Hello Everyone, My next article is published. This one focuses on "*Using Stories to Influence Purchase Decisions*". I hope it helps you to learn something new. It would be great if you can read it and give me feedback for improvement, It's a short 5 min read. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/u-ashwin-nandapurkar/

Importance of goal setting as a meta-skill 💯  

Is anyone part of the platform.sh team here ?

Does anyone use time tracking tools like Rescue Time or Timely? If yes, what do you suggest?

timely is scary in the sense that they track each and every click, all the information of the tabs we open in chrome, any other apps you open on your laptop they track the activity etc etc. they are worse than google and facebook in tracking your personal activity.

Hubstaff is a good tool

Rescue time - works like a charm

If you are scared of apps and data collection, maybe try living in a jungle - every app collects heavy data and unless you are a drug lord or a trillionaire - most folks should have nothing to worry about 😛

#nooffence

^ said everyone before cambridge analytica - “i dont need privacy because i have nothing to hide”. with enough users calling out dark patterns, i hope this argument changes in the future.

Not true @swift-pilot-25722.

Just something that popped up in PH today regarding time tracking 👍 https://stafftimerapp.com/

okay - what should we be careful of then @able-salesmen-17286 @able-smartphone-4504 @agreeable-breakfast-76503 - like genuinely asking I hardly believer crap ads or even watch TV, so not sure how any of it affects me

enlighten us about privacy and what we can do meaningfully

I agree with Pravin. Privacy concerns for the most part are overblown. Ads is what keeps the internet free. Ads need data. Data collection needs tracking. There is no such thing as free lunch

Valid argument. But then, I want to pay for no ads. There’s not much option there. AND then, the whole ad economy is very very unclear on what data is required and what data is not. If there were ethics in the business, we would not have GDPR. And Cambridge Analytica would not have happened. Using ad sourced data to personalise is in some level acceptable. Using it to influence and sway lives is dangerous. It is almost similar to what is happening with the CAA / NRC protests in India. A lot of the confusion or lack thereof (depending on which camp you belong to) is because of data being misused to influence opinion. Suddenly, we’re no longer looking at shoes because i visited nike.com. Its asking me to buy orange colored t-shirts because I might have at some point said something positivie about someone in the BJP. There’s a very very very thin red line that differentiates advertising and opinion mongering. For a normal sharmaji and his friends on whatsapp, its impossible to tell what’s what.

Yup. Great point @straight-continent-34777 I think there are great points here - my thinking is strongly reflected by what you already mentioned. I have multiple Alexas at home and I prefer using Google over DuckDuckGo - because I prefer the convenience (quicker results) at the expense of a company tracking what I am doing. I agree with Pravin at some level that you cannot really fight the battle - it is difficult today - unless you are cutting yourself completely from any digital existence - even then, it is difficult. But at the same time, we live in a democratic world in which what you vote for affects me as I end up living with that consequence. Cambridge Analytica shows how easy it is to sway the fence sitters - and that is something that really scares me. What we can do about it? I don’t know really. But at the same time, there has to be liability at some level with people who are holding onto our data. (I am sure there are a whole lot of companies like CA which have not been leaked out). Happy to see ads of shoes I want to buy. A subtle political message (or a recommended video), not so much. We are all tech savvy here but I am sure we still are getting swayed slightly everyday (confirmation bias?).

Great discussion and thanks for your answers, yes totally understand that we can be affected in small ways deliberated over long time (just like habits affect us in 1% daily) - this can be a LONG term negative effect Anyone else has other thoughts on what we can do to stay away from the negative influence on social media thats brought upon us?

not going to start privacy war but just clearing some misconceptions. Disclaimer - I work at Memory who has built Timely. Timely does not track each and every click. There is no JS tracker. Timely tracks active tab in browser - means timely read title of the active tab. Timely does not read what you are doing on that tab. The data is private to the user, not accessible to anyone. The tracker app by Timely needs permissions for every app that you want Timely to track. Timely does not track anything by default. Also tracker app can be turned off anytime and Timely does not track anything randomly out of the blue. Memory.ai is Norway based company and GDPR compliant. As part of GDPR compliance approval, we had to follow rigorous process for user privacy. I fully agree that some people can still have privacy concerns but just trying to clear misconceptions around the statements like

timely tracks each and every click and all the information of the tabs we open in chrome

I love that you’ve pointed out crucial aspects of the trade right. Here’s how I see things - there is the set of people who are consumers. And then there’s us. Us - we have a fundamental advantage - we can work to make a change - however minuscule it is. Nothing is non trivial. At the true fear of sounding idealistic, I know that I need to make my bit of contribution and then make a stand against how tech can be improved. I run a tiny bit of decentralized internet - my own dns server. Apart from the folks at home, I generate 1Tb of DNS traffic per month. I know a change is possible. We need to start and push our agenda amidst all this noise.

I'll take the other extreme position. Most advertising (tracking or not) = psychological manipulation, which means it is not an ethical or fair trade. And of course, unfair trades are going to attract a lot of investment (duh!) and will lead to things like Google / Facebook. This is where the debate should begin: Should we be okay with business practices that involve psychological manipulation? You see the positives (such as Google), but not the negatives (people overpaying for things they didn't want or need). Advertising creates wants - and that means waste of productivity and leisure. "Right ad to the right person at the right time" is mostly bullshit. It wasn't the right time or right person or right ad because advertising is interruptive. The user was trying to do something else. If the user really had the intention to search for your product, then you don't need any tracking. If X comes and says she is interested in your product, you don't need to know anything more about her or her browsing habits. You just take them to the product/order page. Search (social or otherwise) is good enough.

Using exaggeration to make my point: If slavery were to be allowed today, it will attract a lot of investment and we'd see grand things built like Egypt's pyramids. You can't just see the one side of the coin to decide what's okay and what's not.

Here are the ways I might be wrong: • Advertising doesn't create wants. Counter-argument: The entire history of marketing and consumer psychology. • Even if it does, the ad system does offer value to the user since the user is voluntarily opting for it. Counter-argument: It might be a net-loss for the user as s/he might see the direct value X, and may not be aware of the loss of 2X that happens because of exposure to advertising. People voluntarily smoke cigarettes, but that doesn't mean they aren't being harmed. • Trade is not zero-sum. It's possible for both parties to have a net benefit in a trade as long as both voluntarily decided to trade. Counter-argument: For a voluntary trade to be truly non-zero-sum, you need two more properties: parties need to be informed and they need to have choices. A child smoker is uninformed, and an adult smoker is crippled for choice - making it not a both-of-us-benefit game. • There's nothing wrong with allowing psychological manipulation because adults are expected to be responsible. Counter-argument: Again, just because the user is an adult, doesn't mean that they understand psychology as much as you with a team of psychologists do. • Something else.

All I can say about marketing is this. Marketing is everywhere. It extends beyond businesses and has existed in nature for thousands of years. To quote Rory Sutherland from the book Alchemy - “A flower is a weed with a marketing budget. They signal their health by releasing strong smells and blossoming into vibrant colors. Since the chemicals required to produce strong smells are also necessary for the production of nectar, bees are attracted to scented flowers. Humans use signals too. Marketers tap into those signals to attract them”

@acceptable-flag-71699 knocked out of the park totally! Your arguments are just brilliant! Good one sir!

If you don’t like ads don’t visit that website and go elsewhere.

Let's think this through. I always mute ads and take a break while watching TV. Would you also argue that "if you don't like ads, then don't watch that channel and go elsewhere". Really? How hostile do you have to be to the users? The relationship between consumers and businesses are asymmetric. You can't apply same standards to both of them.

I agree marketing/manipulation/exploitation is everywhere and has always existed. The local kirana shop and I have a symmetric relationship. It's much more acceptable if he sneaks in a pamphlet/brochure in my cart. I don't have the same symmetry in my relationship with a megacorp that's trying to sell me a product/service. If you acknowledge the asymmetry, then you would also agree that the obligations for the corporations ought to be much more than obligations for me consuming the content in line with my preferences.

Businesses gotta make money. Users gotta use products. You either are a consumer (use paid apps, choose free products with nicer policies, open source) or a product (view ads, share data and get forced feed more of that crap). All services (advertising, marketing, sales, support) have their counterparts in human nature - it's about going with products with fair policies. Limiting number of media outlets is onc choice, just by using the mainstream platforms (all big services so large that they don't have a paid plan for general consumers), you are signing up for data sharing.

Good points, guys But here's some sad news on the privacy front - nice big companies are shutting down, not fair at all https://sparktoro.com/blog/avasts-shutdown-of-jumpshot-will-harm-the-web-and-the-world/

Another side of the story....hope this does not happen. It's not black and white, there are way too many nuances, subtleties that everyone cant see. "My greatest fear is that this weaponization of “privacy rights” as a contentious issue will shut down more and more aggregators and providers of information that let small, medium, and large competitors to the big tech monopolies compete against them. It will shut down the abilities of the press, of the government, of big tech critics like me to call those firms out on their misleading, incomplete, or false claims. And ultimately, it will lead to more power and wealth concentrated in the hands of the few vs. the democratization of data we all should support."