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I am always so surprised when I read articles like this by people in the "ad tech" space by the amount of sheer entitlement to people's attention and data. Appl

I am always so surprised when I read articles like this by people in the "ad tech" space by the amount of sheer entitlement to people's attention and data. Apple making this move is treated as if they were denying access to a natural resource, like Nestle putting a fence around your local lake and selling you the water. Ads are not inherently good, consumers don't need them, and ad companies don't have any right whatsoever to our attention or data. If it can be abused, it will be, and Google and Facebook have shown you can make tens of billions off of personal data and attention. To me it's fundamentally immoral. To see the terrifying endgame to all this, check out "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff.

treeman79 5y ago
Was in adtech. The money involved is obscene. Lots of high paying positions will go away if work arounds are not found. Some level of targeting is fine. Pushing denture cream to 5 year olds makes no one happy. Otherwise yea, creepiness is off the charts, wouldn’t mind most of it going away.
benedictevans 5y ago
I don't work in ad tech at all and never have. I'm just interesting in trying to work out what's doing on and what might happen. I also try to avoid moral panics and hysteria.
- lxchase 5y ago
  As someone who has helped build an attribution platform tying offline sales to online impressions, my hunch of what might happen is that the 3rd parties (in this case ad tech companies) will become more of the “connecting the pipes” role more than they already are. What is happening now with cookies has been happening since direct mail flyers were (and still are) a thing. Advertisers are selling purchase data (or trading) so you get commingled onto a list of people who like wine, watches and steaks. That list is then matched blindly with a 3rd party credit agency and commingled with other identifiers etc. Cookies are just a medium among many many identifiers, albeit a really easy one to use.
- sjg007 5y ago
  Hey Benedict, I've enjoyed your essays, and your podcast with Toni is also great! I hope you both continue to collaborate and produce more episodes.

treeman79 5y ago

Was in adtech. The money involved is obscene. Lots of high paying positions will go away if work arounds are not found. Some level of targeting is fine. Pushing denture cream to 5 year olds makes no one happy. Otherwise yea, creepiness is off the charts, wouldn’t mind most of it going away.

benedictevans 5y ago

I don't work in ad tech at all and never have. I'm just interesting in trying to work out what's doing on and what might happen. I also try to avoid moral panics and hysteria.

lxchase 5y ago
As someone who has helped build an attribution platform tying offline sales to online impressions, my hunch of what might happen is that the 3rd parties (in this case ad tech companies) will become more of the “connecting the pipes” role more than they already are. What is happening now with cookies has been happening since direct mail flyers were (and still are) a thing. Advertisers are selling purchase data (or trading) so you get commingled onto a list of people who like wine, watches and steaks. That list is then matched blindly with a 3rd party credit agency and commingled with other identifiers etc. Cookies are just a medium among many many identifiers, albeit a really easy one to use.
sjg007 5y ago
Hey Benedict, I've enjoyed your essays, and your podcast with Toni is also great! I hope you both continue to collaborate and produce more episodes.