Tangent to the general discussion here I would be interested in hearing other’s opinions on a view I hold regarding the entire state of affair with online marketing techniques around tracking (both in terms of URL and geolocation).
I try to think about what we would do if marketing followed the same approach in the real world as in the virtual world (assume the costs were near zero). I would think most people would consider the real world actions to be a form of stalking and considered illegal.
It feels like it depends a bit on how you frame it. A lot of session tracking is basically equivalent to a store-clerk paying attention to what you do in their store, which is pretty common practice. Can you say more about what specific kinds of tracking feel unethical to you? (I can see some other things that are more cross-site tracking that feel worse to me, but not necessarily that much worse than being watched by a security guard in a mall)
I think it depends a lot on how you frame it, and analogies work much less well than people expect because of ways the Internet is very different from previous environments.
The intuitive social norms surrounding the store clerk involve the clerk having socially normal memory performance and a social conscience surrounding how they use that memory. What if the store clerk were writing down everything you did in the store, including every time you picked your nose, your exact walking path, every single item you looked at and put back, and what you were muttering to your shopping companion? What if that list were quickly sent off to an office across the country, where they would try to figure out any number of things like “which people look suspicious” and “where to display which items”? What if the clerk followed you around the entire store with their notepad when it’s a giant box store with many departments? For the cross-site case, imagine that the office also receives detailed notes about you from the clerks at just about every other place you go, because those ones wound up with more profitable store layouts and lower theft rates and the other shops gradually went out of business.
There are other analogy framings still; consider one with security cameras instead, and whether it feels different, and what different assumptions might be in play. But in all of those cases, relying on misplaced assumptions about humanlike capability, motivation, and agency is to be wary of. (Fortunately, I think a lot of people here should be familiar with that one!)
Yeah, I share the sense that simply reasoning from analogy is not super useful here, which is why I disagreed a bit with the top-level argument which said that by analogy to existing marketing practices, we should consider tracking obviously equivalent to stalking, which felt relatively weak to me (though I do actually think there are a bunch of quite serious problems with trackers of various forms).
[Rana hits on most of what I say here, but more clearly I think.]
I agree, there is a lot that happens in real interactions that is similar but seems much different.
First, the store clerk is limited largely to that store. The virtual world and big data is about taking all my other activities and then using that to guide how the clerk engages me in that one store. The parallel there would be having that clerk follow me around all day documenting everything I do, buy, look at....
I have more control over what information I provide the clerk. Clearly that person will know my sex/gender, approximate age and other physical traits. If they are really attentive, and able to see, they might know what type of car I drive and would be able to guess at socioeconomic status based on dress, speech and manner/demeanor. They will generally not know my name, address or approximate location, my travel habits, where I might work or my larger social circle.
Much of the information now collected is something I have no control over. For the clerk I can do any number of things to control what information I share. This is not the case in the virtual world. So, that gets me back to the “If someone did this in the real world....”
It’s not that I’m saying everything should be taken as stalking but rather it should be considered more carefully. I’ve just never really seen the issue framed as how would this look if done in the “old fashioned” shopping/commercial interaction setting. Would that change anything?
Tangent to the general discussion here I would be interested in hearing other’s opinions on a view I hold regarding the entire state of affair with online marketing techniques around tracking (both in terms of URL and geolocation).
I try to think about what we would do if marketing followed the same approach in the real world as in the virtual world (assume the costs were near zero). I would think most people would consider the real world actions to be a form of stalking and considered illegal.
Why treat it differently in the virtual world?
It feels like it depends a bit on how you frame it. A lot of session tracking is basically equivalent to a store-clerk paying attention to what you do in their store, which is pretty common practice. Can you say more about what specific kinds of tracking feel unethical to you? (I can see some other things that are more cross-site tracking that feel worse to me, but not necessarily that much worse than being watched by a security guard in a mall)
I think it depends a lot on how you frame it, and analogies work much less well than people expect because of ways the Internet is very different from previous environments.
The intuitive social norms surrounding the store clerk involve the clerk having socially normal memory performance and a social conscience surrounding how they use that memory. What if the store clerk were writing down everything you did in the store, including every time you picked your nose, your exact walking path, every single item you looked at and put back, and what you were muttering to your shopping companion? What if that list were quickly sent off to an office across the country, where they would try to figure out any number of things like “which people look suspicious” and “where to display which items”? What if the clerk followed you around the entire store with their notepad when it’s a giant box store with many departments? For the cross-site case, imagine that the office also receives detailed notes about you from the clerks at just about every other place you go, because those ones wound up with more profitable store layouts and lower theft rates and the other shops gradually went out of business.
There are other analogy framings still; consider one with security cameras instead, and whether it feels different, and what different assumptions might be in play. But in all of those cases, relying on misplaced assumptions about humanlike capability, motivation, and agency is to be wary of. (Fortunately, I think a lot of people here should be familiar with that one!)
Yeah, I share the sense that simply reasoning from analogy is not super useful here, which is why I disagreed a bit with the top-level argument which said that by analogy to existing marketing practices, we should consider tracking obviously equivalent to stalking, which felt relatively weak to me (though I do actually think there are a bunch of quite serious problems with trackers of various forms).
[Rana hits on most of what I say here, but more clearly I think.]
I agree, there is a lot that happens in real interactions that is similar but seems much different.
First, the store clerk is limited largely to that store. The virtual world and big data is about taking all my other activities and then using that to guide how the clerk engages me in that one store. The parallel there would be having that clerk follow me around all day documenting everything I do, buy, look at....
I have more control over what information I provide the clerk. Clearly that person will know my sex/gender, approximate age and other physical traits. If they are really attentive, and able to see, they might know what type of car I drive and would be able to guess at socioeconomic status based on dress, speech and manner/demeanor. They will generally not know my name, address or approximate location, my travel habits, where I might work or my larger social circle.
Much of the information now collected is something I have no control over. For the clerk I can do any number of things to control what information I share. This is not the case in the virtual world. So, that gets me back to the “If someone did this in the real world....”
It’s not that I’m saying everything should be taken as stalking but rather it should be considered more carefully. I’ve just never really seen the issue framed as how would this look if done in the “old fashioned” shopping/commercial interaction setting. Would that change anything?