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There is no mention of ethics, and the privacy discussion ends with "I don't think my work in advertising is something harmful to offset." The author seems to t
by burkaman 6y ago
There is no mention of ethics, and the privacy discussion ends with "I don't think my work in advertising is something harmful to offset." The author seems to think there are some good ideas to increase privacy that he is working on, but the existing problems are not serious enough to be considered "harmful".
- tantalor 6y agoIt is here: > This model has some major drawbacks from a privacy perspective. Typically, the vendor doesn't just get that you are interested in cars, they get the full URL of the page you are on. This lets them build up a pretty thorough picture of all the pages you have visited around the web. Then they can link their database with other vendors databases, and get even more coverage.
- burkaman 6y agoYes, I read that part. The article still ends with the claim that this drawback is not actually harmful.
- jefftk 6y agoIn between that claim and the end of the article I describe how I'm working on https://github.com/WICG/turtledove https://github.com/WICG/turtledove etc to build well-targeted advertising without sending your browsing history to advertisers
- burkaman 6y agoI understand, and I'm glad you're thinking about it, but you could not have been more clear: "I don't think my work in advertising is something harmful to offset." Did you misspeak? Do you think it is harmful but turtledove might reduce the harm?
- jefftk 6y agoMy work on advertising is on Turtledove
- burkaman 6y agoOh, that was not clear from the essay, and honestly might change my opinion a little. Is your position "targeted ads cause harmful privacy violations, but my work is exclusively devoted to reducing the privacy impact, so I don't believe my work is harmful"? If so I would encourage you to edit the essay, because that's not at all how it comes across right now, at least to readers who aren't familiar with your work. I had assumed turtledove was one of many projects you're involved with.