Blogsphere Civil War

"And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the other are based."
- Lord Vetinari

Background: Blogsphere Civil War

At what point do the cries for Freedom of Speech, Liberty become hollow when we stop taking the consequences of our actions?

We like our freedom, so long as we don't have to accept any unpleasant consequences. We want to be able to say what we want, without accepting condemnation by others. We want the ability to do what we want, without accepting responsibility when our actions hurt other people.

If you build a site like mean kids or write a blog, you have to accept the consequences of that action.

True freedom is the freedom to take the consequences. Strength of character comes from accepting the consequences of your actions.

Kathy Sierra, Anonymity, Internet

Liability in the age of targeted ads

Every so often you here about the latest advertising based scam. An ad is located somewhere in magazine or newspaper and this leads the un-suspecting off in a merry dance that sees them loose some or all their life savings.

Generally the service (magazine, newspaper etc) are not held liable for this type of scam. Which is fair enough because the service is not targeting ads at specific people.

But...

What happens when a service is predicated (Blyk) on delivering very target ads to a specific demographic delivers advertising that is the start point of a scam? It could be very easily argued that the scam would not have been successful without the targeting provided by the service. Which of course opens the service to liability.

Liability for scams is something that does need to be considered with highly targeted advertising. Particularly, where the targeting focuses on populations known to be (more) prone to duping by scams.

Tag: Blky, Mobiles, Targeted Advertising