When privacy advocates realise they have to pay up, I suspect many will change their tune.
- Very few people, especially privacy advocates, seem to understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
- The general view seems to be that users are the customers of companies like Google and Facebook.
- In fact, its advertisers who are the customers which means that the users are the product.
- Google and Facebook and the like collect data about users and use it to sell targeted advertising to their real customers, those with products to sell.
- All of the excellent Google services are not really free.
- The user pays for these services by allowing Google to collect data about him or her and to sell it.
- Facebook and many others are exactly the same.
- This is how these companies make a living.
- If it is taken away then they will have to begin charging for their applications and services which I suspect will be received even more badly than the growing realisation that Google and Facebook are using data personal to the user.
- This is what Microsoft’s new campaign (Scroogled) for user privacy is all about. (see it here)
- The idea is to encourage users to switch from Gmail to outlook.com as Microsoft promises that it will not go through the user’s email and use it to sell advertising.
- In fact, it promises not to go through it all.
- Fair enough, but then Microsoft doesn’t have to. It has already taken the user for a heavy OS licence in 90% of cases.
- As far as I am concerned, this is the Achilles heel of Google, Facebook and anyone else who relies on advertising for revenues.
- We have already seen browser tracking come under the microscope and now it is the turn of e-mail.
- I think that browser tracking it not such a big deal for the major players but this is much more relevant. (see here)
- If Google is forced to stop sifting through email, it will know less about the user. This means less affective advertising and consequently lower prices.
- The choice for the user is simple. Either you pay with your personal data or you pay cash.
- I suspect that many users will find paying cash for something that was previously free more painful than allowing the Internet companies to target them with advertising.
- As such I believe the privacy movement will wither on the vine once the harsh economic reality is exposed.
Blog Comments
Juha-Pekka Sipponen
February 7, 2013 at 3:02 pm
A nice post. I tend to agree that, generally speaking, “pay with personal data” will prevail over “pay cash”. It is not as risky as privacy advocates claim because people learn to compartmentalize their digital lives, excluding certain data from certain “channels”.
That, in turn, has interesting consequences to user interface logic evolution. Hence, somewhat counter-intuitively, people might not always want “unified everything” but actually to keep many things in their own sandboxes.
windsorr
February 12, 2013 at 11:25 am
Thats a very interesting point,,,the only problem is that keeping everything in sandboxes gets super confusing…even for the tech savvy….hence maybe those that really really care about privacy go for those ecosystems which you pay for the service rather than have your data banks pillaged.
Juha-Pekka Sipponen
February 12, 2013 at 12:32 pm
True. The interesting thing just is that very few people are total extremes i.e. total open books or totally private. Most people are in the middle, having slightly different identities across different social circles, resulting in certain things they want to keep private and separate from others. And the more media savvy people become, the more they realize that keeping surprisingly small part of information closed is enough for obfuscation.
So, for clarification, I don’t think it’s either-or, it’s both and that’s where many user interface paradigms have room for improvement, being “too binary” i.e. are easy to use only if either everything integrates or everything is sandboxed.
windsorr
February 12, 2013 at 2:57 pm
Quite possibly….that is going to be a headache to manage….maybe even more than when one kept in contact with telephones and snail mail….Its going to be hell to get this one right!!!
Juha-Pekka Sipponen
February 12, 2013 at 3:14 pm
Indeed so. Especially because an endless list of configuration options is not really a solution, but would just make things worse. Like you say, headache and hell ahead. But also big rewards for those who find a way
tatilsever
February 7, 2013 at 9:32 pm
Can’t they fulfill their obligations by once presenting a simple tracking authorization request to a user from an EU IP address before he can get any service from their websites?
Even if all of the customers opt-out of tracking, I don’t think ad rates would go down to zero. Google and Facebook should still stay profitable enough to provide these services. Besides, they can always restrict some features to customers who agree to tracking, as an inducement. (For example, I believe Google Maps app on iPhone asks for an opt-in so that you can use the addresses you’ve saved in your Gmail address book and it refuses to use the address book that exists on the phone, forcing the users to pick between opt-in and copy/paste addresses from Contacts app.) If they can come up with an even superficial technical reason why the features would require them to do some tracking, they can avoid customer backlash, too.
windsorr
February 12, 2013 at 11:34 am
They could but everyone presented with a simple choice to opt out would probably do so. The rates wont go down to zero but the available dollars to support these services would take a massive hit. Gieven that these companies are all isted now, they would have to do something radical to portect the margins that the investors have become accustomed to.