An investigation by the media organization The Markup found the pixel by Facebook and Instagram-parent Meta on dozens of popular websites targeting kids from kindergarten to college, including sites that students are all but required to use if they want to participate in school activities or apply to college.
On some level, that’s not a surprise: tracking tools like the pixel are so widespread that intensive tracking is almost the status quo. You could make the argument that these educational sites are “just the same as any other site,” said Marshini Chetty, associate professor of computer science at the University of Chicago.
But dealing with kids raises bigger questions about tracking on the web. “Why is there the Meta Pixel? Why are there session recorders?” she said. “What is the place of that on these sites?”
BigTech’s only goal is to get rich or die trying. Everything they do serves that goal.
That’s the goal of all publicly traded companies to be fair
This reminds me of that scene from Winter Soldier (excellent movie and it gets more relevant every year)
Jasper Sitwell: Zola’s algorithm is a program…for choosing Insight’s targets
Steve Rogers: What targets?
Jasper Sitwell: You! A TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defense, a high school valedictorian in Iowa city. Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who’s a threat to HYDRA! Now, or in the future.
Steve Rogers: The Future? How could it know? [Sitwell laughs]
Jasper Sitwell: How could it not? The 21st century is a digital book. Zola taught HYDRA how to read it. Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores. Zola’s algorithm evaluates people’s past to predict their future.
Steve Rogers: And what then?
Jasper Sitwell: Oh, my God. Pierce is gonna kill me.
Steve Rogers: What then?!
Jasper Sitwell: Then the Insight Helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time.
People seem to give the most praise to Infinity War and End Game, but I contend Winter Soldier and Civil War are peak MCU
It’s one of my favourites for sure
I loved the one big scene in Endgame, but all of Winter Soldier was great
This is 100% on those sites for Siding FB Pixel.
Stop blaming big tech when the problem is everyone willfully going along with it.
If nobody added Pixel to their sites it used FB’s SDKs on mobile they wouldn’t have any of this data.
Big “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” energy.
Facebook has the resources and personnel to maintain basic ethical standards for whom they sell their products to and how they are used. They chose not to because it is more profitable to chose not to. This isn’t either/or. You blame the operators of those websites AND you blame big tech.
We need to stop pretending it is remotely OK to behave without any semblance of humanist morals in the pursuit of capital. It isn’t. It never was. It never will be. Anyone who tells you profits need to be prioritized over ethical standards, in any situation, at any time, for any reason, should be committed.
Trackers like the FB pixel, Google Analytics, etc provide value to the people/company that run the site, particularly the marketing teams. There’s really no privacy-respecting alternatives that have all the same features which is why they’re still commonly used. Google Analytics has far more features that most other similar tools.
Samsung has prep courses that funnel kids from high school into university where they come out with a job. It’s designed to basically fuel Samsung’s employee head count year after year.
Some ten years ago, they swept graduates and through them into rooms with dangerous chemicals. With nothing more than a mask.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Promise
But it pretty much the same here in NA. All of my computer classes were Microsoft heavy. I mean intro Computers spent a third of the course on Microsoft Office ffs.
Companies have educational institutions under their thumb and have for decades.
Some ten years ago, they swept graduates and through them into rooms with dangerous chemicals. With nothing more than a mask.
Not saying this isn’t an indictment of Samsung’s terrible treatment of its workers - it definitely is - but not sure how this relates to the core point of the OP?
But it pretty much the same here in NA. All of my computer classes were Microsoft heavy. I mean intro Computers spent a third of the course on Microsoft Office ffs.
Big Tech, in general, has been doing this for decades. I’ve been interviewing networking graduates for many years now, and all they can (mostly) parrot to me is Cisco-drivel. But that’s been (mostly) appropriate for the roles I’ve recruited for.
Microsoft Office (M365, really) is the proxy standard for enterprises when it comes to choice of productivity suite; directory/authentication; and/or UC. Sure, there are other options, but enterprise IT is generally influenced by where their biggest spend is, or costs that can be avoided. I’ve seen some really shitty decisions made, to put cloud “serverless” hosting with Azure, just because the org wants to dodge a ginormous SQL client CAL bill for self-hosted apps and data.
The real question we need to ask ourselves is if we’re letting the tail wag the dog here.
Are we teaching our grads Big Tech because that’s the skills that are most in demand, or are we letting Big Tech drive education agenda?
Interesting quewtion to ponder…
Google Analytics is used on even more sites and essentially does the same thing…
