• Toribor@corndog.social
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    2 days ago

    ICE is using Palantir data to target neighborhoods, which is purchased directly from “advertising” data brokers. So “advertising” is only part of the story. It’s always been about creating a surveillance state, it’s just not evenly distributed.

    • Karjalan@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I don’t think the websites all started thinking “I’ll harvest data for the inevitable surveillance state”

      Google actually started with great intentions and hoped to translate the data into revenue via “normal” ads

      But… Dogy ass holes paid better than ads, and, like most companies, whenever they get successful/big enough, everything goes out the window in favour of profits

      • draco_aeneus@mander.xyz
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        1 day ago

        “Knowledge is power” is an expression at least hundreds of years old. Whether these data collectors were specifically thinking of adverts or not, they realised that this information had value, and so they collected it. I don’t think we can know the true motivations of the data collectors and brokers, but we can know that there is (and always has been) a market for data.

        • Karjalan@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Yeah exactly. Ultimately they became money machines, and they only exist to make more money now… Some will have willfully amoral motivations (Cambridge analytica, palantir) and others will just persue more money, regardless of the outcome of his they do it, I.E implicily amoral.