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>Starting at "But the biggest issue I see people raising is the privacy impact of targeted ads..." Yes, that's literally all you have to say on the subject. T

>Starting at "But the biggest issue I see people raising is the privacy impact of targeted ads..." Yes, that's literally all you have to say on the subject. The very next paragraph is about how this helps keep ads relevant...

jefftk 6y ago
> that's literally all you have to say on the subject Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of targeted ads ("Most products are a much better fit for some people than others..."), then how it works today ("Historically, ads like this have been built on top of third-party cookies..."), then how it can work without cross-site tracking ("build browser APIs that will allow this kind of well-targeted advertising without sending your browsing history to advertisers, and then get rid of third-party cookies...")
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  Sorry, that's still attempting to justify the unjustifiable. The only ethical way of targeting is content relevance, which allows inference of the audience interest without using any audience data other than what they're currently looking at.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    > The only ethical way of targeting is content relevance Why?
    - shkkmo 6y ago
      Targeting based on content fundemenally allows everyone access to ad content. It makes content providers more responsible for the Ads they carry. It allows me to avoid sites that show me bad Ads (such as mail order brides). Targeting Ads based on anything else is invasive, discriminatory, and enables even higher levels of manipulation. If I get targeted by content independent targeted ads, it can be almsot impossible to avoid those Ads as they will follow you everywhere you go.
      - fastball 6y ago
        Speak for yourself. Instagram gives me fantastically targeted ads, and I appreciate that.
        shkkmo 6y ago
        I'm glad you aren't vulnerable to any of the above issues I raise. That doesn't mean there aren't vulnerable and powerless people who are being hurt by this system and your support o it.
        fastball 5y ago
        Removing personal responsibility from people is in itself a source of many social ills. For example think about how much better society could've been over the past decades if, instead of saying "people can't reasonably make decisions about [insert drug here] so we're going to illegalize all of them" we'd said "wow, adults can make decisions for themselves".
        shkkmo 5y ago
        Personal responsibility is not an excuse for disregarding the suffering of others. The war on drugs was a fundementally bad approach to fixing the problem. If it had worked and drug use had dropped near zero over a decade or two, you wouldn't see the current level of support for ending it. There are other cases where removing personal choice is not controversial (such as seat belt laws, incarceration, In fact, the failure of the war on drugs is an argument against relying purely on personal responsibility to solve the problem. Simply punishing people and expecting them to learn enough about the consequences of drug use to make the responsibile decision to stay away failed. It turns out that sometimes to get people to a place where they can take full personal responsibility, it requires giving them some help. We should strive to avoid removing personal responsibility and choice. The better job we do of providing the tools and support needed to make good decisions (i.e. ones the deciser will look back on without regret), the more respsibility we can easily allow. For examole: If we do a good job of protecting amd treating gambling addicts, that facilitates opening up gambling to more people in more locations.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  > Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of targeted ads I wish that my ads would be more relevant to what I like especially when it comes to music. What does youtube do? I search for a specific video because somebody told me it's there. I find it and sit through the whole length of 50+ mins and after I'm done navigate back to the YT frontpage. What do I see? A recommendation of the video I just watched. And it'll stay there for the next 6 weeks. The other extreme for me is watching something from the other camp simply because I want to learn what they're being exposed to. In my bubble this means conservative stuff like videos of people debating Ayn Rand or a Jordan Peterson. And I swear I'll have to fight for the next 6 months to get similar shit off my timeline. In fact it's easier to throw myself into the rabbit hole of watching Foucault, Zizek, Philosophy genre and fighting my way into content that is dominated by the likes of Tucker Carlson (and what used to be Alex Jones, Brietbart and others) than it is to shed the conservative label that YT has filed me under. And with conservative I mean seriously questionable stuff like Q-anon, climate change denying, cray-cray type of things. Because of this I now have different accounts for when I want to see the other side of the coin/polarization. Not sure if I should be blaming YT/Google with this since society is so polarized that the algorithm just reflects that reality. But it's not like the algo hasn't played a major role in creating this dystopian reality in the first place.
mrblampo 6y ago
It sounds like you would be happier to see the next sentence get into greater detail about how targets ads impact privacy today. But the article does in fact do so (look at the paragraph that starts "This model has some major drawbacks..."), and the next paragraph you refer to ("Most products are a much better fit...") builds to that point by explaining why targeted ads exist at all.

jefftk 6y ago

> that's literally all you have to say on the subject Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of targeted ads ("Most products are a much better fit for some people than others..."), then how it works today ("Historically, ads like this have been built on top of third-party cookies..."), then how it can work without cross-site tracking ("build browser APIs that will allow this kind of well-targeted advertising without sending your browsing history to advertisers, and then get rid of third-party cookies...")

stan_rogers 6y ago
Sorry, that's still attempting to justify the unjustifiable. The only ethical way of targeting is content relevance, which allows inference of the audience interest without using any audience data other than what they're currently looking at.
- jefftk 6y ago
  > The only ethical way of targeting is content relevance Why?
  - shkkmo 6y ago
    Targeting based on content fundemenally allows everyone access to ad content. It makes content providers more responsible for the Ads they carry. It allows me to avoid sites that show me bad Ads (such as mail order brides). Targeting Ads based on anything else is invasive, discriminatory, and enables even higher levels of manipulation. If I get targeted by content independent targeted ads, it can be almsot impossible to avoid those Ads as they will follow you everywhere you go.
    - fastball 6y ago
      Speak for yourself. Instagram gives me fantastically targeted ads, and I appreciate that.
      - shkkmo 6y ago
        I'm glad you aren't vulnerable to any of the above issues I raise. That doesn't mean there aren't vulnerable and powerless people who are being hurt by this system and your support o it.
        fastball 5y ago
        Removing personal responsibility from people is in itself a source of many social ills. For example think about how much better society could've been over the past decades if, instead of saying "people can't reasonably make decisions about [insert drug here] so we're going to illegalize all of them" we'd said "wow, adults can make decisions for themselves".
        shkkmo 5y ago
        Personal responsibility is not an excuse for disregarding the suffering of others. The war on drugs was a fundementally bad approach to fixing the problem. If it had worked and drug use had dropped near zero over a decade or two, you wouldn't see the current level of support for ending it. There are other cases where removing personal choice is not controversial (such as seat belt laws, incarceration, In fact, the failure of the war on drugs is an argument against relying purely on personal responsibility to solve the problem. Simply punishing people and expecting them to learn enough about the consequences of drug use to make the responsibile decision to stay away failed. It turns out that sometimes to get people to a place where they can take full personal responsibility, it requires giving them some help. We should strive to avoid removing personal responsibility and choice. The better job we do of providing the tools and support needed to make good decisions (i.e. ones the deciser will look back on without regret), the more respsibility we can easily allow. For examole: If we do a good job of protecting amd treating gambling addicts, that facilitates opening up gambling to more people in more locations.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
> Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of targeted ads I wish that my ads would be more relevant to what I like especially when it comes to music. What does youtube do? I search for a specific video because somebody told me it's there. I find it and sit through the whole length of 50+ mins and after I'm done navigate back to the YT frontpage. What do I see? A recommendation of the video I just watched. And it'll stay there for the next 6 weeks. The other extreme for me is watching something from the other camp simply because I want to learn what they're being exposed to. In my bubble this means conservative stuff like videos of people debating Ayn Rand or a Jordan Peterson. And I swear I'll have to fight for the next 6 months to get similar shit off my timeline. In fact it's easier to throw myself into the rabbit hole of watching Foucault, Zizek, Philosophy genre and fighting my way into content that is dominated by the likes of Tucker Carlson (and what used to be Alex Jones, Brietbart and others) than it is to shed the conservative label that YT has filed me under. And with conservative I mean seriously questionable stuff like Q-anon, climate change denying, cray-cray type of things. Because of this I now have different accounts for when I want to see the other side of the coin/polarization. Not sure if I should be blaming YT/Google with this since society is so polarized that the algorithm just reflects that reality. But it's not like the algo hasn't played a major role in creating this dystopian reality in the first place.

mrblampo 6y ago

It sounds like you would be happier to see the next sentence get into greater detail about how targets ads impact privacy today. But the article does in fact do so (look at the paragraph that starts "This model has some major drawbacks..."), and the next paragraph you refer to ("Most products are a much better fit...") builds to that point by explaining why targeted ads exist at all.