February 7th, 2012  Redlining er, Weblining for Profit.
Stereotyping is alive and well in data aggregation. The quote of
the day for me?  "You might be refused health insurance based on
a Google search you did about a medical condition."  Holy fuck,
a health insurance company can tell me which questions I can or
can’t ask? Whoa. I call bullshit.  Please, read on:   Facebook
made $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, 85 percent
of its total revenue. Yet Facebook’s inventory of data and its
revenue from advertising are small potatoes compared to some
others. Google took in more than 10 times as much, with an
estimated $36.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2011, by
analyzing what people sent over Gmail and what they searched on
the Web, and then using that data to sell ads. […]  In the
1970s, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern
University named John McKnight popularized the term “redlining”
to describe the failure of banks, insurers and other
institutions to offer their services to i