Ad targeting is just a bugbear for a section of the tech activist crowd. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with a site like Twitter noticing that I tend to p

Ad targeting is just a bugbear for a section of the tech activist crowd. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with a site like Twitter noticing that I tend to post a lot about cats and showing me cat ads as a result. No, it's not self-evident that targeting is bad, and no, behavioral targeting doesn't require "surveiling" everyone internet-wide. > Late stage capitalism I don't subscribe to the neo-Marxist worldview that uses this "late stage capitalism" frame all the time. Capitalism is the natural order of the universe, not some temporary aberration on the way to your Utopia. > Opt-in. Transparent. Not transparent, and hardly opt-in: HN feed ranking is the default. > I much prefer client side (user controlled) filtering and sorting, like with any generic RSS reader. Okay, so people seeing different feeds is good... > Repeating myself: All HN visitors see the same feed. A crucial qualitative point you pointedly do not acknowledge. ... and now people seeing different feeds is bad. Make up your mind. Different people should see different feeds because they're interested in different things. There's nothing sinister or nefarious about showing people stories about topics that interest them and not showing them stories about topics that don't. I think even you'd agree that someone should be able to opt into seeing stories about "cooking" and opt out of stories about "motorcycles". Okay, that's good, right? Now what's wrong with using ML to infer, based on what someone reads, that he's interested in "cooking" and not "motorcycles"? This interest inference is what FB is doing. There's nothing bad about it. I maintain that the criticism you and others are lobbying against algorithmic feeds is logically incoherent, emotionally rooted, and unworkable as public policy.