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> Unfortunately, this simply isn't true. It quite literally is. I like mountain biking, if I go to Pinkbike (largest MTB news site), all the ads are for mounta

> Unfortunately, this simply isn't true. It quite literally is. I like mountain biking, if I go to Pinkbike (largest MTB news site), all the ads are for mountain biking products. If I'm there, I don't want to see ads for cloud services, or toasters, because that's literally not what I'm interested in at this point. > The value of a vistor to a 'sports site' may be considerably more for some other product or service. Like what? Probably less utility to the user though. > The fact is, people are considerably more likely to opt for ad-based products than pay-based products Many products are advertising only, and there's a strong culture (pushed by the advertising industry I might ad) of ad-supported above all else. > The 'ill effects' of privacy are negligible...Nobody is harmed because of what FB is able to discern 'out of network' vs. what it already knows from what you do 'on network'. In your opinion, sure. So what, we should all just have to put up with it, just because Facebook thinks it "deserves" to make money. Phillip Morris and friends argued that cigarettes didn't harm anybody as well. > There are definitely considerations, but in reality, no harm. The previous American election and the well documented effect of troll farms would indicate otherwise. Targeted advertising, enabled by invasion of privacy and amplified by the ill-effects of social-networks literally enabled that directly. The "chilling effect" of constant monitoring on culture is a well documented effect. > Ads are not going away, better ads are better for everyone, we need to figure out how to deal with privacy. "Ads are here, who cares about privacy, we want to make money". We have a right to privacy, advertisers not have right to make money, and when rights and advertising collide, I don't see any reason beyond "let's just endlessly feed people to the machine of capitalism" why the latter should be allowed to win.

jariel 6y ago
You are conflating 'targetting = harm' with the more broad concern of 'private information in private hands = harm'. It's a huge stretch to say 'targetted ads disrupt elections'. What if we could to 'perfect targetting' without invasion of privacy? Well, the 'Evil Russians' would still be able to try to use ads. They are completely separate issues. 'The Russians' FYI mostly use FB pages, Reddit pages and fake groups to generate outrage, not just ads. There isn't really specific harm to individuals by FB having this information. It 'feels' creepy, but it's really not a material issue. It's something we would rather not have, obviously, and there are elements of privacy we definitely don't want to give up (ie intimate moments haard by Alexa), but in general not something that's bad.

jariel 6y ago

You are conflating 'targetting = harm' with the more broad concern of 'private information in private hands = harm'. It's a huge stretch to say 'targetted ads disrupt elections'. What if we could to 'perfect targetting' without invasion of privacy? Well, the 'Evil Russians' would still be able to try to use ads. They are completely separate issues. 'The Russians' FYI mostly use FB pages, Reddit pages and fake groups to generate outrage, not just ads. There isn't really specific harm to individuals by FB having this information. It 'feels' creepy, but it's really not a material issue. It's something we would rather not have, obviously, and there are elements of privacy we definitely don't want to give up (ie intimate moments haard by Alexa), but in general not something that's bad.