Reason 5,654,309 I’m Glad I’m Not A Charter Customer
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The NY Times BITS blog has an interesting post today for anyone that subscribes to Charter Communications Internet services. They will begin spying on you to serve you ads based upon what you browse. But it’s good for you!
The five-paragraph letter positioned the monitoring program as an “an enhanced online experience that is more customized to your interests and activities.”
“As a result,’’ the letter said, “the advertising you typically see online will better reflect the interests you express through your web-surfing activity. You will not see more ads — just ads that are more relevant to you.”
As a publisher that runs ads, I’m less than enthusiastic as well. Read the last sentence again. The software basically takes my ads and puts Charter’s over them. So, if you click on an ad you aren’t supporting me, but your ISP whom you are already paying for the right to use the service. There are several smaller ISPs that do this but won’t talk about it. Charter is the first of the big ones to do so and I can’t imagine that AT&T, Time Warner, Verizon, and Comcast will be far behind. As a business, it’s great. I mean you get the revenue instead of the content producer that does nothing but suck up your bandwidth, right?
This software has the possibility to be game changing to bloggers and others that rely on advertising to provide content. If all the ISPs begin superimposing their ads over mine, how do I get paid? I actually lose money on this site now, but it’s nice to at least be able to recoup some of my costs and possibly make a small profit as I grow. With this technology, I won’t be able to.
If I was a Charter customer, I’d be pissed. I already pay them to be able to use the Internet, why should they be able to hijack websites? For that instance, if they can hijack ads why can’t they hijack all sorts of other content? I’m not a huge fan of slippery slope arguments, but many ISP CEOs have long argued that it is their pipes and they should use them how they see fit. What’s to stop them from superimposing Google results to their own content?
I’m sure this won’t be the last we hear of this. While Charter argues that you can opt out, you have to opt out via cookie. Which means if you clear cookies, you have to go and re-opt out every time you do so. Oh, and you have to do it in every browser every time you do so. Of course, if they made it more convenient more people would do it and that would mean less revenue for Charter.
It’s a brave new world for the Internet. Can we just go back to the ethos of 1995? Please?