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> If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news. Ummm. Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertisi

> If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news. Ummm. Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertising. It's really a slow return to how TV advertising and etc worked. > continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and safeguards than there were a decade ago. Let alone the amount of tools like AdBlocker or Ghostery or Brave or etc. Keep in mind that the awareness of your online presence is probably growing faster than your actual online presence. In fact, just like standard of living, it's easy to lose perspective of just how fast our entire idea of privacy has changed. 100 years ago, hotel beds used to be shared amongst strangers. Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home.

JohnFen 3y ago
> Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertising. Not being in the ad industry, this seems a lateral change to me. I can see how it would be problematic to others in the industry, though. > How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and safeguards than there were a decade ago. The online ad industry has poured enormous amounts of time, money, effort, and even lobbying to bypass efforts from end users to prevent being tracked. And that effort continues. There are more privacy rules and tools than before, but that's just because of the back-and-forth nature of the battle. Sometimes privacy edges ahead, then the ad companies push the gains back or route around them, then privacy edges ahead, etc. > Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home. I'm old enough to remember phone books. And I remember that people who didn't want to be listed, or only wanted limited information in them, had that option. Those books never had every person's information. They were, in modern parlance, opt-out (although you did have to pay a fee to be omitted, which was considered outrageous in the day, but there wasn't a way around that.)
dylan604 3y ago
>Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home. This example is only half-hearted at best I feel. Anyone touting this as an example also leaves out it was very possible to be omitted from this book or have a name other than your legal name listed. It is absolutely not possible with online tracking. Anyone throwing out this as an example of how "not bad" their industry is can take a long walk off a short pier.
ForHackernews 3y ago
> It's really a slow return to how TV advertising and etc worked. TV advertising is the opposite of targeted. Literally every person picking up a broadcast signal sees the same ads. My neighbors having my name and address in the phone book doesn't bother me the way Google tracking every damn thing I see on the internet does. People don't notice it, but the latter is far more invasive.
- throwaway14356 3y ago
  it was but tv is now a specific audience: people who don't care what they watch. Sounds terrific for advertising?
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    This isn't true, at least, it's not true of me. Most of my viewing is Freesat, i.e. free-to-air satellite broadcasts, which I receive via a Sky box with 2Tb of storage. I scan the schedules daily, and mark what interests me for recording. Periodically I go through my recordings, and delete stuff I'm never likely to watch. I used to have a Netflix subscription; I cancelled it when I realized that there's nothing worth watching (for me) on Netflix. Very occasionally I head to YT, but content discoverability on YT is poor. I do care what I watch; sometimes I find that I've run out of pre-recorded shows that I'm interested in; then I stop watching. And I never have TV on "in the background".
- bostik 3y ago
  > Literally every person picking up a broadcast signal sees the same ads. This is technically true, but only because it implies the word "same" before broadcast too. Regional ads injected into the ad slots were definitely a thing with TV already back in ~2005. So households getting their signal from the same transmitter got the same ads, but just a few kilometres away you could see entirely different ads during the advertising break.
watwut 3y ago
I find both hotel and phone book examples pretty weak. Neither proves we got a lot of privacy. Temporary sleeping with a stranger while traveling is loss of fonfort, but nit meaningful loss of privacy. With phonebook, you could ask to be omitted and more famous people routinelly did that. Also, information about you was very limited. Stalker or violent ex could use it, but it would be impossible to si thousands of strangers into harrasing you. It was nit the same as posting address on 4 Chan.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  The examples were about awareness of the concept of privacy, not privacy per se.
ssivark 3y ago
> Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home. And our opinions towards that changed precisely because some people started abusing that data to do targeting (and adversarial discrimination), exploiting scale, and the whole thing got out of hand.

JohnFen 3y ago

> Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertising. Not being in the ad industry, this seems a lateral change to me. I can see how it would be problematic to others in the industry, though. > How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and safeguards than there were a decade ago. The online ad industry has poured enormous amounts of time, money, effort, and even lobbying to bypass efforts from end users to prevent being tracked. And that effort continues. There are more privacy rules and tools than before, but that's just because of the back-and-forth nature of the battle. Sometimes privacy edges ahead, then the ad companies push the gains back or route around them, then privacy edges ahead, etc. > Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home. I'm old enough to remember phone books. And I remember that people who didn't want to be listed, or only wanted limited information in them, had that option. Those books never had every person's information. They were, in modern parlance, opt-out (although you did have to pay a fee to be omitted, which was considered outrageous in the day, but there wasn't a way around that.)

dylan604 3y ago

>Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home. This example is only half-hearted at best I feel. Anyone touting this as an example also leaves out it was very possible to be omitted from this book or have a name other than your legal name listed. It is absolutely not possible with online tracking. Anyone throwing out this as an example of how "not bad" their industry is can take a long walk off a short pier.

ForHackernews 3y ago

> It's really a slow return to how TV advertising and etc worked. TV advertising is the opposite of targeted. Literally every person picking up a broadcast signal sees the same ads. My neighbors having my name and address in the phone book doesn't bother me the way Google tracking every damn thing I see on the internet does. People don't notice it, but the latter is far more invasive.

throwaway14356 3y ago
it was but tv is now a specific audience: people who don't care what they watch. Sounds terrific for advertising?
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  This isn't true, at least, it's not true of me. Most of my viewing is Freesat, i.e. free-to-air satellite broadcasts, which I receive via a Sky box with 2Tb of storage. I scan the schedules daily, and mark what interests me for recording. Periodically I go through my recordings, and delete stuff I'm never likely to watch. I used to have a Netflix subscription; I cancelled it when I realized that there's nothing worth watching (for me) on Netflix. Very occasionally I head to YT, but content discoverability on YT is poor. I do care what I watch; sometimes I find that I've run out of pre-recorded shows that I'm interested in; then I stop watching. And I never have TV on "in the background".
bostik 3y ago
> Literally every person picking up a broadcast signal sees the same ads. This is technically true, but only because it implies the word "same" before broadcast too. Regional ads injected into the ad slots were definitely a thing with TV already back in ~2005. So households getting their signal from the same transmitter got the same ads, but just a few kilometres away you could see entirely different ads during the advertising break.

watwut 3y ago

I find both hotel and phone book examples pretty weak. Neither proves we got a lot of privacy. Temporary sleeping with a stranger while traveling is loss of fonfort, but nit meaningful loss of privacy. With phonebook, you could ask to be omitted and more famous people routinelly did that. Also, information about you was very limited. Stalker or violent ex could use it, but it would be impossible to si thousands of strangers into harrasing you. It was nit the same as posting address on 4 Chan.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago
The examples were about awareness of the concept of privacy, not privacy per se.

ssivark 3y ago

> Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home. And our opinions towards that changed precisely because some people started abusing that data to do targeting (and adversarial discrimination), exploiting scale, and the whole thing got out of hand.