> Every scrap of data that is taken from you will be leveraged against you
False, because if I feed false & non-incriminating pieces of data to a surveillance system - which is not an edge case, but the exact idea that we are arguing about in this thread - then it will not be leveraged against me, and in fact it will decrease the amount of leverage that the system has against me.
> or sold to someone else on the promise that it could be
Right, at which point it will make that system worse, as well.
> The reason there is a multi-billion dollar a year industry around buying and selling the most mundane aspects of your life is because it gives others huge advantages over you. It allows them to take more of your money, to punish you, to erode your ability to enact change, and to manipulate you into supporting positions favorable to them.
Yes, I know this, and the point of feeding fake data is to prevent people from doing this. There's no point in putting this in, because that isn't the interesting part of the discussion, it's whether fake data actually works. Why do you keep putting completely irrelevant material into your comments?
> The data they collect allows them to do this no matter how inaccurate their assumptions about you are.
No. No no no. This is false. "Inaccurate data", just by itself, is worthless. It doesn't do anything. It's only inaccurate data along specific dimensions ("incriminating" data) that actually matters, and it's straightforward (if not easy) to "shape" the fake data that you feed to surveillance systems to that which is simultaneously (a) damaging to ad systems and (b) not incriminating at all.
And the rest of this paragraph? Pure speculation. You cannot make a connection between these kinds of negative outcomes and Ad Nauseam (and related techniques) because it has never happened.
> Ad Nauseam's approach fails to have any meaningful impact on the outcome.
You have precisely zero evidence for this, and I have counter-evidence: Google specifically banned Ad Nauseam from the Chrome Store[1], which is very good evidence for the fact that it is effective in ways that adblockers and anti-fingerprinting tools are not.
Your entire comment is filled with ridiculous assertions, completely irrelevant tangents, illogical leaps, and pure speculation. None of it lines up with reality.
> You cannot make a connection between these kinds of negative outcomes and Ad Nauseam (and related techniques) because it has never happened...Your entire comment is filled with ridiculous assertions, completely irrelevant tangents, illogical leaps, and pure speculation. None of it lines up with reality.
I clearly can't convince you, but I strongly encourage you to educate yourself if you honestly think none of the things I described have ever happened or could ever happen. Pretty much all of it is happening and/or has happened.
Stores changing prices on a per person basis based on their data?
"For example, ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace, indicates that it could increase profits by 84% by experimenting with personalized prices (Wallheimer 2018). Other players, such as travel sites (e.g., Orbitz, Hotel Tonight; DeAmicis 2015; Mattioli 2012), retailers (e.g., Amazon.com, Home Depot, Staples; Streitfeld 2000; Valentino-DeVries et al. 2012), and even grocery stores (e.g., Safeway; Clifford 2012) have also reportedly begun implementing personalized prices for their customers based on individual characteristics." (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-019-00224-3)
Other fun ways stores use your data to discriminate against you? They can tell you their return policy is that they don't accept returns or have a very short return window while the next person who walks in the door gets told their return policy is extremely generous. Some even use it to decide how long to leave you on hold, bumping you down to the bottom of the queue when someone with a better "consumer reputation" calls in.
Health insurance rates being influenced by big data? There has been going on for a long time and there's a massive push to increase it.
"Insurers contend they use the information to spot health issues in their clients — and flag them so they get services they need. And companies like LexisNexis say the data shouldn’t be used to set prices. But as a research scientist from one company told me: “I can’t say it hasn’t happened.” (https://www.propublica.org/article/health-insurers-are-vacuu...)
Police using search histories to fish for suspects?
Seriously, all of this stuff is happening. The vast majority of the ways the data you hand over to companies are being used against you happen without your ever being made aware of it, but be assured that your life has already been impacted by the data you've provided and you will be dealing with the fall out of that data being out there for the rest of your life. Adding more data to that pile, accurate or not, will only hurt you.
Google banning Ad Nauseam is not proof that it will save you. Google is in the ad business and it's possible they banned it because they objected to the concept, thought it could have hurt the perception that their data was accurate, had concerns about how it would impact payouts, or any other reason, but it would do nothing to prevent any of the abuses described above and actually opens you up to more risk.
It's not like anyone is throwing out the file they have on you because there might be a mistake in it. Data brokers get paid the same no matter how accurate their data is. Feel free to get yourself flagged as being/doing more and more random things on top of all the real data you give up if you like, but I hope that you'll give it some real thought because it can, is, and will be used against you, and all that data (real or not) never ever goes away.
False, because if I feed false & non-incriminating pieces of data to a surveillance system - which is not an edge case, but the exact idea that we are arguing about in this thread - then it will not be leveraged against me, and in fact it will decrease the amount of leverage that the system has against me.
> or sold to someone else on the promise that it could be
Right, at which point it will make that system worse, as well.
> The reason there is a multi-billion dollar a year industry around buying and selling the most mundane aspects of your life is because it gives others huge advantages over you. It allows them to take more of your money, to punish you, to erode your ability to enact change, and to manipulate you into supporting positions favorable to them.
Yes, I know this, and the point of feeding fake data is to prevent people from doing this. There's no point in putting this in, because that isn't the interesting part of the discussion, it's whether fake data actually works. Why do you keep putting completely irrelevant material into your comments?
> The data they collect allows them to do this no matter how inaccurate their assumptions about you are.
No. No no no. This is false. "Inaccurate data", just by itself, is worthless. It doesn't do anything. It's only inaccurate data along specific dimensions ("incriminating" data) that actually matters, and it's straightforward (if not easy) to "shape" the fake data that you feed to surveillance systems to that which is simultaneously (a) damaging to ad systems and (b) not incriminating at all.
And the rest of this paragraph? Pure speculation. You cannot make a connection between these kinds of negative outcomes and Ad Nauseam (and related techniques) because it has never happened.
> Ad Nauseam's approach fails to have any meaningful impact on the outcome.
You have precisely zero evidence for this, and I have counter-evidence: Google specifically banned Ad Nauseam from the Chrome Store[1], which is very good evidence for the fact that it is effective in ways that adblockers and anti-fingerprinting tools are not.
Your entire comment is filled with ridiculous assertions, completely irrelevant tangents, illogical leaps, and pure speculation. None of it lines up with reality.
[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-bans-adn...