I want to make an interesting meta-comment here: One of the common criticisms of ads is how they impact privacy. I'm not going to pick any particular comment t

I want to make an interesting meta-comment here: One of the common criticisms of ads is how they impact privacy. I'm not going to pick any particular comment there, because I agree with some and disagree with others and find some to be incoherent. But the core issue is that ads (and the associated tracking and data collection) are an unethical privacy intrusion. I think that some of the arguments (especially the ones I find incoherent) are because some people value privacy for privacy's sake. That is, I usually try to look at my privacy from the perspective of threats I care about. Some people don't do that, they want privacy for the sake of privacy. Privacy as a goal, not as a means to an end of avoiding specific attacks. When I ask these kinds fo people what kinds of privacy "attacks" they're afraid of, I get things that sounds to me like conspiracy theories. This isn't wrong, it's just fundamentally different than how I approach things. I expect (given that Jeff publishes his salary every year and is super transparent about many things) he's similarly not worried about privacy as a goal, and instead cares about "circumstantial" privacy. I wonder if this difference in values is part of the disconnect. I think another part of the disconnect is that once you have insight into an organization, is much easier to see how it actually works. It's very easy to presume bad things as an outsider than an insider. But by the same token, it's somewhat rational for an outsider to not believe an insider who says "no just trust me, we aren't doing that". And so this too isn't an easy thing to fix without some sort of radical transparency on the part of the company (and even then).