From the readings and in your experience, what are the ethical issues or concerns surrounding online advertising? Considering the Internet meme that If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold:

Online advertisements have become incredibly sophisticated in that they can target people based on all kinds of analyzed data. The idea of the advertising “nudge” is simple: over time, advertisements nudge you this way and that way to direct you down a path that a computer predicted. In other words, if the Internet realizes that I am a software developer, I start getting commercial advertisements on YouTube about JIRA. If I then give into the temptation and start using JIRA, I might start getting advertisements about why Bitbucket is so great. Over time, I am less likely to invest in a broad variety of products because of how focused my advertising is toward my interests. For example, consider a world where there was no data analytics for online advertisements. Maybe I would have been shown a personal massager (which I might purchase now that I think about it), a cool new pair of football cleats, or a discount on a flight to New Zealand. Obviously, many of these I would disregard, but the ones that I took a risk and purchased would help keep me balanced as an individual.

I believe that is an ethical issue in and of itself. The internet meme is very true: if you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold. Every time I see an advertisement about some new development platform, I know that my data was sold to help better target customers.

Does privacy become an unrealistic expectation in light of this pervasive information gathering?

In my opinion, no it does not. Just because your information is collected does not mean that there are individual people sitting at their desks reading all of your search history. Sure, the data is fed into algorithms and data analytics to help produce more targeted advertising, but it is not as if a Google employee is sitting there reading “Jack Ryan from Notre Dame just googled X, Y, and Z.” Plus, if you really wanted to protect your privacy, you could always browse the Internet logged out of all accounts and in Incognito Mode.

Do you find online advertising too invasive or is it tolerable? Do you use things like NoScript or Adblock? Why or why not? Is it ethical to use these tools?

I think it is tolerable. That being said, I still use Adblock because it gets rid of some of the clutter on webpages and also saves me the hassle of having to click out of popup windows. I believe it is ethical to use the tools: it is a similar concept as muting the television during commercials, or fast-forwarding through them on a recorded show. The only difference is that you can “fast-forward” through them in real time. But that doesn’t make it unethical, because online advertisers know that this is a possibility and still willingly take that risk.