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People aren't forced to do anything. They don't have to use content supported by ads, plenty of it isn't. And the biggest/best online ad networks offer controls

People aren't forced to do anything. They don't have to use content supported by ads, plenty of it isn't. And the biggest/best online ad networks offer controls, which nobody uses because vanishingly few people care. Banning targeted advertising would be ridiculous. I'll say it: I love targeted ads. I'd much rather have usefully targeted ads than go back to the days of DoubleClick punch the monkey garbage, or "these beautiful twins" generic garbage. No targeted ads doesn't look like a blissful utopia of clean web pages, it looks like the existing web but all the ads are 10x more distracting and manipulative. We've been there, we know how it is. If you want a reminder just go to a news website in incognito mode and see what lowest common denominator dreck gets presented. When I look around trying to find people supposedly harmed by targeted ads, I come up blank. I've never heard of this being a problem and I resent the constant efforts of "privacy justice warriors" to screw up the internet for everyone else. My internet experience is made far worse by invasive cookie banners than by ad cookies, if I had to pick which one to disappear with a wand there'd be no hesitation.

danaris 7y ago
> People aren't forced to do anything. You're not listening. Or, apparently, thinking critically about the issue. Two things: First, they—we—are forced to see it. That, in itself, is already a cost to us all. It taxes our brains, in ways that have been measured. And yes, I know that banning the targeting isn't the same as banning the advertising, but we should definitely be doing that in more of our spaces, too. Now, second: People do not have the choice to opt out of the data collection. Oh, sure, you can check the box on website X that says "don't sell my data," you can choose not to do business with Facebook, but you can't actually avoid the tracking and actually participate in the modern world. (Heck, in some places, you'll be tracked and profiled just from what you do in the physical world, too, through cameras and such.) The point isn't that people are (by and large) being actively harmed by the targeting in the ads. We're being harmed by the invasion of privacy required to implement the targeting, and we're being harmed by the inability to avoid seeing the ads.

danaris 7y ago

> People aren't forced to do anything. You're not listening. Or, apparently, thinking critically about the issue. Two things: First, they—we—are forced to see it. That, in itself, is already a cost to us all. It taxes our brains, in ways that have been measured. And yes, I know that banning the targeting isn't the same as banning the advertising, but we should definitely be doing that in more of our spaces, too. Now, second: People do not have the choice to opt out of the data collection. Oh, sure, you can check the box on website X that says "don't sell my data," you can choose not to do business with Facebook, but you can't actually avoid the tracking and actually participate in the modern world. (Heck, in some places, you'll be tracked and profiled just from what you do in the physical world, too, through cameras and such.) The point isn't that people are (by and large) being actively harmed by the targeting in the ads. We're being harmed by the invasion of privacy required to implement the targeting, and we're being harmed by the inability to avoid seeing the ads.