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I just want to take this opportunity to thank "adtech" and everyone working in it for making local storage way more complex than it otherwise needed to be becau

I just want to take this opportunity to thank "adtech" and everyone working in it for making local storage way more complex than it otherwise needed to be because you couldn't/can't stop yourselves from abusing users.

Bewelge 4y ago
In what way is it more complex than it has to be? I don't work in front-end but whenever I've used localstorage for personal projects it's as simple as getting/setting a javascript object with keys & values.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- matthewowen 4y ago
  It’s described in the first section of the article.
  - Bewelge 4y ago
    Care to elaborate? I just re-read the article and honestly still don't know what complexity OP was referring to. Do you mean the fact that cookies and LocalStorage (or other APIs able to persist data) are often considered the same thing when using the term "cookies"?
beebmam 4y ago
A technology which leaves the door open for exploitation will certainly be exploited by someone. In a self-governing society, people would turn their backs on the most exploitable technology; in the actual world, I just don't see that happening.
- Justsignedup 4y ago
  Where there is an opportunity for exploitation and humans, there will always be an exploit used. It's just how we are, how our brains are built. Until that exploit yields you no benefit socially. Meanwhile we see just how effective targeted advertisement can be for both money and political influence.
ajross 4y ago
This is a good example of how the discourse on this subject seems to have twisted itself around. No one serious ever thought "advertising" was a bad thing, not really. It was the potential abuse of the stored data people were worried about. But that's hard to explain, especially without good examples to which to point[1]. So fast forward a few years and... now it's "adtech" that's the enemy in isolation. That seems unfortunate. And futile anyway, because the truth is that society as a whole actually wants advertising, in all its forms. We may find individual ads annoying but we still make our purchase decisions based on those ads and use those channels to hawk our own wares. [1] The truth is that the big ad-driven internet companies have been, on the whole, actually fairly good stewards of this stuff. People don't trust them out of principle (or, just as often, tribalism), but at least so far the dystopia hasn't arrived.
- topaz0 4y ago
  That's not true -- many people think advertising as practiced is abusive in its own right.
  - ajross 4y ago
    "Society as a whole" and "many people" are not the same entities. Again, there was a time when serious discourse about internet privacy focused on abuse potential and how to provide data security guarantees. Now it's just "ads bad", and I think that's a real problem with the discourse. To repeat, you can win fights over privacy (c.f. the GDPR, which while pretty flawed was a real and tangible win for users). You'll never win a fight over "ads". Ever.
    - hedora 4y ago
      The vast majority of Americans are concerned about data collection: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-about-privacy-surveillance-and-data-sharing/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeawa... There's no point in additional discourse on the issue. We may as well be arguing about whether cigarettes cure lung disease.
    - 4y ago
sysmuird 4y ago
I’m in adtech and we manage to do ads in a completely user respecting way within the retail space. We monetize on search traffic without user data, cookies, local storage. The only browser feature we leverage are click events and img tags. Though I appreciate your frustration, your aggression is a little off target. :)
- user3939382 4y ago
  > The only browser feature we leverage are click events Do the users want their click events fed into an advertising engine? Did you ask them? If you made this opt-in, how many would say, yes, please track my clicks in order to advertise to me? Even if its anonymized/aggregated. A huge amount of advertising is enabled by tracking users against their will, exploiting the fact that many users aren't aware of what's going on, don't know how to stop it, or aren't as invested in their preference as the adtech companies are in their revenue. "A man is always right in his own eyes". If you're smart it's easy to justify this stuff to yourself because you're getting paid, but that doesn't make it right.
  - matyasrichter 4y ago
    I'm sorry if this hurts your beliefs, but in what way are aggregated and anonymized data exploitative? Every "offline" store does it. How do you expect businesses to make profits if they can't look at what drives their revenue without bothering every single customer with consent requests?
    - trasz 4y ago
      Data claimed to by anonymized usually can be easily deanonymized.
  - sysmuird 4y ago
    I should have known my comment would only make you more aggressive. Walked into that I guess. You are right in that a huge amount of ads leverage user data at the expense of the user. The point I’m trying to make is that not all involved in the advertising technology are exploitive. We do zero ad targeting based on user data. You make a search for specific products, we take the response and shuffle the order a bit based on vendor campaigns. That’s it. Nothing is associated or even collected from the user. It’s all system metrics. The greatest harm that my team does is hurting optimized relevancy, which is inherit to advertising but also something we work hard to alleviate. That misused proverbs quote is a nice touch. Shows a lot of self awareness.

Bewelge 4y ago

In what way is it more complex than it has to be? I don't work in front-end but whenever I've used localstorage for personal projects it's as simple as getting/setting a javascript object with keys & values.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
matthewowen 4y ago
It’s described in the first section of the article.
- Bewelge 4y ago
  Care to elaborate? I just re-read the article and honestly still don't know what complexity OP was referring to. Do you mean the fact that cookies and LocalStorage (or other APIs able to persist data) are often considered the same thing when using the term "cookies"?

beebmam 4y ago

A technology which leaves the door open for exploitation will certainly be exploited by someone. In a self-governing society, people would turn their backs on the most exploitable technology; in the actual world, I just don't see that happening.

Justsignedup 4y ago
Where there is an opportunity for exploitation and humans, there will always be an exploit used. It's just how we are, how our brains are built. Until that exploit yields you no benefit socially. Meanwhile we see just how effective targeted advertisement can be for both money and political influence.

ajross 4y ago

This is a good example of how the discourse on this subject seems to have twisted itself around. No one serious ever thought "advertising" was a bad thing, not really. It was the potential abuse of the stored data people were worried about. But that's hard to explain, especially without good examples to which to point[1]. So fast forward a few years and... now it's "adtech" that's the enemy in isolation. That seems unfortunate. And futile anyway, because the truth is that society as a whole actually wants advertising, in all its forms. We may find individual ads annoying but we still make our purchase decisions based on those ads and use those channels to hawk our own wares. [1] The truth is that the big ad-driven internet companies have been, on the whole, actually fairly good stewards of this stuff. People don't trust them out of principle (or, just as often, tribalism), but at least so far the dystopia hasn't arrived.

topaz0 4y ago
That's not true -- many people think advertising as practiced is abusive in its own right.
- ajross 4y ago
  "Society as a whole" and "many people" are not the same entities. Again, there was a time when serious discourse about internet privacy focused on abuse potential and how to provide data security guarantees. Now it's just "ads bad", and I think that's a real problem with the discourse. To repeat, you can win fights over privacy (c.f. the GDPR, which while pretty flawed was a real and tangible win for users). You'll never win a fight over "ads". Ever.
  - hedora 4y ago
    The vast majority of Americans are concerned about data collection: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-about-privacy-surveillance-and-data-sharing/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeawa... There's no point in additional discourse on the issue. We may as well be arguing about whether cigarettes cure lung disease.
  - 4y ago

sysmuird 4y ago

I’m in adtech and we manage to do ads in a completely user respecting way within the retail space. We monetize on search traffic without user data, cookies, local storage. The only browser feature we leverage are click events and img tags. Though I appreciate your frustration, your aggression is a little off target. :)

user3939382 4y ago
> The only browser feature we leverage are click events Do the users want their click events fed into an advertising engine? Did you ask them? If you made this opt-in, how many would say, yes, please track my clicks in order to advertise to me? Even if its anonymized/aggregated. A huge amount of advertising is enabled by tracking users against their will, exploiting the fact that many users aren't aware of what's going on, don't know how to stop it, or aren't as invested in their preference as the adtech companies are in their revenue. "A man is always right in his own eyes". If you're smart it's easy to justify this stuff to yourself because you're getting paid, but that doesn't make it right.
- matyasrichter 4y ago
  I'm sorry if this hurts your beliefs, but in what way are aggregated and anonymized data exploitative? Every "offline" store does it. How do you expect businesses to make profits if they can't look at what drives their revenue without bothering every single customer with consent requests?
  - trasz 4y ago
    Data claimed to by anonymized usually can be easily deanonymized.
- sysmuird 4y ago
  I should have known my comment would only make you more aggressive. Walked into that I guess. You are right in that a huge amount of ads leverage user data at the expense of the user. The point I’m trying to make is that not all involved in the advertising technology are exploitive. We do zero ad targeting based on user data. You make a search for specific products, we take the response and shuffle the order a bit based on vendor campaigns. That’s it. Nothing is associated or even collected from the user. It’s all system metrics. The greatest harm that my team does is hurting optimized relevancy, which is inherit to advertising but also something we work hard to alleviate. That misused proverbs quote is a nice touch. Shows a lot of self awareness.