[ SECRET POST #5746 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5746 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 13 secrets from Secret Submission Post #822.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT.

What I was trying to say in my post is that people have conflated technology and capitalism in a way that is demonstrated in this comment. The smart recommendation algorithms are a consequence of new technology which is emerging and allows us to do complicated tasks quite quickly at scale. The harvesting-your-data-to-sell-it-to-advertisers part is capitalism at work. Those are two different things that have traditionally gone together but nothing is saying they should continue to go together; you can move them independently.

The fact that currently companies that DO recommendation do it as a business tactic doesn't actually mean that this is the only viable way and that the very act of information collection is inherently sinister, although (understandably) living in the current social media environment and seeing how tech companies that became big and profited off their userbase by doing this has understandably led people to think this is the only way that companies can collect and handle data -- to profit off of people. However, a company that collects your data, processes it for insights, and distributes it back TO YOU to do with as you like and has principles regarding respecting your privacy that it takes very seriously is something that in theory could actually exist. It just doesn't right now but that's because all the actors who have been pushing forward this technology and adopting it early have been for-profit big tech companies with large R&D departments and quite irresponsible with the way they handle data and quite untransparent about their privacy policies.

But I think what people who don't understand the tech side don't understand about the situation is that now that the technology is out there, everyone can use it, which includes smaller organizations that aren't about monetizing everything.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I don't disagree with you that technology is at the point now that data collection is so fast and rampant there is no real way to "stop" it now. As well as inherently data collection isn't sinister or bad, it's just that major tech companies saw the opportunity to make a lot of money out of it and did.

However, I don't know what it will take for me to trust digital data collection in good faith because it's been the evil corporations that have taken advantage of the information they've gotten and exploited our information. Like, there's a lot of moral grey zones and I don't even know where to start.
In terms of taking all that data and making sense of it, I'm a bit skeptical too, just because historically speaking it's been routine for people to cherry pick information from data collection and build a false narrative around the information.

IMHO though, I don't feel comfortable with AO3 being a test subject for something like this. I might support some other platform to give it a try, but I just don't want AO3 to take on something that makes me really nervous. Data collection just seems so easy to exploit, even with the best of intentions. And again IDK what can be done to mitigate my concerns/skepticism.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT.

Thank you for this reply! This makes a lot of sense and I see where you're coming from. I definitely agree with you that the way companies have used our information has been so unethical and so rampant that I have serious trust issues now. So many bridges have been burned. And using users' data does open up a door to misuse and making irresponsible conclusions even with good intentions, I agree. I also have concerns about the ethical issues raised by the choices that automated content recommenders because consuming content does manipulate us (change our behavior) and I don't know if I want AO3 getting into the business of actively recommending content for that reason.

Just to explain where I am coming from, I'm a socialist computer scientist and so when I saw that the fallout of companies harvesting people's information and violating their privacy has been that people now perceive the very act of collecting information and processing it as incredibly creepy and privacy-violating full stop, even divorced of profit motive, advertisers, or sharing with third parties, it was a bit dismaying to me. What a big win for companies, for the public to just not trust data collection full stop, rather than the way these companies used and profited off of data collection! The algorithms themselves are actually useful and good (in the sense that they are capable of automating a lot of tedious work; not in the sense that they will always be put to good purposes because they clearly won't). It was a choice to use them the way that companies did (and they should be held accountable for that choice), and one that doesn't have to made by people who want to make use of the tech in the future.