True. However, it's in the interest of any company to protect its' customers.
I'm not saying the government wouldn't be able to tap into our communications, and it doesn't have to be dealt with, but that as long as we're the product, and not the customer - no one really cares about our interests.
We like free stuff, but we don't always realize that it makes us the sold product, and not the customer.
i have seen many people spill their guts on-line, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money-value. in the nineteenth century, commodities were made in factories, which karl marx called “the means of production.” capitalists were people who owned the means of production, and the commodities were made by workers who were mostly exploited. i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul. people who post frequently on boards appear to know that they are factory equipment and tennis shoes, and sometimes trade sends and email about how their contributions are not appreciated by management.
as if this were not enough, all of my words were made immortal by means of tape backups. furthermore, i was paying two bucks an hour for the privilege of commodifying and exposing myself. worse still, i was subjecting myself to the possibility of scrutiny by such friendly folks as the FBI: they can, and have, downloaded pretty much whatever they damn well please. the rhetoric in cyberspace is liberation-speak. the reality is that cyberspace is an increasingly efficient tool of surveillance with which people have a voluntary relationship.
It's both. Sure there's ad space sold, but there's also ad space that targets specific people with specific interests.
What ads you end up seeing could be based on a whole range of your personal data, usage history, and the subject matter of your own content. In many ways, these details about you make the ad spaces more valuable than if they were just random ad spaces.
Perhaps then, "your life is the product" is more accurate than "you are the product".
"Your ad here" is one thing, but "your ad in this person's life (which we track for you and report back)" is another thing.
The ad space seller arranges a stealthy introduction between ad space buyer and Dave user. Without needing permission because Dave "agreed when he started using our free service, that we could change the terms at any time, do stuff in the background to keep the business running etc" a silent on-going relationship is established without Dave being reminded of that persistent connection.
We now have default permission granted to contact list and personal details when installing some apps. I hope the rumored Android 4.3 selective permissions control per app is true.
What a great day for privacy that will be when we can stop apps bullying their way into our [contact list + internet access] when that isn't needed for the app to work.
The marketing-programming that is entering apps, whereby an impolite, unchecked persistent tracking, ad placement, additional purchase persuasion spamming and infiltration of our private data is happening, you don't need a tin foil hat to justify a few concerns.
> However, it's in the interest of any company to protect its' customers.
Its also in the interest of any company to protect its suppliers -- which is what consumers of free web-services that provide the views that are sold to advertisers are.
OTOH, this general interest in protecting "suppliers" or "customers" doesn't imply that it is in the interest of the company to protect the interests of any individual or small minority of either its paying customers or suppliers when it has a very, very large number of either, and the cost of protecting the individual or small minority would be high compared to the revenue produced directly from them (in the case of customers) or from resale of what they supply (in the case of suppliers.)
So, the web service operator isn't much motivated to be concerned about you, personally, no matter whether you are one of a very large number of paying customers or one of a very large number of suppliers of views to be sold to advertisers. It's an inherent feature of long-tail services whether they are monetized by directly or via advertising.
And, in either case, there is little in the interest of the company of protecting abstract interests of either suppliers or customers, only those interests which are likely to impact their ability or willingness to continue to purchase/supply the way they have been.
I'm not saying the government wouldn't be able to tap into our communications, and it doesn't have to be dealt with, but that as long as we're the product, and not the customer - no one really cares about our interests.
We like free stuff, but we don't always realize that it makes us the sold product, and not the customer.