Today whilst logging into a computer game and reading the conditions carefully I followed a series of obscure links that eventually led to an American article called 'Understanding Online Advertising' by the Network Advertising Initiative. I have to admit, I was, perhaps naively, strangely heartened by what I read there.
It has not escaped my attention lately that online marketing has got pretty damned good these days, and often, especially when slightly manic (I am slightly bipolar) I start imagining that there are people out there watching me, like some sort of virtual shop assistants, personally selecting stuff with which to tempt me, or network anthropologists offering me stuff as part of some sort of social experiment or focus group. Well, 'just because your paranoid' as the saying goes.... My father worked in one of the top UK advertising companies for some time, so it is an area that interests me.
A friend recently tried a social experiment on Facebook, posting a picture of an £85,000 lottery winning ticket, to see how all his friends would react, how long it would take his ex partner to find out and who would tell her. It was quite a whacky idea, and I thought it was a slightly hurtful motive, but it was certainly very interesting, and he found out quite a lot about his friends that way. Some people started telling him how he ought to spend his money and his 'ex' did indeed find out very soon, whereas he expected his friends to be discreet. I think expecting friends not to speak to ones ex partner is a bit of an unrealistic expectation anyway, but that is not my point.
In the old days psychologists like Milgram and others could do really exciting experiments on unsuspecting participants, but these days, rather sadly, there are strict laws of consent governing what you can and can't do to the unsuspecting. What many people do not realise, however, is that these laws do not necessarily apply in computer games and sites such as Facebook, where people are deemed to have given their consent. In June 2014 Facebook manipulated data as part of a mood changing experiment that was revealed . A Wall Street Journal article by Reed Albergotti suggested that Facebook, for instance, conducts social experiments on its unsuspecting users on a far greater scale that most people realise. How do we feel about this, people? Do we mind? Should we mind?
Personally I don't really mind that much. Facebook is a great service and it is free and if the deal is that someone wants to much about with my data and sell me stuff, that doesn't bother me too much. In fact the whole personal privacy thing does not bother me too much. I have nothing to hide, and I think the world would be a simpler place if nobody ever hid anything ever. On the other hand, it is said that almost everyone has something to hide, and once you have something to hide people can blackmail you. And, of course, if there was a political regime to which I was opposed, and sometimes I feel like there might be one already, and they spied on me, that would be intrusive and scary. If it was a benign regime that would be OK, but who is to judge whether a regime is benign or not? All regimes fondly believe that they are benign, and if you let one regime spy on you then all the technology is there in place for any hostile regime when they came into office.
Anyway, musings apart, according to the Network Advertising Initiative, internet advertising is never personalised as such but works by linking tags relating to your expressed interests. Which, of course we all knew. The thing is, these things are so darn sophisticated that they feel human. It can get quite scary..... Better keep taking the pills. Not that I am. I will let you know if I need to, because I am honest and open about that sort of thing. Bring it on!
Ironically, Facebook are, perhaps, the most secretive people of all, wheeling and dealing secretly away in their secret labs. But that is the nature of business, perhaps.
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