Pajiba

This is what Torchwood should have done.

I can't wait for this.

So, this is like Ghost in the Shell without the need for cybernetic bodies? I'm intrigued.

Yes, Sean Gunn.

This looks like an absolute must!
But can we get back to the nekkid Skarsgard pics?

Wesley AND Kurt?

I'm in.

I spend much of my day job dealing with privacy issues in the context of mobile apps and online advertising. What's been fascinating recently is how the conflict between the "free" web and interest based advertising is really coming to a head.

For years, we've been told that the web is "free"; when in fact it has been paid for by our eyeballs looking at ads. If Pajiba didn't run ads, there would have to be a paywall, and there'd have to be aggressive copyright enforcement (which there should be anyway, but that's another issue altogether).

The interesting part is that the business model isn't new. For decades we watched commercial TV shows, paid for by advertising, with the ads targeted towards likely viewers of the show.

Online ads just take it to the next obvious level. In order to show you an ad you might be interested in, I probably need to know... what you are interested in! Therefore I need to collect information to better serve the right ad. It's generally innocuous albeit annoying.

However privacy advocates who focus on commerce use polling data which shows that 97% of Americans say they are "concerned" about privacy, and combine it with the realities of online advertising, swirl in the non-sequitur of data security, and say "we must ban the current model of online adverts, for if we don't the internet will fail!"

When we went back and asked people "are you willing to have information shared with advertisers in order to get content and apps at no direct monetary cost", the whole picture shifts. The vast majority say "sure, I'll make that trade". Yes, they want to know what is going to be done with the data stored, and there's a bit of a general dislike for advertising, but they understand the benefits and costs, and prefer ads to money from their pockets.

And by the way, preventing data collection for advertising won't bring you less ads. In fact a review of how the EU has been impacted by some privacy laws show that users will get MORE ads, that are less relevant. Worse still, websites like pajiba get paid less money, hiring fewer writers, etc etc etc.

Meanwhile, the government is busy pushing for changes to the law to require telcos to keep TWO YEARS of location data on customers, and opposing changes to the law that would require subpoenas to look at information stored in the cloud.

Worse still, the real problem areas like insurance companies using data to determine rates or exclusion, job discrimination on credit records, interest rate setting by race through demographic information ends up not really being part of the discussion. Instead it's"My iPhone knows where I am and is telling advertisers!!!!!!! OMG"

Ultimately, you get choose your poison. A world where you are shown ads and pay nothing out of pocket, a world with paywalls and no spread costs, or worse, a wasteland where professional content is limited to a very few companies who have big enough databases to make it work inside their own walled garden.