Do people really not remember scandals like Cambridge Analytica, and realise that these ads combined with social media feeds can be used to literally control and manipulate peoples decisions and behavoir?
Theres a reason Facebook and Youtube just got sued for being intentionally addictive attention machines.
Facebook was a party, but not the protagonist.
- a Cambridge researcher (Aleks Kogan) created a personality quiz FB app advertised as academic research
- users had to consent to download the app
- the app nefariously scraped users' friends' data (300k users unlocked 87 million users' data)
- the information was sold to Cambridge Analytica
- who then used the information to profile American voters
LinkedIn already has all of this information from the information you feed it. Scanning for more information provides more refined views, but LinkedIn already has your graph.
> if they do a better job at showing me an ad that might be relevant to me, how is that disgusting?
To me that signalled that the author of the comment doesnt really care what is gonig on behind the scenes if the result is a better and more relevant ad.
I see this attitude often from people who dont seem to understand the severity and seriousness of online tracking which leads to psychological profiling which leads to manipulation.
> who then used the information to profile American voters
You seem to have missed off the most serious bit at the end. Cambridge Analytica then used the data to profile millions of voters, and purposefully target divisive and flammable political material to specific suggestible people in order to manipulate outcomes.
This same thing is done all the time by all tracking and ad companies. I think this thread has gone beyond just LinkdIn scanning your browser extensions.
My point is that LinkedIn already has enough information (We've willingly given them!) to manipulate outcomes and if they're doing something nefarious, then it's already too late.
Whereas Cambridge Analytica involved bad actors (not Facebook) duping customers and re-selling their data. I don't think those elements are necessarily in play here.
You'd say that's a ridiculous and illegal thing to do without you explicit consent, right?
Maybe you personally don't mind and would be happy to offer that consent. But they're doing it without your consent, regardless of whether you want it or not.