11 ms·

> Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well. For example, it could be helpful if an online store reminds you every three months you need a new toothbr

> Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well. For example, it could be helpful if an online store reminds you every three months you need a new toothbrush, or that this time last year you bought a birthday card for your mum. fuck off

notoverthere 3y ago
This isn't even a realistic use case of tracking. Nobody needs tracking cookies to get reminders about buying birthday cards. Online stores can (and do) remind us about this stuff via email. No third-party tracking cookies needed – you're already a customer of theirs. If they want to get in touch, they already know your order history and contact details. Or, you know, we can add our own reminders to a personal calendar.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Now you gave me an idea: We gonna launch a start-up working on an AI-based reminder calendar app. And in order to improve the invest... ahm, user experience we gonna track them across the web to enable our AI to propose futire reminders!
- mulmen 3y ago
  I don’t think the article makes the case that tracking cookies are required. It only claims that automated reminders can benefit people, which is far less controversial. The article gives instructions on how to turn this off and concludes with the classic warning about being the product.
  - acidictadpole 3y ago
    It's less controversial but also not really relevant. Those kinds of reminders shouldn't be using cookies, and don't need to.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - mulmen 3y ago
      The part about tracking being arguably good is a separate paragraph that is clearly written in contrast to Google’s tracking. At no point does the article claim cookies are required for “good” automation.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
tgv 3y ago
It's against the guidelines to be dismissive, but there really is no other response. Especially when you left read the follow-up sentence: > Offloading cognitive effort, such as reminders like these, is a great way automation can assist humanity. Does that pass for journalism? I really don't want to read the rest of the article.
- hosteur 3y ago
  This is where I stopped reading as well. This would be a much better article for this thread: https://movementforanopenweb.com/googles-privacy-sandbox-a-closer-look-at-claims-and-contradictions/ https://movementforanopenweb.com/googles-privacy-sandbox-a-c...
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    How do you know which article is better, without reading them?
    - hosteur 3y ago
      I think it was rather obvious from the context of this thread that the quoted text indicates that the article linked is of very poor quality. It is not necessary to read the full article before knowing something is of poor quality which is trivially known by anyone who has started reading a book or article and then decided it was not worth their time. I read the article that I suggested was better and I stand by that statement.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        > I think it was rather obvious from the context of this thread that the quoted text indicates that the article linked is of very poor quality. I read the article; it's actually one of the better pieces I've read in that domain (tech news for the general public) IMHO. People say those things (take-downs) about everything on HN. Don't trust the threads - why would you trust anonymous people writing one-sentence hot-take rants, some of whom probably also didn't read the article and are just repeating things. The Internet tide isn't a reliable indicator of anything, any more than the tide at the beach.
finite_depth 3y ago
It isn't wrong. These things COULD be useful - just like a camera in your shower that warns you if you have a problematic-looking mole on your ass could be. We could do amazing things if not for bad actors. But bad actors are a much harder problem than computer vision or AI or recommendation engines or just about anything else non-adversarial. It's why discovering climate change 50 years ago hasn't led to a solution since. It's why we can't just educate people out of misconceptions, we have to actively fight against people trying to keep them wrong and make them wronger (and it's why institutions have lost so much trust that this becomes possible). The only defense against this is virtuous people in power, but our system has done an incredible job - somewhat intentionally - of making sure that they aren't. Investors aren't lining up to support someone who'll make 10% less profit to avoid some horrible externality.
madeofpalk 3y ago
it's such a terrible example because you could make a case for interest-based tracking + advertising. Whether you're okay with it is seperate.
HeckFeck 3y ago
Let's have an advertising company also have a monopoly on the web browser. What could possibly go wrong?
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  You all voted for this.
  - Larrikin 3y ago
    But Chrome loads 1000 tabs a second faster than Firefox, which makes Firefox totally unusable.
    - throwaway2990 3y ago
      I have more tabs open on Firefox than chrome and Firefox is faster. Chrome is massively annoying because it unloads the tab all the time. It sucks that I have to use chrome for work.
      - CaptainZapp 3y ago
        I think that parent was being sarcastic.
        bee_rider 3y ago
        They were, but in different directions. Poster 1 was sarcastically pointing out an advantage that people claim Chrome has. Poster 2 was pointing out that it isn’t even true.
    - hskdhdkshs 3y ago
      the funny thing is: it doesn't. never did you only believe that because it was advertised, by the company who is the number one for advertisement, who would have though? i workedv with JavaScript performance at a top10 alexa site when that was talked about. chrome and firefox (and ie, heh) were always close. but all the chrome promoters focused on the aspects chrome was better... which changed monthly btw. today chrome string concatenation was fast. tomorrow firefox using string array mergers, etc. anyway, just created an account to point this wrong assumption out, even if it was posted as a joke. and i did have to solve a challenge (captcha) by the very advertising company we are talking about. sigh.
bobim 3y ago
Exactly! Can’t wait that it also includes present suggestions based on the browsing history from the person having his/her birthday…
dspillett 3y ago
> fuck off Hell yes. Those benefits don't require us being stalked around our entire online lives: the online store already knows when I bought a toothbrush¹. Unless they are trying to argue that telling every retailer on the planet when I last bought a toothbrush, or other healthcare products, is a good idea?! Same for the birthday card if I bought one online. This example is even worse: potentially not just tracking my personal information but that of another person too, much like Facebook's “shadow profiles” for people who aren't even using the service themselves. If I were a millionaire, and still as bitter at the world as I am while currently not being one, I might have a PI follow that writer for a bit, so I can helpfully send reminders, to illustrate how badly ill-conceived this take is…
- mulmen 3y ago
  > I might have a PI follow that writer for a bit, so I can helpfully send reminders, to illustrate how badly ill-conceived this take is… That’s not a healthy fantasy. The “following” part is especially creepy. There’s a contact the author link on the site. If you care to contact her it’s just a couple clicks away. No reason to hire a stalker. Why are you so angry at the author and not at the people who actually made Chrome do this?
  - Kamq 3y ago
    > The “following” part is especially creepy. I think that was the point. It's an analogy for what the article is talking about. The behavior of Chrome is legitimately creepy.
    - mulmen 3y ago
      But it’s targeted at the author of this article and not the people doing the tracking.
      - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        I think that the point is to make the author understand exactly why it's creepy, so that next time they write something like this, they actually see the problem. I'm not advocating this approach. But it's not entirely off base.
Xelbair 3y ago
"Advertisements and it's consequences have been a disaster to human race." a nod to a fragment of well known manifesto. The sooner we ban all forms of such tracking the better we will be as society.
- meiraleal 3y ago
  You made me waste so much time thinking that this well known manifesto was some genius hacker thing but it turned out to be american extremism/terrorism.
eduction 3y ago
[flagged]
- alexvitkov 3y ago
  i sincerely apologize and profusely thank the author for spreading awareness to this issue!
- VerminOctopus1 3y ago
  This philosophy of thinking every opinion deserves and requires reasoned critique while maintaining decorum is worse than any rude words. The opinion expressed by the author does not deserve more than the two words they were generously afforded.
  - eduction 3y ago
    I don’t see how you can actually read the article with any care and think the author expressed an opinion. They aired a possible counter argument - “ Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well.” In two paragraphs in a much longer piece. It’s sad that HN has become a place where there is only room for simplistic one sided rants. That actual journalism is met with angry swearing.
- omginternets 3y ago
  [flagged]
paint 3y ago
Only tangentially related, but the new hot shit i recently learned about is "conversational commerce", i.e. services that let companies spam their target markets on messengers like whatsapp in situations like the ones you describe, or when a certain product is back in stock etc.. i think it's an absolutely disgusting invasion of supposedly personal communication spaces. My ex "works" (cold messaging people on linkedin) for a startup that does this and i genuinely don't understand how otherwise lovely amazing people can throw their morals under the bus like that and willingly dedicate 40+ hours of their lives week after week to making the world a shittier place.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  How many people work for Google and Facebook?
cmiles74 3y ago
I have yet to see an ad this clever! It's 2023 and the ads I'm served are for things I already recently purchased (and don't need to buy again) or similar to something I have recently purchased or a cheap knock-off of something I have recently purchased.
rgrieselhuber 3y ago
And the engineers who build this too. We need to have a national conversation about common sense nerd control.
tomjen3 3y ago
If that was a selection box on the site when you bought something there, do you think 0% would check it? If not, I don’t think the comment is appropriate.
boringuser2 3y ago
That seems like the kind of trite positivity that ChatGPT writes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
simonebrunozzi 3y ago
Honestly, one of the most brilliant comments I've read in a while, and a perfect use of some "swear" words. I am not kidding. Upvoted, of course. You summed up everything we have to say about it in just two words, in perhaps the best possible way.

notoverthere 3y ago

This isn't even a realistic use case of tracking. Nobody needs tracking cookies to get reminders about buying birthday cards. Online stores can (and do) remind us about this stuff via email. No third-party tracking cookies needed – you're already a customer of theirs. If they want to get in touch, they already know your order history and contact details. Or, you know, we can add our own reminders to a personal calendar.

hef19898 3y ago
Now you gave me an idea: We gonna launch a start-up working on an AI-based reminder calendar app. And in order to improve the invest... ahm, user experience we gonna track them across the web to enable our AI to propose futire reminders!
mulmen 3y ago
I don’t think the article makes the case that tracking cookies are required. It only claims that automated reminders can benefit people, which is far less controversial. The article gives instructions on how to turn this off and concludes with the classic warning about being the product.
- acidictadpole 3y ago
  It's less controversial but also not really relevant. Those kinds of reminders shouldn't be using cookies, and don't need to.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mulmen 3y ago
    The part about tracking being arguably good is a separate paragraph that is clearly written in contrast to Google’s tracking. At no point does the article claim cookies are required for “good” automation.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

tgv 3y ago

It's against the guidelines to be dismissive, but there really is no other response. Especially when you left read the follow-up sentence: > Offloading cognitive effort, such as reminders like these, is a great way automation can assist humanity. Does that pass for journalism? I really don't want to read the rest of the article.

hosteur 3y ago
This is where I stopped reading as well. This would be a much better article for this thread: https://movementforanopenweb.com/googles-privacy-sandbox-a-closer-look-at-claims-and-contradictions/ https://movementforanopenweb.com/googles-privacy-sandbox-a-c...
- wolverine876 3y ago
  How do you know which article is better, without reading them?
  - hosteur 3y ago
    I think it was rather obvious from the context of this thread that the quoted text indicates that the article linked is of very poor quality. It is not necessary to read the full article before knowing something is of poor quality which is trivially known by anyone who has started reading a book or article and then decided it was not worth their time. I read the article that I suggested was better and I stand by that statement.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      > I think it was rather obvious from the context of this thread that the quoted text indicates that the article linked is of very poor quality. I read the article; it's actually one of the better pieces I've read in that domain (tech news for the general public) IMHO. People say those things (take-downs) about everything on HN. Don't trust the threads - why would you trust anonymous people writing one-sentence hot-take rants, some of whom probably also didn't read the article and are just repeating things. The Internet tide isn't a reliable indicator of anything, any more than the tide at the beach.

finite_depth 3y ago

It isn't wrong. These things COULD be useful - just like a camera in your shower that warns you if you have a problematic-looking mole on your ass could be. We could do amazing things if not for bad actors. But bad actors are a much harder problem than computer vision or AI or recommendation engines or just about anything else non-adversarial. It's why discovering climate change 50 years ago hasn't led to a solution since. It's why we can't just educate people out of misconceptions, we have to actively fight against people trying to keep them wrong and make them wronger (and it's why institutions have lost so much trust that this becomes possible). The only defense against this is virtuous people in power, but our system has done an incredible job - somewhat intentionally - of making sure that they aren't. Investors aren't lining up to support someone who'll make 10% less profit to avoid some horrible externality.

madeofpalk 3y ago

it's such a terrible example because you could make a case for interest-based tracking + advertising. Whether you're okay with it is seperate.

HeckFeck 3y ago

Let's have an advertising company also have a monopoly on the web browser. What could possibly go wrong?

throwaway2990 3y ago
You all voted for this.
- Larrikin 3y ago
  But Chrome loads 1000 tabs a second faster than Firefox, which makes Firefox totally unusable.
  - throwaway2990 3y ago
    I have more tabs open on Firefox than chrome and Firefox is faster. Chrome is massively annoying because it unloads the tab all the time. It sucks that I have to use chrome for work.
    - CaptainZapp 3y ago
      I think that parent was being sarcastic.
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        They were, but in different directions. Poster 1 was sarcastically pointing out an advantage that people claim Chrome has. Poster 2 was pointing out that it isn’t even true.
  - hskdhdkshs 3y ago
    the funny thing is: it doesn't. never did you only believe that because it was advertised, by the company who is the number one for advertisement, who would have though? i workedv with JavaScript performance at a top10 alexa site when that was talked about. chrome and firefox (and ie, heh) were always close. but all the chrome promoters focused on the aspects chrome was better... which changed monthly btw. today chrome string concatenation was fast. tomorrow firefox using string array mergers, etc. anyway, just created an account to point this wrong assumption out, even if it was posted as a joke. and i did have to solve a challenge (captcha) by the very advertising company we are talking about. sigh.

bobim 3y ago

Exactly! Can’t wait that it also includes present suggestions based on the browsing history from the person having his/her birthday…

dspillett 3y ago

> fuck off Hell yes. Those benefits don't require us being stalked around our entire online lives: the online store already knows when I bought a toothbrush¹. Unless they are trying to argue that telling every retailer on the planet when I last bought a toothbrush, or other healthcare products, is a good idea?! Same for the birthday card if I bought one online. This example is even worse: potentially not just tracking my personal information but that of another person too, much like Facebook's “shadow profiles” for people who aren't even using the service themselves. If I were a millionaire, and still as bitter at the world as I am while currently not being one, I might have a PI follow that writer for a bit, so I can helpfully send reminders, to illustrate how badly ill-conceived this take is…

mulmen 3y ago
> I might have a PI follow that writer for a bit, so I can helpfully send reminders, to illustrate how badly ill-conceived this take is… That’s not a healthy fantasy. The “following” part is especially creepy. There’s a contact the author link on the site. If you care to contact her it’s just a couple clicks away. No reason to hire a stalker. Why are you so angry at the author and not at the people who actually made Chrome do this?
- Kamq 3y ago
  > The “following” part is especially creepy. I think that was the point. It's an analogy for what the article is talking about. The behavior of Chrome is legitimately creepy.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    But it’s targeted at the author of this article and not the people doing the tracking.
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      I think that the point is to make the author understand exactly why it's creepy, so that next time they write something like this, they actually see the problem. I'm not advocating this approach. But it's not entirely off base.

Xelbair 3y ago

"Advertisements and it's consequences have been a disaster to human race." a nod to a fragment of well known manifesto. The sooner we ban all forms of such tracking the better we will be as society.

meiraleal 3y ago
You made me waste so much time thinking that this well known manifesto was some genius hacker thing but it turned out to be american extremism/terrorism.

eduction 3y ago

[flagged]

alexvitkov 3y ago
i sincerely apologize and profusely thank the author for spreading awareness to this issue!
VerminOctopus1 3y ago
This philosophy of thinking every opinion deserves and requires reasoned critique while maintaining decorum is worse than any rude words. The opinion expressed by the author does not deserve more than the two words they were generously afforded.
- eduction 3y ago
  I don’t see how you can actually read the article with any care and think the author expressed an opinion. They aired a possible counter argument - “ Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well.” In two paragraphs in a much longer piece. It’s sad that HN has become a place where there is only room for simplistic one sided rants. That actual journalism is met with angry swearing.
omginternets 3y ago
[flagged]

paint 3y ago

Only tangentially related, but the new hot shit i recently learned about is "conversational commerce", i.e. services that let companies spam their target markets on messengers like whatsapp in situations like the ones you describe, or when a certain product is back in stock etc.. i think it's an absolutely disgusting invasion of supposedly personal communication spaces. My ex "works" (cold messaging people on linkedin) for a startup that does this and i genuinely don't understand how otherwise lovely amazing people can throw their morals under the bus like that and willingly dedicate 40+ hours of their lives week after week to making the world a shittier place.

scarface_74 3y ago
How many people work for Google and Facebook?

cmiles74 3y ago

I have yet to see an ad this clever! It's 2023 and the ads I'm served are for things I already recently purchased (and don't need to buy again) or similar to something I have recently purchased or a cheap knock-off of something I have recently purchased.

rgrieselhuber 3y ago

And the engineers who build this too. We need to have a national conversation about common sense nerd control.

tomjen3 3y ago

If that was a selection box on the site when you bought something there, do you think 0% would check it? If not, I don’t think the comment is appropriate.

boringuser2 3y ago

That seems like the kind of trite positivity that ChatGPT writes.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

simonebrunozzi 3y ago

Honestly, one of the most brilliant comments I've read in a while, and a perfect use of some "swear" words. I am not kidding. Upvoted, of course. You summed up everything we have to say about it in just two words, in perhaps the best possible way.