Wall Street Journal (paywalled) The digital payments company plans to build an ad sales business around the reams of data it generates from tracking the purchases as well as the broader spending behaviors of millions of consumers who use its services, which include the more socially-enabled Venmo app.

PayPal has hired Mark Grether, who formerly led Uber’s advertising business, to lead the effort as senior vice president and general manager of its newly-created PayPal Ads division.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
      73·
      5 months ago

      This is indeed one of the things cryptocurrencies exist for, but social media denizens around these parts have long conditioned themselves to hate it.

      So a rock and a hard place, it seems. Which is more hated; the big data-harvesting corporation co-founded by Elon Musk, or a big bad NFT-hosting blockchain?

      For people who are concerned about data harvesting I would recommend something like Monero or Aztec over Bitcoin, though. Bitcoin’s basically obsolete at this point, coasting on name recognition and inertia, and has no built-in privacy features.