Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

Even Barbie will be listening to your conversations soon.

Why the need for a petition? Why not just not by that stupid thing for your kid?

Because boycotting is useless in today's reality.

How? If a product doesn't sell than why would they keep trying to sell it?

Because there's not nearly enough people actually boycotting to make even a modicum of difference?

What I mean, one can say "I'm boycotting EA", but then forget about that as soon as a new shiny game is announced.

I guess part of it is what the point of a boycott is — is it to make the person doing it feel good, or is it to drive the company to bankruptcy?

And also, Europol chief warns on computer encryption

edited 29th Mar '15 6:10:25 AM by Greenmantle

Successful Boycotts.

"Hidden areas of the internet and encrypted communications make it harder to monitor terror suspects, warns Europol's Rob Wainwright."

I'm sure lots of things make it harder to monitor terrorists, like not being able to read my mail or install cameras in my living room. Face to face meetings sure make it hard to monitor terrorists!

edited 29th Mar '15 8:10:53 AM by DeMarquis

Boycotts don't work when not enough people are upset about a thing to successfully boycott it. The "Nos" are outweighed by the many, many "Yes's", and capitalism works exactly as it's supposed to, but it can be a bitter pill to swallow when you realize your moral outrage lost, fair and square.

I don't see how a petition is any better in that regard, besides potentially disguising the actual statistics by only presenting one side and hoping the target doesn't look at the other.

edited 29th Mar '15 1:57:31 PM by TobiasDrake

That's done the old-fashioned and rather expensive way — with a lot of people, and a lot of tradecraft. Of course, even then a person can break contact.

But even then, only with a warrant.

Tobias: Did you read the list of successful recent boycotts? It isnt necessary to wreck the company, merely make them slightly less competitive than their closest rivals.

Yes. My point isn't that all boycotts don't work. My point is laying down that the reason why the ones that don't work fail is simply because enough people didn't support it, and you can't solve "being on the losing side of the vote" with a petition. It's attempting to replace a capitalist response with a democratic one without addressing the core reason for failure: because there just aren't enough people agreeing with you.

edited 30th Mar '15 8:43:17 AM by TobiasDrake

Populist market action against a large corporation is all but impossible unless they commit an act of such gross malfeasance that nobody can ignore it.

"Boycotts don't work when not enough people join it". Of course. When enough people do...

Exactly. The success or failure of a boycott is dependant entirely on how many people support it. Opting for a petition instead of a boycott does nothing to change this.

It might or it might not. I note that according to the website, over 26 thousand people signed that petition. The petition itself carries no force, of course, but it could serve as a vehicle for raising public awareness.

That said, it isnt clear what is so objectionable about that particular use of wi-fi technology. My own child owns a "Leapad" hand held gaming device that can can use our house wi-fi to connect to the internet. You have to do it deliberately, though, and specifically act to store any recordings on the company's cloud server. There are also adult settings to prevent my child from doing this on his own.

That's part of the purpose of a petition. Signing a petition is easy. It takes five seconds of your time and can be done entirely off the information presented with the petition itself, and then can never be taken back if future information becomes available to the signatory. In short, the only real advantages it offers over a boycott is that it's remarkably easy to be intellectually dishonest via petitioning, as has been fantastically explored via such studies as the Dihydrogen Monoxide hoax, or Jimmy Kimmel's Comparison Survey competing Obamacare against the Affordable Care Act for public opinion.

The advantage of a petition is that it's effortless to sign and easy to manipulate. The disadvantage of a petition is that nobody with the power to change things usually cares about petitions, because they're effortless to sign and easy to manipulate.

You're being needlessly cynical. Petitions are just another tool to use, and they can be used well or mis-used just like any other tool.

Facebook tracking people without their permission, thanks to all those "like" buttons on the web

So let me get this straight: Even if you've never joined Facebook, they can track you just because you happen to visit a site with a Facebook button on it? If so, that's just plain unacceptable.

Kind of obvious, isn't it? To make sure that likes only happen once per person, they'd have to track who's liking things. My reaction to this is... "duh".

I mean, who could see that and honestly believe that their like is anonymous?

edited 3rd Apr '15 11:06:47 AM by Fighteer

From the article: "This does not mean that Facebook tracks only those users who click on the ‘like’ button. No, Facebook is not such a lame player! Rather, every time you visit a site that has the “like” button hosted on it, Facebook evidently gets the opportunity to track your browsing activities. It places cookies on your computer which allows it to garner all the relevant information it wants for its advertisement purpose even if you have logged-off from that site which allowed the company to place the cookies in the first place."

So you don't even have to "like" something to be tracked.

They and every other site. Again, so what? Tracking cookies have been a thing since forever.

The issue is that Facebook is placing cookies on users computers on web sites that are not affiliated with Facebook itself. By going to, say, TV Tropes, you are implicitly giving TVT permission to place a cookie on you (unless you actively deny that permission). But by coming here none of are intending to give a third party with no connection to TVT permission to place a cookie on us. It's that level of indirectness which gives this practice the appearance of insidiousness.

Facebook makes available a website where you can opt out of targeted advertising. Most browsers also have settings that allow you to manage what cookies get placed on your system.

Wait, this outrage is over tracking cookies?

Why does it matter?

The problem is not 'tracking cookies' in and of themselves. It's FB using stuff of people who visit websites but don't use FB at all.

Kinda like buying a drink other than Coke at a cafe, but Coca-Cola (the company) keeping tabs on your drinking habits (the analogy might now work in full, but the principle stands, imo).

edited 3rd Apr '15 2:43:44 PM by Quag15

I'm still not clear on why that's a bad thing.

In the analogy, Coca-Cola has a perfectly good reason to do that: tailoring their products to suit market trends. Inventing new flavors and marketing existing flavors in regions where those flavors would have the highest demand.

edited 3rd Apr '15 2:59:40 PM by TobiasDrake