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I'm sorry, but this solution is very much cart before the horse. I think many people have woken up in a world where most of the "free" stuff they enjoy on a dai

I'm sorry, but this solution is very much cart before the horse. I think many people have woken up in a world where most of the "free" stuff they enjoy on a daily basis necessarily requires the ability to identify them on an individual basis. I fear people will either have to learn to live with tracking and profiling as a part of everyday life, or they will have to get comfortable with the idea of paying for more of the stuff they use. Rejecting apps for accessing UDIDs does nothing to solve the underlying problem...

palish 15y ago
Ok. I choose "pay more for the stuff I use".
- dhbanes 15y ago
  Good. Now the goal is to get people (in the aggregate) to do so.
  - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
    First of all, service providers have to give me a choice. Even if they offer a paid subscription it doesn't automatically mean they don't store personal information about me. These things would have to be part of the contract and I haven't seen many such contracts. Right now, I don't feel I have any other choice but to block the trackers as aggressively as possible. I hope there will be better solutions in the future, because I really want to pay for services I like.
    - gyardley 15y ago
      Oh? Can I demand subscription services offer me an ad-supported version because I don't want to pay the monthly fee? After all, these service providers 'have to give me a choice'. No one has to give you anything. Where does your sense of entitlement come from? If you don't like the way a service is offered, your other choice is not to use it.
      - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
        You seem to have missed the parent posts. I'm not saying unconditionally that service providers have to give me a particular choice. Of course they don't have to. What I'm saying is that IF I am to choose option X that option has to be available to me, otherwise I cannot possibly choose it. And most of the time it is not available.
        gyardley 15y ago
        Yep, you're right - glossed over too much of the grey in the thread. Sorry for the early-morning invective.
wtn 15y ago
They want you to use iCloud to identify people. Makes more sense anyhow, since UDID's are hardware-dependent.
throwaway64 15y ago
please stop spreading this false dichotomy, advertising existed before every move you made was tracked, and it was quite profitable. There is zero reason that such invasive bullshit is a requirement, period.
- jballanc 15y ago
  Advertising has always been targeted, but lately consumers have been making it more and more difficult for advertisers to do so. Compare the number of magazines, television shows, radio stations, or highway routes to the number of websites or apps available today. When most of your target demographic reads the same 5 magazines or watches the same couple dozen television shows, targeting is easy. Now that everyone has the ability to, essentially, plot their own course through consumable media and entertainment, targeting must follow suit.
- superuser2 15y ago
  Before every move you made was tracked, there were only a handful of companies that could deliver ads to people: a few TV stations, a few radio stations, and one local paper. The Yellow Pages. Maybe some billboards. More competition and greater accountability (you can't really measure conversion rates for TV ads) means advertising services have to be more effective. Showing people ads for things they actually want is the best way to go about that. Facebook et al do not owe you ANYTHING. The anti-tracking crowd seems to feel it's entitled to services while providing nothing of value in exchange. That's not how the market works. Your attention alone isn't worth much if a website can't show you ads you're likely to act on. I don't like it either, which is why I run AdBlock and pay for things that are valuable to me - NYTimes, New Yorker, local paper, and phone (nothing sensitive on GMail so I don't care). As the saying goes, you're not the customer, you're the product.
  - pyre 15y ago
    So all of this tracking is only necessary due to the web? What about retailers such as Target or Walmart? Their weekly fliers have been around longer than the web, yet they too are tracking us as much as they can in order to target their advertising. This has nothing to do with there being too many channels to choose from.
tomjen3 15y ago
So Zynga goes banckrupt? Let me see where I put that timy violin...

palish 15y ago

Ok. I choose "pay more for the stuff I use".

dhbanes 15y ago
Good. Now the goal is to get people (in the aggregate) to do so.
- fauigerzigerk 15y ago
  First of all, service providers have to give me a choice. Even if they offer a paid subscription it doesn't automatically mean they don't store personal information about me. These things would have to be part of the contract and I haven't seen many such contracts. Right now, I don't feel I have any other choice but to block the trackers as aggressively as possible. I hope there will be better solutions in the future, because I really want to pay for services I like.
  - gyardley 15y ago
    Oh? Can I demand subscription services offer me an ad-supported version because I don't want to pay the monthly fee? After all, these service providers 'have to give me a choice'. No one has to give you anything. Where does your sense of entitlement come from? If you don't like the way a service is offered, your other choice is not to use it.
    - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
      You seem to have missed the parent posts. I'm not saying unconditionally that service providers have to give me a particular choice. Of course they don't have to. What I'm saying is that IF I am to choose option X that option has to be available to me, otherwise I cannot possibly choose it. And most of the time it is not available.
      - gyardley 15y ago
        Yep, you're right - glossed over too much of the grey in the thread. Sorry for the early-morning invective.

wtn 15y ago

They want you to use iCloud to identify people. Makes more sense anyhow, since UDID's are hardware-dependent.

throwaway64 15y ago

please stop spreading this false dichotomy, advertising existed before every move you made was tracked, and it was quite profitable. There is zero reason that such invasive bullshit is a requirement, period.

jballanc 15y ago
Advertising has always been targeted, but lately consumers have been making it more and more difficult for advertisers to do so. Compare the number of magazines, television shows, radio stations, or highway routes to the number of websites or apps available today. When most of your target demographic reads the same 5 magazines or watches the same couple dozen television shows, targeting is easy. Now that everyone has the ability to, essentially, plot their own course through consumable media and entertainment, targeting must follow suit.
superuser2 15y ago
Before every move you made was tracked, there were only a handful of companies that could deliver ads to people: a few TV stations, a few radio stations, and one local paper. The Yellow Pages. Maybe some billboards. More competition and greater accountability (you can't really measure conversion rates for TV ads) means advertising services have to be more effective. Showing people ads for things they actually want is the best way to go about that. Facebook et al do not owe you ANYTHING. The anti-tracking crowd seems to feel it's entitled to services while providing nothing of value in exchange. That's not how the market works. Your attention alone isn't worth much if a website can't show you ads you're likely to act on. I don't like it either, which is why I run AdBlock and pay for things that are valuable to me - NYTimes, New Yorker, local paper, and phone (nothing sensitive on GMail so I don't care). As the saying goes, you're not the customer, you're the product.
- pyre 15y ago
  So all of this tracking is only necessary due to the web? What about retailers such as Target or Walmart? Their weekly fliers have been around longer than the web, yet they too are tracking us as much as they can in order to target their advertising. This has nothing to do with there being too many channels to choose from.

tomjen3 15y ago

So Zynga goes banckrupt? Let me see where I put that timy violin...