Several times a month I hear some new story or other, probably on NPR (yes, I am one of the ones the pledge drives are lamenting about, I haven't yet contributed despite being an avid listener...you know what, I thought about contributing for real some this morning!), about facebook and privacy, or google and privacy, pandora and facebook and Google and twitter linking up to retain everything about every song I ever listened to and then commented about on facebook...
I hate twitter, but anyway. I wasn't particularly thrilled with facebook started taking recognizable things I once said I liked and linking them to random advertisements that might affect other people if they wanted to click on said random links--but who really looks at that anyway? I'm not so much of a facebook user anymore anyway, I'm finding I value the world IRL (that's In Real Life, so the local public radio guy explained) more and more, which, if you knew me in high school, will know that's quite a change of heart.
In general, all of this information collecting and selling--or not--the deliverance of targeted ads, this ability for some advertising firm to build an entire profile of me, what kind of music I listen to, what links I click on, what I've ever bought ever...
Well, I can see some potentially bad ways that a repository of such information could be used, a la "big brother", and in one sense I think my shopping habits are nobody else's damn business on principle (nonexistent over the Internet, mostly). But since it happens to all the millions of Internet users all over I can hardly think that anybody will find my dismally tightwad habits particularly interesting anyway, and if all it's being used for is to make sure certain ads come my way instead of others...well, if I'm going to enjoy having my whole life on Google calendar and bringing you this blog (come on Mozilla, you're really going to put a red squiggle under the word "blog?" You really aren't with the 'net, are you?), they've got to pay for it somehow, and since I will take ads I can ignore for free services I would actually rather get ones for things I might actually like.
Hey, now that I have a job, maybe I'll buy a domain and hosting!
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