This a bit orthogonal so I put it in a separate comment, but let me be even more aggressive and do a bit of offense: I've read a lot of the "pro privacy/anti tracking" arguments over the years, and (outside of a few exceptions) they almost always hinge upon some aesthetic dislike for companies having this information, rather than having any material justification for why it's harmful. But attacking ads and ad trackin…
You can have ads without tracking. I don't think anyone is against ads per se. People are against pervasive continuous tracking and wholesale sale of data to anyone.
You're not going to win this "fight" on HN, I've been here for years. People here are convinced that every piece of data being collected is a moral evil. They'll vaguely wave at things like DNS logs or server IP logs, and always assume that everything is always feeding huge tracking machines at big companies. They'll mix up tracking used for logs with tracking used for ads with tracking used to improve the product. T…
The target audience for my comments are the hundreds of people reading and not commenting. If you're casually reading the comments, without a foil of reasonability, I think it's easy to get sucked into implicitly accepting the premises of the zealots frothing at the mouth in the comments. You're right that I don't imagine I'm going to change the mind of the zealots.
Indeed, as a wise man once said, "the haters are going to hate".
A common explanation I get from people with poor digital hygiene is that they do not see how it is affecting them. Making the imperceptible perceptible is a great concept for more innovations. I have sent the kids in my house logs for their devices from the DNS blocker I have running on our network, but it was too much for them to digest. Perhaps I should work on a visualization tool of all the data that shows impact…
>they do not see how it is affecting them I'm an adult who understands tracking tech and in particular Google's level of tracking quite well (I used to work on AdWords), and I'm one of these people -- tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all but it keeps the many free services I value greatly running. Visual or audio representations of the amount of data they're collecting are hardly an ar…
> tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all
Like a frog boiling in hot water, just because you don't perceive it, doesn't mean it doesn't affect you. The business model of ad-based services is that they sell the ability to manipulate real world behavior to the highest bidder. That manipulation ranges from innocuous ads for products you don't need, to political ideas and misinformation. There's a chance that you're self aware, self disciplined and very observant and manage to avoid this manipulation. But given the fact that it works extremely well at scale, it's more likely that you're just not noticing how you're being manipulated.
> Visual or audio representations of the amount of data they're collecting are hardly an argument for why it's bad, as the logic goes "see, they're collecting a lot of data about your browsing... ...and that's bad" but it doesn't fill in the logical leap in the middle. You are going to be a lot more persuasive if you can fill that in instead of making fancy graphs. But that just means the novel representations are a…
>But that just means the novel representations are a step forward, just not the whole solution. No. The part where people argue Google is collecting a lot of data is sound. The part that's missing is why is this bad . No chart, no numbers, no sounds, or anything else will in their own argue why this data collection is bad. This argument as to why is what's missing, and until nominal privacy advocates start putting to…
This form of data collection and use has broken a status quo that has existed as long as life itself. Shouldn't it more conventionally be the ones in favour of this change to provide evidence of its benefits rather than the other way around?
>they do not see how it is affecting them I'm an adult who understands tracking tech and in particular Google's level of tracking quite well (I used to work on AdWords), and I'm one of these people -- tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all but it keeps the many free services I value greatly running. Visual or audio representations of the amount of data they're collecting are hardly an ar…
This a bit orthogonal so I put it in a separate comment, but let me be even more aggressive and do a bit of offense: I've read a lot of the "pro privacy/anti tracking" arguments over the years, and (outside of a few exceptions) they almost always hinge upon some aesthetic dislike for companies having this information, rather than having any material justification for why it's harmful. But attacking ads and ad trackin…
Lack of privacy harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. It’s sort of like freedom of speech is necessary not just for journalists, but for everyone, even if you have nothing to say.
>But that just means the novel representations are a step forward, just not the whole solution. No. The part where people argue Google is collecting a lot of data is sound. The part that's missing is why is this bad . No chart, no numbers, no sounds, or anything else will in their own argue why this data collection is bad. This argument as to why is what's missing, and until nominal privacy advocates start putting to…
you can go learn about state surveillance more generally to answer that instead of handwaving it away as 'seems worth it to me'
Google making ad auctions more efficient and "state surveillance" aren't the same thing. Did you legitimately not know this or are you being intellectually dishonest in your argumentation?
A common explanation I get from people with poor digital hygiene is that they do not see how it is affecting them. Making the imperceptible perceptible is a great concept for more innovations. I have sent the kids in my house logs for their devices from the DNS blocker I have running on our network, but it was too much for them to digest. Perhaps I should work on a visualization tool of all the data that shows impact…
>they do not see how it is affecting them I'm an adult who understands tracking tech and in particular Google's level of tracking quite well (I used to work on AdWords), and I'm one of these people -- tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all but it keeps the many free services I value greatly running. Visual or audio representations of the amount of data they're collecting are hardly an ar…
You're only seeing things from the Google bubble where the data they collect is kept only for themselves and law enforcement/nation states. There's a whole ecosystem of unscrupulous trackers selling your personal details indiscriminately to anyone who wants it. It all goes into profiles that most definitely have an impact on you in real life. No amount of goodwill for supporting free services is enough to permit this activity to operate without your knowledge or consent.
>they do not see how it is affecting them I'm an adult who understands tracking tech and in particular Google's level of tracking quite well (I used to work on AdWords), and I'm one of these people -- tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all but it keeps the many free services I value greatly running. Visual or audio representations of the amount of data they're collecting are hardly an ar…
You're only seeing things from the Google bubble where the data they collect is kept only for themselves and law enforcement/nation states. There's a whole ecosystem of unscrupulous trackers selling your personal details indiscriminately to anyone who wants it. It all goes into profiles that most definitely have an impact on you in real life. No amount of goodwill for supporting free services is enough to permit this…
>It all goes into profiles that most definitely have an impact on you in real life
Such as?
I might add the initial discussion was about Google tracking ads but I'm curious to hear what you have to say about these down market trackers.
I believe that hCaptcha pays the site administrator, so for a Cloudflare or Discord it could be a sizable chunk of cash. Maybe not to them, but it’s something.
This is a snapshot of the cognitive dissonance that causes AdWords to keep growing despite the people building it being smart folks. It doesn’t affect me and I like free stuff, so seems fine. There isn’t a missing logical leap in the middle. The tracking is self-evidently anti-democratic.
How is it anti-democratic? I'm on board with a ton of criticisms of surveillance capitalism, but "anti-democratic" isn't one I understand.
It extends its tendrils into government services where corporate authoritarianism subverts democratic ideals. The ill-conceived attempt to force face id for IRS services via a third party is but one example.