We spoke yesterday about digital advertisements that target user preferences on Facebook, Gmail, and other platforms. I\u2019ve always found these targeted ads somewhat unsettling \u00ad\u2013 they remind me of the difficulty of having full control over the extent of the information that internet sites \u201cknow\u201d about me. In fact, it would be interesting to have some sort of objective internet inspection done on myself, to know how much information about me exists in the ether \u2013 both the hard and fast facts (birthdate, etc.) as well as my preferences that may change over time (friends, TV shows I like, political affiliations).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Today, the line between active and passive internet involvement seems to be fuzzier than ever before. Take the political affiliation example. If I give a donation to a political candidate, that politician\u2019s monthly or quarterly FEC report will show that I gave them money; an outside observer could conclude that I support that politician. Liking a certain politician\u2019s Facebook page or retweeting and sharing their online content could also be considered active support for a candidate. In both the donation case and the social-media-sharing case,\u00a0I know that people online will publicly be able to see that information and conclude that I support the candidate.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
However, what if I don\u2019t donate or don\u2019t think I\u2019m actively engaging with this politician on social media, yet\u00a0on Facebook, I click on news articles or web links that support my candidate and also click on content that brings up flaws in their opponent? I intend for only myself to know what articles I\u2019m clicking on, yet Facebook (and whoever else could have access to their data) could start to conclude information about my preferences. Methods of engagement that we may think of (or want to think of) as passive can still be active. We as a user may not see our actions as active, but Facebook (and other sites)\u00a0certainly does.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We also discussed how the internet facilitates more efficient online transactions, and many of the benefits of having an internet-age economy. But what if the goods we\u2019re buying or selling are illegal? I\u2019m interested in how goods sold over the dark internet\/Tor network fit into our overall economy. The fascinating idea that \u201cmoney is just a representation of a bit\u201d was also brought up yesterday, which made me think of bitcoins and other the ways that illegal transactions are conducted. Not sure if we will learn about the technical background of bitcoins in this course, but that is something I\u2019d definitely want to explore if there\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Switching gears, it\u2019s interesting to think about the benefits of Anderson\u2019s Long Tail concept, but also those who oppose it. Funnily enough, the Long Tail showed up in my sociology lecture earlier today. We were talking about production of culture and how a \u201cBlockbuster\u201d strategy can lead to a far greater profit than capitalizing on the Long Tail, after reading sections from Anita Elberse\u2019s Blockbuster<\/em>. Many large movie studios today don\u2019t focus on the Long Tail and instead use a Blockbuster method: funding three or four major projects (often sequels, remakes, or known crowd pleasers) and hoping that one of them is a box-office smash-hit. This leaves far less room for funding \u201cart house\u201d and other more unique artistic project. Eric Schmidt was a major supporter of the Long Tail when Anderson\u2019s idea first emerged. Only a few years later, however, his views changed and he stated that a Blockbuster approach may be more effective going forward \u2013 evidence for how quickly developments can occur in our modern internet era (source: http:\/\/www.digitalmusicnews.com\/2013\/07\/22\/longtail\/)<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We spoke yesterday about digital advertisements that target user preferences on Facebook, Gmail, and other platforms. I\u2019ve always found these targeted ads somewhat unsettling \u00ad\u2013 they remind me of the difficulty of having full control over the extent of the information that internet sites \u201cknow\u201d about me. In fact, it would be interesting to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sdfblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}