Why would you do this to us?

  • Otter@lemmy.ca
    692·
    11 days ago

    Unfortunately some of the stuff that allows fingerprinting falls into a convenience vs privacy argument. It allows a website / web app to make changes to display things more appropriately, or have helpful functionality. That’s why when you use a browser that is very strict about fingerprinting, some stuff will break.

    An even simpler example is the screen aspect ratio. On a small screen, you want to use as much of the space as you can, but that information can be used for fingerprinting. This was annoying on browsers like mullvad, before they updated the aspect ratio to something more modern.

    That doesn’t excuse companies that abuse that data for malicious fingerprinting.

    • undefinedTruth@lemmy.zip
      5·
      11 days ago

      Most of this stuff is done locally by the browser using media queries in CSS. There is no reason for that data to make its way to the server.

    • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
      45·
      11 days ago

      Yeah exactly. A lot of features are like, let’s design the website to perfectly suit your device. But then that means they know everything about your device, otherwise they can’t design for it. Then, if they know everything about your device, bad actors will abuse that information. So the only solution is going back to shit websites, but nobody wants that, so we just kind of pretend that it’s not a problem and compromise as best we can

      • Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        9·
        11 days ago

        Don’t speak for the lot of us.

        I want to go back to websites that were actually just functional websites that did the thing they were designed to do and nothing more.

        • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
          21·
          11 days ago

          Most people don’t actually want that unfortunately. I agree with you but the numbers don’t lie. People love bloated and annoying websites

          • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
            5·
            10 days ago

            Are you sure? Because I’d bet that people don’t think about it enough to say they love it or hate it. Most people don’t understand that the internet doesn’t have to be this way. Its our job to enlighten them to that, I think.

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
          12·
          11 days ago

          Unfortunately people want things like websites being easily readable regardless of device form factor, language being automatically detected, ability to choose font families for readability… I know, people are idiots.

          • Aniki@feddit.org
            2·
            10 days ago

            yeah that can all (except language) happen browser-side easily

            and language, now the website knows i speak english. there’s 1.5 billion people speaking english. that alone does not identify me.

      • kodevade@lemmy.zip
        8·
        11 days ago

        I kinda dont see a problem “boring” shitty websites that do its job. For example Wikipedia hasn’t changed much and it’s still my most used website, it gives me a good sense of familiarity and I know exactly what to find where

        Maybe I am weird but I kinda preferr boring TBH

  • daannii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    542·
    11 days ago

    Greed. Lack of ethics.

    Many years ago. I think it was like 2016-17 ish. I interviewed at a university for a grad program that’s basically “psychology -engineering”. Designing things to work with human psychology. Aka human factors psychology

    (I ended up doing a different degree).

    During this interview thing. I was there 2 days. It’s like an event. You meet professors and tour labs. See what other grads are working on and you have lunch and dinner with current grads and professors.

    So a professor was talking about developing tech to do eye tracking on phones. So they could see what you were looking at on the screen and for how long.

    Now at this time I knew a little bit about eye tracking methods. Firstly I pointed out that it would be impossible for it to be very accurate without stabilizing the head (as is done in research), usually with a chin mount that holds the head still. But the guy said it didn’t need to be that accurate as the intent was marketing. See what items people look at when scrolling on shopping apps/sites. And see how long they look at it.

    I also pointed out that this was highly unethical because it’s using physiological data to manipulate someone into spending money. Indiscriminately.

    I said What about people with a shopping addiction.? Or kids using their parents credit cards. And you would be using this data to psychologically manipulate people for purchases but the data could be used in all sorts of other ways that really even more unethical.

    The idea was that if someone showed interest by looking at an item longer then that item would be presented again by the app. Multiple times even. To encourage purchase.

    Or to show items that were similar to try to seal the deal with what the person was finding appealing.

    Possibly with price alterations to encourage purchase.

    When I said again that this was obviously unethical. As a scientist our goal should not be to manipulate the public I was told “someone’s going to do it, it might as well be us so we get paid for it”.

    I was very surprised that this came with chuckles and agreement from other students.

    Another professor I talked to about her work was investigating devices that could help people drive who were hearing impaired. So it was quite the contrast.

    I did not get offered a PhD position but they did offer me admission to their masters program that was 50k a year. Near D.C. 2 year program. (Combo positiond are typically “free” in a manner of speaking. Highly competitive but that’s how it’s done). I wasn’t interested in paying them 200k for a master’s (after taking loans for living expenses too).

    I also learned later they don’t even have masters/PhD program combos. Which is what it said on their website and I specifically applied to that. They also gave me a 2 week notice for the interview.

    You ever buy a plane ticket 2 weeks ahead? $$$$$

    They didn’t reimburse me for that either. Which is customary for these interview invites. Typically travel and lodging is covered by the university. They had me stay in some graduates house. They had like 6 roommates.

    Cheap-ass, greedy, no ethics, bastards.

    GMU

    • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
      9·
      11 days ago

      Well at least I am pretty sure corruption in academia never had any long-term consequences for the population! /s

    • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      5·
      11 days ago

      What you describe is being used by now. The permanent eye-tracking got low-level support on Snapdragon SoCs by 2023 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, “Sensing Hub”), the Honor Magic 6 phone advertised itself as able to “open apps by looking at them”; those desperate fucks really tried to sell this as a good thing to users. Though even this article eventually spilled the beans:

      “Content Personalization: Adapt news feeds based on the focus and duration of your gaze.”

      They want you to think this is a good thing, but it’s clearly dystopian. And already 3 years old, so by now they certainly found even more ways to make everyone miserable & manipulated.

      The Google Assistant famously still listened to the microphone and uploaded data even if you tried to stop it, so I genuinely always recommend everyone to either flash your phone with GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, /e/OS or iodéOS immediately or throw it away. Modern mainline phones are a health hazard.

      • daannii@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 days ago

        Yeah I keep a piece of tape over my front camera on my phone.

        A strip. Because there are usually other cameras you can’t see. Idk which they use but yeah. This tech was already in development 10 years ago. It definitely is common on most phones and apps by now.

      • Aniki@feddit.org
        1·
        10 days ago

        actually, what i’ve learned is that some people (probably the majority?) actually like being shown ads. that is, i believe, because many people have no inherent purpose of life. so they need to be told why they exist by someone else (“you must consume” is the message of ads. it gives people a purpose in life).

    • Aniki@feddit.org
      1·
      10 days ago

      I also pointed out that this was highly unethical because it’s using physiological data to manipulate someone into spending money. Indiscriminately.

      I said What about people with a shopping addiction.? Or kids using their parents credit cards. And you would be using this data to psychologically manipulate people for purchases but the data could be used in all sorts of other ways that really even more unethical.

      marketing is highly unethical in general. however, your points are kinda invalid. sure, children can use their parents’ credit cards, but they can also burn the money with a lighter. children can do stupid things, and ideally such a purchase would be illegal and the parents eligible for a refund. or you would need a password to authenticate etc.

      however what is a real problem is that advertisement poisons our environment. when you step out on the street, there’s ads everywhere. you can’t go anywhere where there’s no ads. the consequence is that your head is trapped in an eternal cobweb of “consume, consume, consume”. you must consume, there is nothing else to do. that is the true horror that modern marketing has brought to us. psychologically hacking the brain to make us think about buying stuff all the time.

  • 87Six@lemmy.zip
    152·
    11 days ago

    They didn’t really develop it, it just kinda happened, because browsers send so much goddamn data to the servers

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        11 days ago

        You’re fired. We’ll just hire someone from India for $0.03 a week.

        We can dream about getting billions of people to all agree to stop undercutting each other. It’s a nice dream

        • 0x0@lemmy.zip
          1·
          11 days ago

          We can dream about getting billions of people to all agree to stop undercutting each other. It’s a nice dream

          The conditioning is working. Don’t unionize.

        • Aniki@feddit.org
          1·
          10 days ago

          the problem is that even if you convince 5 million people to join your union and raise your wages, the other 295 million people in the country are then gonna take the opportunity to undercut you, which leads you to be fired as “too expensive” and other people to take your job.