how we treat each other and about the importance of empathy, but it usually doesn’t. I think we have a deeper sickness in our society than we’re willing to admit. Even if we had the most private of internets, that still wouldn’t fix our collective soul…
Receiving appropriately-targeted ads improves one’s life compared to receiving irrelevant ads meant for a completely different demographic. Ads for bespoke suits or iPhone oscilloscopes or military jet-skis are more interesting to me than ads for Rolexes or tampons or subscriptions to Budgie Fancy, but I don’t think he’s comparing it to receiving no ads.
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