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>For the individual consumer, there is nothing good about privacy invasion and personalized ads. That's not true. If I'm forced to see ads they might as well b

>For the individual consumer, there is nothing good about privacy invasion and personalized ads. That's not true. If I'm forced to see ads they might as well be personalized. Hell, sometimes (rarely, I'll admit) I even find some things that interest me, like new products or services. Personalized ads work, there is no way around it. What irks me about these complaints is not complaining about ads, we all know they are annoying, but the faux moral high horse people, especially in this supposedly ultra rational community, put themselves on. I mean, it's not like you are begging to be paying a subscription to get rid of ads. For most sites you are still going to be browsing there with your adblocker even if the "legal" opportunity to get rid of ads is offered. If the ads weren't personalized you would complain about how irrelevant they are or something in that vain. You are not avoiding websites that display ads you find annoying you just block them. So please, stop with the moral high ground. You block ads because you can and because it's easy and, on the face of it, harmless. Yes, the data gathering can be abused, like anything, really.

jevoten 5y ago
> That's not true. If I'm forced to see ads they might as well be personalized. Don't forget personalized prices, too. Or pushing on you the "premium" versions of products. We show that personalized prices and advertising might boost firms’ profits in comparison to mass advertising and uniform prices, at the expense of consumer welfare. - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167718718301061 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01677... The Journal identified several companies, including Staples, Discover Financial Services, Rosetta Stone Inc.and Home Depot Inc., that were consistently adjusting prices and displaying different product offers based on a range of characteristics that could be discovered about the user. - https://lifehacker.com/how-web-sites-vary-prices-based-on-your-information-an-5973689 https://lifehacker.com/how-web-sites-vary-prices-based-on-yo...
simion314 5y ago
You might pay for a product and still get ads or get spied on, ex smart TVs that get updates with ads, smartphones that come with sponsored applications or games you can't remove, Windows computers or Windows itself , Be honest , did you see some product Box that says with big fonts on it "this product contains ads and telemetry" so you chose the other product that does not do that ? (or a non related example do the phones say on the box that "we force the developers not to inform you of better deals outside of the stores because we are greedy fucks and want you to pay more on stuff" ... companies will push the limits of legality to suck as much as they can from you, even if you pay for the products.
RealityVoid 5y ago
> I mean, it's not like you are begging to be paying a subscription to get rid of ads. Hah, and what, have multiple walled gardens, pay monthly subscriptions for skimming 2 articles 1 a month? Have to deal with the whole payment process? The complication alone would be more that what I get out of it. Besides, pay what? Most things on the net are crap anyways. You know those SEO cancer, content devoid, webpages? I would hate hate hate for them to get even 1 cent off of me. Most _good_ pages, ones I am truly interested are not ad powered anyway. HN is _almost_ add free. Reddit is pretty annoying with ads, but the content is community generated anyway. Most forums I visit are not ad powered. I swear, if I could, I would pay the ad revenue myself. I really really am curious how much that amounts to. Can't be too much, I remember reading _somewhere_ that FB has on average 50$/year off of each account. Sounds about right, but maybe my memory was playing tricks on me and the info might be bullshit. Would love to just send 2 cents for each page visited would that be fair? Someone should do a micropayments interface so that I can send some crypto to pages I read.

jevoten 5y ago

> That's not true. If I'm forced to see ads they might as well be personalized. Don't forget personalized prices, too. Or pushing on you the "premium" versions of products. We show that personalized prices and advertising might boost firms’ profits in comparison to mass advertising and uniform prices, at the expense of consumer welfare. - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167718718301061 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01677... The Journal identified several companies, including Staples, Discover Financial Services, Rosetta Stone Inc.and Home Depot Inc., that were consistently adjusting prices and displaying different product offers based on a range of characteristics that could be discovered about the user. - https://lifehacker.com/how-web-sites-vary-prices-based-on-your-information-an-5973689 https://lifehacker.com/how-web-sites-vary-prices-based-on-yo...

simion314 5y ago

You might pay for a product and still get ads or get spied on, ex smart TVs that get updates with ads, smartphones that come with sponsored applications or games you can't remove, Windows computers or Windows itself , Be honest , did you see some product Box that says with big fonts on it "this product contains ads and telemetry" so you chose the other product that does not do that ? (or a non related example do the phones say on the box that "we force the developers not to inform you of better deals outside of the stores because we are greedy fucks and want you to pay more on stuff" ... companies will push the limits of legality to suck as much as they can from you, even if you pay for the products.

RealityVoid 5y ago

> I mean, it's not like you are begging to be paying a subscription to get rid of ads. Hah, and what, have multiple walled gardens, pay monthly subscriptions for skimming 2 articles 1 a month? Have to deal with the whole payment process? The complication alone would be more that what I get out of it. Besides, pay what? Most things on the net are crap anyways. You know those SEO cancer, content devoid, webpages? I would hate hate hate for them to get even 1 cent off of me. Most _good_ pages, ones I am truly interested are not ad powered anyway. HN is _almost_ add free. Reddit is pretty annoying with ads, but the content is community generated anyway. Most forums I visit are not ad powered. I swear, if I could, I would pay the ad revenue myself. I really really am curious how much that amounts to. Can't be too much, I remember reading _somewhere_ that FB has on average 50$/year off of each account. Sounds about right, but maybe my memory was playing tricks on me and the info might be bullshit. Would love to just send 2 cents for each page visited would that be fair? Someone should do a micropayments interface so that I can send some crypto to pages I read.