111–120 of 765 posts
Comments here so far focus on personalised ads as the issue -- but that's a symptom of what's being banned, which is the mass collection of personal data. Personalised ads are beside the point. The issue is how they are personalised, namely by building a rich profile of user behaviour based on non-consensual tracking. It isnt even clear that there's a meaningful sense of 'consent' to what modern ad companies (ie., go…
Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…
Can you elaborate on how a government can 'ruin your life', while a company can't? This might be hard to grok, but we can actually be aware of both threats without minimizing the seriousness of either.
Even in good times, in countries with mostly balanced institutions, the government can lock you up in prison and throw away the key if you piss off the wrong people.
On the other hand, I can assure you the only thing Unilever is aspiring to do is get you to buy more toilet bowl cleaner.
And I know the rebuttal will be..."but stupid people (not me of course) will get duped into buying more toilet bowl cleaner than they actually need!"
While that is indeed a huge burden of responsibility to place upon all the people you think are less intelligent than you, I think they will be okay.
As history has shown, the real risk is the government telling me exactly how much toilet bowl cleaner I get to use.
Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…
EU data practices differ significantly from tech giants; they're governed by strict GDPR rules, requiring consent for personal data processing.
No EU nation systematically tracks citizens like tech companies do for ads.
It's difficult to compare the data collection practices of EU nations directly with those of large tech companies like Facebook or Google, there are some parallels and distinctions to be made.
The encryption debate is separate, focusing on balancing privacy with security.
My take (being in EU) is that with weaker encryption, the EU tries to balance privacy with law enforcement needs, aiming to curb illicit communications while raising privacy concerns.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand. We were able to run with untargeted ads for decades. Why now, suddenly only targeted ads are viable?
That's not true, ads have always been targeted. On the telly you don't see the same ads on all stations all the time. They are segmented depending on the average profile of the viewer. If you are watching a soap opera you will see ads for diapers for female incontinence.
Why do people hate personalized ads so much? I understand hating ads in general, but why something personalized is worse than just random spam? EDIT --- Ok, I get it now. Personalized ads = surveillance. Fair enough. Doesn't the whole GDPR already cover it though? You can opt out of the surveillance.
Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…
As the old saying goes: don’t lie, don’t steal: the government doesn’t like competition. Although I do believe that governments should be liable (is this the best word?) to people and in turn make companies liable too.
Companies are, according to some ideologies, only really accountable to their shareholders and to the law. If you want to hold them more accountable, the law is generally the way to do that.
Autocratic governments are of course not accountable to the people, and autocratic parties in democracies go out of their way to undermine their accountability.
I know in HN there is a big "personalized advertising" is bad sentiment, but I don't get what the problem is. I mean, if I am looking for a notebook, I rather have FB/IG (or Google or whatever), show me adds of a notebook that I might end up buying, instead of the generic poker/porn adds that we had on the beginning of the internet. It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads. So on one side, people w…
I exclusively follow technical people. Devs of the software and tools I work with, PG, indie hackers, that sort of thing.
Personalized ads are a scam. They are not personalized to you. They are personalized to the imaginary profile advertisers want to see their ads. You're just the sorry victim that nobody cares about. Some of them are outright dangerous (see the first one in the album), and your interests always come last.
That doesn't even include the primary concern: The rampant abuse of privacy and collected data.
[1] - https://imgur.com/a/NGBsEaM (one or two are mildly NSFW)
I know in HN there is a big "personalized advertising" is bad sentiment, but I don't get what the problem is. I mean, if I am looking for a notebook, I rather have FB/IG (or Google or whatever), show me adds of a notebook that I might end up buying, instead of the generic poker/porn adds that we had on the beginning of the internet. It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads. So on one side, people w…
There are parts of my life that are fine for ad companies to know. What clothes I like, what music I like, what sports I like etc. These are all benign, and even useful to me if ad companies know about them. The sentiment of your comment makes sense when applied to these topics. But then there are things that I don't want ad companies to know about. My medical history, my likely voting patterns, my political affiliat…
Even that is a problem for me. Advertising is manipulation, they want to change my behaviour so I purchase whatever product they are selling. So I've gone from a state of not thinking about buying something to reaching into my wallet.
I don't want any corporation to do that to me which is why I'm against advertising in general.
Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…
Corporations can ruin your life just fine.