An investigation into the smartphone tracking industry
I try to avoid sarcasm online. It can be taken the wrong way. But I would like to welcome the NYT to 20 years or so ago when Google realized that there was money in the data. Or ten years ago or so, as privacy advocates started seriously bouncing off the walls realizing that we were tagging and tracking people in a way dictators of the past could only dream of. I&#x27;m glad they might be catching up, but for a big news organization like that, it&#x27;s sad to see it take so long.<p>I wonder if, like so many of these blow ups in the past, there&#x27;ll just be a spike of public interest and then it&#x27;ll all die away. One of the most amazing things about the news in the last few years is how stories that used to have international, severe impact and political repercussions just drift off into the ether now. No follow-up, no continuing coverage. It&#x27;s all about immediate spikes in shares, likes, tweets, and readers. They know people don&#x27;t care about the follow-up that much; heck the data tells them that. So there&#x27;s no follow-up, only the next sensation.<p>I hope this amounts to something. I have my reservations.