811–820 of 902 posts
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"a lot of what I describe" - you mean big players collecting even more data? Not really illegal, you just have to get the users to consent somehow. Which most do anyway.
> you mean big players collecting even more data? No.
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The polio vaccine serves an actual need, and if you're not selling something I would refrain from using the word marketing. As for the marketing of 'good' products: even marketing a good product comes with the implied 'right to market', where possibly none exists. You could get people hooked on very high quality vehicles for short trips because of convenience when the alternative, a bike, or even walking are perfectl…
> The polio vaccine serves an actual need, and if you're not selling something I would refrain from using the word marketing. Then I believe basing policy off your definition of marketing would require first a tribunal to decide if something is "marketing" or... Whatever the polio campaign was. Because the national, then international, polio eradication project absolutely included perception and behavior modification…
Let's just use the dictionary definition and save everybody a lot of time:
"the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service"
So I think the polio campaign doesn't have to be hauled in front of a tribunal (is that a new thing? I see this term used more and more for things that it has nothing to do with) to prove its worth.
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The thing with WWW is links, the web. So https://news.ycombinator.com is a good starter. From there, yes, you could end up on twitter.com for example but it would be worthwhile.
“…you could end up on twitter.com for example but it would be worthwhile.” Unpopular opinion: I never click on twitter links anymore. It’s almost never worth it. IMHO, 140/280/N character limits are a way to cheapen discourse. I think there is something to be said for the “density” of text: text that offers very little to think about (less dense) is vacuous but encouraged by a character limit; yet, text that is compr…
It's not unpopular with me, I agree with you completely. I was never a Twitter fan but when they forced the use of JS that was the end of it (you'll note I used Twitter as an example in one of my earlier posts).
You're right about sacrificing people’s privacy and security, as I said in another post 'I'm forever amazed at the trust the average person has in these vulnerability-ridden flaky systems'.
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"...they can always serve ads from the origin domain without JavaScript." But most of them don't. Yes, they can change their model and in time they likely will. As it stands now, one doesn't have to watch ads on the internet if one doesn't want to - all it takes is a little perseverance and they're gone. If one can't rise to the occasion then one has a high tolerance for ads. Even YouTube can be viewed without ads wi…
> What I want is a PVR/STB that figures out the ads and bypasses them. Say I want to watch TV from 7 to 11pm (4 hours) and there's a total of one hour of ads and other breaks in that time that I don't want to watch then I want my AI-aware PVR/STB to suggest that I start watching at 8pm instead of 7 as this will allow it to progressively remove ads on-the-fly across the evening. I wonder if something like sponsorblock…
As someone who has spent a lot of time on both sides of this, I think this is a great outcome, personally. The most annoying part of ad-tech for me, as a user, was the fact that I was running all sorts of random javascript, any bit of which could blow up performance on my browser. As someone who used to lead an e-commerce operation, I hated running all of this crap in my users' browsers because I knew it would get bl…
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Exactly! A company's goal is profit and most of the time, that does not align with the customer's goals. Amazon's goal is to sell me the highest margin item, I want the best value or highest quality. I have very limited information about which items are a good value or high quality, so why should amazon have the tools to most effectively steer me towards high-margin items? They exist to provide us a service and we gr…
> I have very limited information about which items are a good value or high quality, so why should amazon have the tools to most effectively steer me towards high-margin items? They exist to provide us a service and we grant them the right to make a small % of profit while doing it. Not the other way around! As a small aside, The capitalist's answer is that regulating companies to prevent them from steering to the m…
True, but only because that’s the wrong approach. The correct regulations are the ones that result in more competition. That’s treating the cause rather than the symptom.
If Amazon had to seriously worry about competitors, they wouldn’t be focused on selling overpriced garbage. Why? Because customers will notice that Amazon sells overpriced garbage, and will instead buy from somewhere else.
I don’t know what those regulations might look like, but I do know that pretty much every single “evil” behavior in the market can be solved by throwing in competition. It’s not always possible (e.g. maybe someone is locked in to a single vendor due to a bad contract), but when customers are given choices, the choice that offers the best value will survive in the long run.
This kind of data collection abuse is why I think we need more addons like AdNauseam [1]. Unlike uBlock Origin, it's not available from the Chrome web store anymore, which is a good sign that Google hates these types of addons more than they hate simple blockers. Blocking A/AAAA domains with custom URLs to prevent tracking is almost impossible, so instead let's flood the trackers with useless, incorrect data that's n…
That would actually make difference, not only for the HN crowd.
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> By default, I don't run JavaScript. I don't see blocking JS as a problem - in fact, it's a blessing as the web is blinding fast without it - and also most of the ads just simply disappear if JS is not running. Years ago I was on the "people who block JavaScript are crazy" bandwagon, until just loading a single news article online meant waiting for a dozen ads and autoplaying videos to load. I spent more time waitin…
Tried NoScript for years and it was a pain. Too many of the sites I use need so many domains full of JS. So I think this will vary widely depending on the person and their preferred/needed sites.
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I rather think it's more like legislating that you can't sell people food adulterated with poisons, and you have to label the ingredients accurately. Oh, and it's like saying that you can't sell lead paint, even though it is a very pretty white.
Even without that legislation, most people would already care about avoiding poisoned food. So a law specifically forbidding poisons is in line with what the majority already cares about. (Slightly related: see eg some Chinese people making good money from buying baby formula overseas and shipping it back home in their luggage. China has legislation against poison, but people don't trust the enforcement enough.)
There is lots of evidence that people would still use harmful substances when it’s nice and cheap. Then other people would be exposed to it just because it is impossible to know the chemical composition of everything around you. Lots of people care about avoiding things like toxic chemicals and harmful bacteria, the trouble is that they cannot see them.
> So a law specifically forbidding poisons is in line with what the majority already cares about.
So why not do it, then, if it is the right thing and people want it?
In the real world, people are not perfectly informed, and fraudsters are willing to lie. So law and enforcement are absolutely necessary to end harmful practices. See lead paint, but also leaded petrol, asbestos, antibiotics in farm animals, and insecticide chemicals spread willy nilly across the countryside. These things not just disappear on their own because some people don’t like it.
Even on the topic at hand, to be honest. People know that ads and tracking are bad and annoying, even if they do not see clearly the extent of the damage. Some of us know how to avoid most of them. And yet, they keep making more and more money, and are far from disappearing. It is difficult to take your point seriously.
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> Luckily, people tend to be much more savvy when voting with their wallets or their feet. And as a society we would be well advised to encourage these latter two. The problem with voting with your dollars is that people with more dollars get more votes. The problem with voting with your feet is that only some people can afford to move. If you want "just let the rich decide", why dress it up in fancy words?
As much as possible, people should decide what to do with their dollars. > The problem with voting with your dollars is that people with more dollars get more votes. Eh, the biggest and most successful companies on the planet cater to mass markets. The system seems to work fairly well for average people. (And we all suspect the most important politicians cater to tiny elites.) Also, using your dollars to vote means y…
This sounds very good until it is actually put in practice, when people realise that those who have all the dollars have all the power. Now you have an unaccountable oligarchy.
> Also, using your dollars to vote means you lose those dollars. So rich people can vote each dollar only once, just like everyone else.
That’s hilarious. As if those billionaires were not making the median yearly income in a week.