4 ms·

Meaningless. There are people claiming with a straight face that targeted ads make user experience better. Wholesale collection and aggregation of personal user

by pacala 7y ago

Meaningless. There are people claiming with a straight face that targeted ads make user experience better. Wholesale collection and aggregation of personal user data will continue unabated.

tomerico 7y ago
Curious, why would targeted ads make the user experience worse? (putting privacy aside)
- skrebbel 7y ago
  Why would getting shot make your life worse? (putting the pain and the bleeding aside)
- throwaheyy 7y ago
  Advertising is a distraction and an attempt at psychological manipulation. That is obviously a worse experience, unless you're actually into being distracted/manipulated. The weasel words "targeted ads are better" imply comparison to untargeted ads and is a disingenuous statement.
- n4r9 7y ago
  It doesn't have to make it worse, just not make it better. Almost no one ever says "I love using such-and-such a website, the adverts on the side are just so relevant".
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    When I'm looking for something, relevant ads are great. Ads that were relevant to something I was looking for a month ago? Not so much.
    - n4r9 7y ago
      When I'm looking for something, I'll usually have already done a thorough search around on google, ebay, amazon etc... and it's unlikely that targeted ads will show me something I've not yet seen.
    - mrr54 7y ago
      If I'm looking for something I want to read trusted reviews of it, not ads.
    - D-Coder 7y ago
      You don't have a refrigerator collection???
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- slumdev 7y ago
  As a kid, anytime I stayed home sick from school, I watched TV. I would see only advertisements for catheters and guaranteed-issue life insurance. They didn't occupy much of my conscious thought. They were annoying at worst. When I watched TV during prime time and on the weekends, though, the advertisements were for toys and products that interested me. In the blink of an eye, my entire outlook worsened because I needed those things and didn't have them. The advertisements were also a great distraction from homework and chores.
- manifestsilence 7y ago
  This is an interesting debate, and one where I fear the young generation's attitudes seem to differ. My 16yo says she'd rather get targeted ads than non, because it's just more relevant and she might want to buy those things. She has zero concern about the psychological manipulation factor and assumes she will just say no if she doesn't want a product. I guess I can see where she's coming from, as I don't avoid physical stores when I'm not planning to buy things. Window shopping is fun. But still, I think all that tracking has a dark side that's difficult to convey to the generation that grew up taking it for granted. Are we just old and fear the new and unknown? The one thing I definitely hate is how bloated the web has gotten. Everything works great on my old computers that I switched over to linux, until I need to just google (duckduckgo) some simple piece of information on a forum. And then I find myself fantasizing about upgrading to an i7 so I can read the same basic text that could be read online when 1ghz processors were a pipe dream. Edit: and this is with ad blockers and anti-trackers turned on. The whole browser experience is just slower, and I think the act of having to scan and block all that cruft must have an impact. Browsers used to function on Windows XP machines back in the day, right? Edit2: and then I see this thread on the HN front page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054715
- not_kurt_godel 7y ago
  Targeted ads degrade user experiences for me because it's a reminder that someone or something that I don't know, knows about me. It's as if a stranger came up to you on the street, knew what brand of toilet paper you used at home, and asked if you wanted to buy more because you're almost out. Naturally you would wonder how this stranger knows these facts about you - do they snoop in your trash? Do they observe you in the bathroom through the window? Do they come in your home while you're away? We would consider such a world where this was normal to be Kafka-esque and dystopic. Anyone who gives an iota of care about personal privacy and dignity could (and arguably should) find implementation of the digital equivalent equally repulsive.
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    You say "someone or something," and to me, that's a pretty big difference. I don't care if things know about me. If there is an actual human being who is directly looking at me, associating it with my face, etc, that is a lot more bothersome than some machine that is doing that. I understand that many people here don't make that distinction. I do care about privacy in some ways, but when you I "arguably should" find machines invading my privacy to repulsive, I guess I have to thank you for putting the word "arguably" in there, because I would argue that. It just doesn't bother me, and I am happier for not having one more thing to be bothered by.
    - not_kurt_godel 7y ago
      I agree that there's a difference, but it's not necessarily one that the primal part of my brain cares about, regardless of what I know at a conscious/intellectual level. Furthermore, data that a machine knows is just one step away from becoming data that a human knows given sufficient curiosity or happenstance; a step into which you usually have no insight into whether or if it will occur.
      - robbrown451 7y ago
        Yeah, I hear ya, I guess my primal brain is different than yours. For instance, sometimes I feel a bit embarrassed by what I purchase at a store. (even if it's just that I'm buying a lot of junky, easy-to-prepare food at the grocery store) I've never once felt that way checking out at Amazon. Not even a teensy tiny bit. And that would remain true even if I suspected (or knew) that some human at Amazon was looking closely at the orders.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  In addition to other answers in this thread: It's a form of cultural bubble. A lot of 20th Century pop culture was driven by or at least responded to advertising. When advertising has to hit the broadest demographics and speak to the largest audiences it has more pressure to be creative and interesting, so that people talk or think about it. It also lead to interesting moments of discovery when ads found audiences outside of what they expected. Targeted ads are more often preaching to an already sold choir, so they can just be lazier in almost every way. They break expectations of novelty in ads. They lose the ability to drive the discovery models that were the original driving force behind why ads even exist in the first place. They add yet another unnecessary border wall/bubble effect where we struggle to find shared cultural events/jokes/touchstones between groups of people, because just about no two people (even inside the same demographic group) are seeing the same ads these days.
anonymousab 7y ago
It's only meaningless because "only what is needed to make your experiences better" means anything that is useful for advertisers. I've never seen a company that purported to be more benign than that.
kylealden 7y ago
If you're interested in exactly what data is collected and what it is used for, this whitepaper is fairly exhaustive: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-whitepaper https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-whit...

by pacala 7y ago

Meaningless. There are people claiming with a straight face that targeted ads make user experience better. Wholesale collection and aggregation of personal user data will continue unabated.

tomerico 7y ago

Curious, why would targeted ads make the user experience worse? (putting privacy aside)

skrebbel 7y ago
Why would getting shot make your life worse? (putting the pain and the bleeding aside)
throwaheyy 7y ago
Advertising is a distraction and an attempt at psychological manipulation. That is obviously a worse experience, unless you're actually into being distracted/manipulated. The weasel words "targeted ads are better" imply comparison to untargeted ads and is a disingenuous statement.
n4r9 7y ago
It doesn't have to make it worse, just not make it better. Almost no one ever says "I love using such-and-such a website, the adverts on the side are just so relevant".
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  When I'm looking for something, relevant ads are great. Ads that were relevant to something I was looking for a month ago? Not so much.
  - n4r9 7y ago
    When I'm looking for something, I'll usually have already done a thorough search around on google, ebay, amazon etc... and it's unlikely that targeted ads will show me something I've not yet seen.
  - mrr54 7y ago
    If I'm looking for something I want to read trusted reviews of it, not ads.
  - D-Coder 7y ago
    You don't have a refrigerator collection???
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
slumdev 7y ago
As a kid, anytime I stayed home sick from school, I watched TV. I would see only advertisements for catheters and guaranteed-issue life insurance. They didn't occupy much of my conscious thought. They were annoying at worst. When I watched TV during prime time and on the weekends, though, the advertisements were for toys and products that interested me. In the blink of an eye, my entire outlook worsened because I needed those things and didn't have them. The advertisements were also a great distraction from homework and chores.
manifestsilence 7y ago
This is an interesting debate, and one where I fear the young generation's attitudes seem to differ. My 16yo says she'd rather get targeted ads than non, because it's just more relevant and she might want to buy those things. She has zero concern about the psychological manipulation factor and assumes she will just say no if she doesn't want a product. I guess I can see where she's coming from, as I don't avoid physical stores when I'm not planning to buy things. Window shopping is fun. But still, I think all that tracking has a dark side that's difficult to convey to the generation that grew up taking it for granted. Are we just old and fear the new and unknown? The one thing I definitely hate is how bloated the web has gotten. Everything works great on my old computers that I switched over to linux, until I need to just google (duckduckgo) some simple piece of information on a forum. And then I find myself fantasizing about upgrading to an i7 so I can read the same basic text that could be read online when 1ghz processors were a pipe dream. Edit: and this is with ad blockers and anti-trackers turned on. The whole browser experience is just slower, and I think the act of having to scan and block all that cruft must have an impact. Browsers used to function on Windows XP machines back in the day, right? Edit2: and then I see this thread on the HN front page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054715
not_kurt_godel 7y ago
Targeted ads degrade user experiences for me because it's a reminder that someone or something that I don't know, knows about me. It's as if a stranger came up to you on the street, knew what brand of toilet paper you used at home, and asked if you wanted to buy more because you're almost out. Naturally you would wonder how this stranger knows these facts about you - do they snoop in your trash? Do they observe you in the bathroom through the window? Do they come in your home while you're away? We would consider such a world where this was normal to be Kafka-esque and dystopic. Anyone who gives an iota of care about personal privacy and dignity could (and arguably should) find implementation of the digital equivalent equally repulsive.
- robbrown451 7y ago
  You say "someone or something," and to me, that's a pretty big difference. I don't care if things know about me. If there is an actual human being who is directly looking at me, associating it with my face, etc, that is a lot more bothersome than some machine that is doing that. I understand that many people here don't make that distinction. I do care about privacy in some ways, but when you I "arguably should" find machines invading my privacy to repulsive, I guess I have to thank you for putting the word "arguably" in there, because I would argue that. It just doesn't bother me, and I am happier for not having one more thing to be bothered by.
  - not_kurt_godel 7y ago
    I agree that there's a difference, but it's not necessarily one that the primal part of my brain cares about, regardless of what I know at a conscious/intellectual level. Furthermore, data that a machine knows is just one step away from becoming data that a human knows given sufficient curiosity or happenstance; a step into which you usually have no insight into whether or if it will occur.
    - robbrown451 7y ago
      Yeah, I hear ya, I guess my primal brain is different than yours. For instance, sometimes I feel a bit embarrassed by what I purchase at a store. (even if it's just that I'm buying a lot of junky, easy-to-prepare food at the grocery store) I've never once felt that way checking out at Amazon. Not even a teensy tiny bit. And that would remain true even if I suspected (or knew) that some human at Amazon was looking closely at the orders.
WorldMaker 7y ago
In addition to other answers in this thread: It's a form of cultural bubble. A lot of 20th Century pop culture was driven by or at least responded to advertising. When advertising has to hit the broadest demographics and speak to the largest audiences it has more pressure to be creative and interesting, so that people talk or think about it. It also lead to interesting moments of discovery when ads found audiences outside of what they expected. Targeted ads are more often preaching to an already sold choir, so they can just be lazier in almost every way. They break expectations of novelty in ads. They lose the ability to drive the discovery models that were the original driving force behind why ads even exist in the first place. They add yet another unnecessary border wall/bubble effect where we struggle to find shared cultural events/jokes/touchstones between groups of people, because just about no two people (even inside the same demographic group) are seeing the same ads these days.

anonymousab 7y ago

It's only meaningless because "only what is needed to make your experiences better" means anything that is useful for advertisers. I've never seen a company that purported to be more benign than that.

kylealden 7y ago

If you're interested in exactly what data is collected and what it is used for, this whitepaper is fairly exhaustive: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-whitepaper https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-whit...