171–180 of 765 posts
Personalized advertising should never have been allowed without a specific opt-in. I know lots of advertisers think they can't live without it --- because promoters have told them so.
You specifically opt-in when you create your account on IG/FB.
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…
In the post Snowden world it’s hard to imagine that any massive tech service isn’t hooked directly into the NSA or that it’s being used for what isn’t exactly illegal surveillance but sort of is.
Not that you’re wrong of course, but I think we should still work on both issues. Even if you look at the EU the agencies which are working to protect and destroy our privacy aren’t the same. So it’s very possible to support one and not the other. Similarly I think we should absolutely crack down on tech company surveillance. What I don’t personally get is why it stops with Meta. Let’s not pretend TikTok and the others aren’t doing the exact same thing. I also think we should keep in mind that the consumer agencies aren’t only doing it to protect our privacy, they are also doing it to protect our tech industry, so it’s not exactly black and white, but I really don’t think we should stop just because other parts of the EU are also evil.
I’m also not convinced that they are doing a good job distracting anyone. Within the EU NGOs there is far more focus on end-to-end encryption and keeping our privacy safe from governments, especially in countries like Germany.
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…
Why should it be illegal? I don’t understand the moral threat. Personally I feel that privacy gets too much airtime as a value — I see lots of other more direct issues (like political manipulation) that will remain an issue even with “strong privacy.”
Okay, then it should be legal for me to use Facebooks/Google's 'Intellectual Property' however I want.
Why should it be legal for them to steal my data, but illegal for me to use their's?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should it be illegal? I don’t understand the moral threat. Personally I feel that privacy gets too much airtime as a value — I see lots of other more direct issues (like political manipulation) that will remain an issue even with “strong privacy.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw an ad a while ago for a piece of software that turned out very beneficial for my business. I did not know that such software existed. The ad was good for me and for the seller. Trade is not a zero sum game.
Trade is not a zero-sum game. Advertising is. The fact that advertising sometimes actually helps in discovering a product you actually needed is a coincidence. The main point of advertising is to convince people to prefer a product for reasons other than cost/benefit. Even in your case - did you see the ad and immediately bought the product? Or did you see the ad and then actually went and looked for reviews, competi…
This is false. If you've ever run ads before, the best way to get people to convert is to offer a higher cost/benefit than competitors.
How do you think Uber grew from 0 to a 90B market cap? Magical emotional trickery? No.
Uber advertised cheaper, faster, and more convenient rides. The definition of a better cost/benefit. Hence they grew fast. I could list a million examples.
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…
When you realize that large enough corporations are a form of government, your way of thinking really starts falling to bits... But, the government is the solution to when business gets too much power. You can't convince a profit motivated corporation to stop doing something evil as long as it's profitable, so it's the government's job to protect people from corporate governance.
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…
contextual advertising is placing ads in locations, pages, screens etc where people are likely already in a certain mindset (and potentially more likely to be influenced and buy) but the advertiser has no further information about them.
behavioral, profile based advertising is, in contrast, using (in principle) any and all information about you that they can grab and get legally away with using:
Citizen X2235X, device ID asx233e, geolocation X,Y, with $$ in the bank account, an estimated IQ of 98, with the following list of prior purchases, the following list of "likes" on social, has just searched for "weekend trip". Let the bidding begin.
Creating profiles of people has always been a very regulated affair (e.g. your credit score, insurance segments, medical categories etc). In the context of state surveillance profiling people has been the primary tool for oppression.
In the last decade somehow in the name of "innovation" all caution has been thrown out the window.
Its really not about ads at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you realize that large enough corporations are a form of government, your way of thinking really starts falling to bits... But, the government is the solution to when business gets too much power. You can't convince a profit motivated corporation to stop doing something evil as long as it's profitable, so it's the government's job to protect people from corporate governance.
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