Data and Goliath (43 page)

physical locations of people on Twitter:
Jalal Mahmud, Jeffrey Nichols, and Clemens Drews (7 Mar 2014), “Home location identification
of Twitter users,” arXiv:1403.2345 [cs.SI], http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.2345.

surveillance-based advertising is oversold:
This essay, for example, questions the effectiveness of Internet advertising. Derek
Thompson (13 Jun 2014), “A dangerous question: Does Internet advertising work at all?”
Atlantic
, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/a-dangerous-question-does-internet-advertising-work-at-all/372704.

one of the kids died in a car crash:
In 2014, OfficeMax sent a promotional mailing addressed to “Mike Seay/Daughter Killed
in Car Crash/Or Current Business.” That was a database error, but it illustrates the
personal nature of data these data brokers collect. Amy Merrick (23 Jan 2014), “A
death in the database,”
New Yorker
, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/01/ashley-seay-officemax-car-crash-death-in-the-database.html.

advertising that’s too targeted feels creepy:
Blase Ur et al. (2 Apr 2012), “Smart, useful, scary, creepy: Perceptions of online
behavioral advertising,” CyLab, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/research/techreports/2012/tr_cylab12007.html.

the “uncanny valley”:
Farhad Manjoo (23 Aug 2012), “The uncanny valley of Internet advertising,”
Slate
, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/08/the_uncanny_valley_of_internet_advertising_why_do_creepy_targeted_ads_follow_me_everywhere_i_go_on_the_web_.html.
Sara M. Watson (16 Jun 2014), “Data doppelgängers and the uncanny valley of personalization,”
Atlantic
, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/data-doppelgangers-and-the-uncanny-valley-of-personalization/372780.

People are okay with sloppily:
Mike Masnick (11 Mar 2008), “Where’s the line between personalized advertising and
creeping people out?”
Tech Dirt
, http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080311/121305499.shtml.

“creepy” is relative:
Blase Ur et al. (2 Apr 2012), “Smart, useful, scary, creepy: Perceptions of online
behavioral advertising,” CyLab, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/research/techreports/2012/tr_cylab12007.html.

depends a lot on our familiarity:
Evan Selinger (22 Aug 2012), “Why do we love to call new technologies ‘creepy’?”
Slate
, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/08/facial_recognition_software_targeted_advertising_we_love_to_call_new_technologies_creepy_.html.
Omer Tene and Jules Polonetsky (16 Sep 2013), “A theory of creepy: Technology, privacy,
and shifting social norms,”
Yale Journal of Law & Technology
, http://yjolt.org/theory-creepy-technology-privacy-and-shifting-social-norms.

ads that follow us around:
Sara M. Watson (16 Sep 2014), “Ask the decoder: Stalked by socks,” Al Jazeera, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/16/the-decoder-stalkedbysocks.html.

click on a link to find out why:
Mike Isaac (2 Nov 2011), “New Google ‘transparency’ feature aims to reduce ad-targeting
creepiness,”
Wired
, http://www.wired.com/2011/11/google-ad-transparency-target. Todd Essig (27 Feb 2012),
“‘Big Data’ got you creeped out? Transparency can help,”
Forbes
, http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2012/02/27/big-data-got-you-creeped-out-transparency-can-help.

Recipients of these mailings:
Charles Duhigg (19 Feb 2012), “How companies learn your secrets,”
New York Times
, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html.

50 million people have installed AdBlock Plus:
Kashmir Hill (21 Aug 2013), “Use of ad blocking is on the rise,”
Forbes
, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/21/use-of-ad-blocking-is-on-the-rise.

the value of a single:
Victor Luckerson (7 Mar 2014), “Twitter’s ad prices are in free fall,”
Time
, http://time.com/16032/twitter-ad-prices-decline. Brian Womack (16 Apr 2014), “Google
revenue falls short of estimates, ad prices drop,”
Bloomberg Business Week
, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-04-16/google-revenue-falls-short-of-estimates-as-ad-prices-decline-1.

a common commodity:
Emily Steel (12 Jun 2013), “Companies scramble for consumer data,”
Financial Times
, http://link.ft.com/r/S4XZQQ/Z8K8I2/9ZND5E/972MV7/VTD3N8/SN/h. Ken Figueredo (19
Jun 2013), “Prices and value of consumer data,”
More with Mobile
, http://www.more-with-mobile.com/2013/06/prices-and-value-of-consumer-data.html.

the value of each user:
Tristan Louis (31 Aug 2013), “How much is a user worth?”
Forbes
, http://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlouis/2013/08/31/how-much-is-a-user-worth.

already reached the peak:
Tim Hwang and Adi Kamdar (9 Oct 2013), “The theory of peak advertising and the future
of the web,” Peakads.org, http://peakads.org/images/Peak_Ads.pdf. Tim Hwang (19 Mar
2014), “The Peak Advertising Institute,”
Knight News Challenge
, https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/feedback-review/the-peak-advertising-institute.

I don’t think anyone knows:
Doc Searls (23 Mar 2009), “After the advertising bubble bursts,”
Doc Searls Weblog
, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2009/03/23/after-the-advertising-bubble-bursts.

early tropes of the Internet:
Moshe Yudkowsky (2005),
The Pebble and the Avalanche: How Taking Things Apart Creates Revolutions,
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, http://www.pebbleandavalanche.com.

eBay connected buyers and sellers:
Mark Graham (2008), “Warped geographies of development: The Internet and theories
of economic development,”
Geography Compass
2/3, http://www.geospace.co.uk/files/compass.pdf.

music promotion and distribution:
Mike Masnick (19 Jun 2013), “Hollywood’s new talking point: Gatekeepers are awesome,”
Tech Dirt
, https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/18243923466/hollywoods-new-talking-point-gatekeepers-are-awesome.shtml.

airline tickets:
Alina M. Chircu and Robert J. Kauffman (1998), “Analyzing market transformation in
the presence of Internet-driven disintermediation: The case of online travel reservation
providers,” Management Information Systems Research Center, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.196.4820&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

in some cases—advertising:
Tim Williams (3 Jun 2013), “The disintermediation
of the advertising agency business,”
LinkedIn
, http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130603205503-2042198-the-disintermediation-of-the-agency-business.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said:
Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen (2013),
The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business
, Knopf, http://www.newdigitalage.com.

A variety of economic effects:
Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian (1998),
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
, Harvard Business Review Press, http://www.inforules.com.

Google controls two-thirds:
comScore (21 Jun 2014), “comScore releases June 2014 U.S. search engine rankings,”
https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-Releases-June-2014-US-Search-Engine-Rankings.

have Facebook accounts:
Maeve Duggan and Aaron Smith (30 Dec 2013), “Social media update 2013,” Pew Research
Internet Project, http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/12/30/social-media-update-2013.

Amazon controls about:
Troy (12 May 2013), “Highlights from the U.S. Book Consumer Annual Review,”
AALB.com’s Discussion Forum
, http://aalbc.com/tc/index.php/topic/2051-highlights-from-the-us-book-consumer-annual-review.

Comcast owns about:
Trefis Team (24 Jul 2014), “Comcast earnings grow 15% on good broadband growth,”
Forbes
, http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/07/24/comcast-earnings-grow-15-on-good-broadband-growth.

In 2001, eBay started hiding:
Matthew Fordahl (2 Feb 2001), “eBay to hide members’ e-mail addresses,”
ABC News
, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98958.

in 2011, it banned e-mail addresses:
eBay (1 Oct 2011), “E-mail addresses and some links no longer permitted in listings,”
http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/news/links2011.html.

in 2012, it banned them from user-to-user:
eBay (2 Oct 2012), “Sellers: E-mail addresses and some URLs no longer allowed in
member-to-member messages,” http://announcements.ebay.com/2012/10/sellers-e-mail-addresses-and-some-urls-no-longer-allowed-in-member-to-member-messages.

Websites that profit from advertising:
Steven Levy (22 Apr 2014), “Inside the science that delivers your scary-smart Facebook
and Twitter feeds,”
Wired
, http://www.wired.com/2014/04/perfect-facebook-feed.

sites that allow you to opt out:
Nate Anderson (24 Jul 2008), “.06% opt out: NebuAd hides link in 5,
000
-word privacy policy,”
Ars Technica
, http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/07/06-opt-out-nebuad-hides-link-in-5
000
-word-privacy-policy.

The relationship is more feudal:
Bruce Schneier (26 Nov 2012), “When it comes to security, we’re back to feudalism,”
Wired
, http://www.wired.com/2012/11/feudal-security.

We like having someone else:
Rachel King (15 Oct 2012), “Consumers actually really like cloud storage, report
says,”
ZDNet
, http://www.zdnet.com/consumers-actually-really-like-cloud-storage-report-says-7
000
005784.

the rise of cloud computing:
This is a good introduction to cloud computing. Michael Armbrust et al. (10 Feb 2009),
“Above the clouds: A Berkeley view of cloud computing,” Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2009-28,
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California at Berkeley,
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.pdf.

they turn our data over:
Both Google and Microsoft have turned child porn suspects over to the FBI on their
own initiative. Robert Macpherson (4 Aug 2014), “Google defends child porn tip-offs
to police,”
Yahoo! News
, http://news.yahoo.com/google-defends-child-porn-tip-offs-police-025343404.html.
Leo Kelion (6 Aug 2014), “Microsoft tip leads to child porn arrest in Pennsylvania,”
BBC News
, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28682686.

the rise of user devices:
Jonathan Zittrain (2009), “Tethered appliances, software as service, and perfect
enforcement,” in
The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It,
Yale University Press, http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4455262/Zittrain_Future%20of%20the%20Internet.pdf.

Apple has rules about what software:
Meg Albus (5 Sep 2013), “Don’t get rejected by Apple!”
PBS Producer Exchange
, https://projects.pbs.org/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=34046325.

In 2009, Amazon automatically deleted:
Brad Stone (18 Jul 2009), “Amazon erases Orwell books from Kindle,”
New York Times
, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html.

vendors are moving to a subscription model:
Sam Grobart (14 Nov 2013), “Software makers’ subscription drive,”
Business Week
, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-14/2014-outlook-software-makers-subscription-drive.

Adobe did that with Creative Cloud:
David Pogue (17 Sep 2013), “Adobe’s software subscription model means you can’t own
your software,”
Scientific American
, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/adobe-software-subscription-model-means-you-cant-own-your-software.

if I decide to abandon those services:
Google is much better at letting users leave with their data than many other companies
are.

Political scientist Henry Farrell:
Henry Farrell (Fall 2013), “The tech intellectuals,”
Democracy
30, http://www.democracyjournal.org/30/the-tech-intellectuals.php.

It’s not reasonable to tell people:
This isn’t to say that these things are essential and that it’s impossible to get
along without them. I don’t have a Facebook account. I know people who don’t have
cell phones, and one person who doesn’t shop online at all. We do have a choice, but
living without any of these things can be very difficult, both personally and professionally.

Opting out just isn’t a viable choice:
Jessica Goldstein (29 Apr 2014), “Meet the woman who did everything in her power
to hide her pregnancy from Big Data,”
Think Progress
, http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/04/29/3432050/can-you-hide-from-big-data.

5: GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL

The documents from Snowden:
Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani (14 Oct 2013), “NSA collects millions of e-mail
address books globally,”
Washington Post
, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-collects-millions-of-e-mail-address-books-globally/2013/10/14/8e58b5be-34f9-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html.
Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani (30 Oct 2013), “NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo,
Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say,”
Washington Post
,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html.
Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras (7 Jun 2013), “U.S., British intelligence mining
data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program,”
Washington Post
, http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html.