4 ms·

this is a load of crap that gets repeated again and again, please stop. advertising existed before every move you made was tracked, and it was quite profitable

this is a load of crap that gets repeated again and again, please stop. 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. HN user fauigerzigerk put it best: I would like to agree with your idea of tracking as payment, but I really can't, because: a) Most of the time I don't have a choice. There's no option to pay them money and even if I pay them directly, they may still keep collecting tons of personal information about me on top of it. b) It's sneaky. I don't really know what information they have and how they use it. I just have a couple of completely meaningless words from their privacy policy. c) I don't know the price I'm paying. The last point is the most important one. The value and the risk associated with a particular piece of information greatly depends on what other information it is combined with, but I can't control that. The company could get acquired tomorrow by some ad behemoth that knows a lot of other things about me, so the price I'm paying could change after the fact. That's not the way payment works. I have to know the price I'm agreeing to pay before I enter that contract. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3751905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3751905

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- throwaway64 14y ago
  children are also starving in africa, does that mean anything more trivial than that should not be addressed until that is?
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    - throwaway55-33 14y ago
      You mean like playing on people's fears of paywalling by saying something like "If we don't alllow web advertising to be unregulated, all good content will be paywalled." You mean that kind of irrational fearmongering?
- lambda 14y ago
  Stores don't track my payments if I pay in cash and give them no identifying information (some local businesses, that I trust and want to support, I will join their rewards program that allows them to track me). I don't have a credit card, so they can't track me. My bank can only track me when I pay with my debit card, which I don't do often. The thing is, in the offline world, you can control much better who's tracking you. And this is why people get upset at CCTV cameras too; while you can see the people around you who are observing you, and choose to modify you're behavior by whether someone's around or who is around, CCTV means that you may be observed, recorded, and tracked at any time without consent.
josephagoss 14y ago
You make a good point and I agree with you, I just wish you had not put "period" at the end of your sentence. If you point stands good, but putting period like really is kinda close minded, don't you think? If your point is strong you should have no need to throw your hands up in the air and say "end of discussion" which is what period pretty much means. Your making the call that this discussion is over because you know best. I had to post this, your 'period' distracted your entire argument for me.
- throwaway64 14y ago
  fair enough, i just feel its an issue that needs a strong stance, but i understand your concerns. I removed it.

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throwaway64 14y ago
children are also starving in africa, does that mean anything more trivial than that should not be addressed until that is?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - throwaway55-33 14y ago
    You mean like playing on people's fears of paywalling by saying something like "If we don't alllow web advertising to be unregulated, all good content will be paywalled." You mean that kind of irrational fearmongering?
lambda 14y ago
Stores don't track my payments if I pay in cash and give them no identifying information (some local businesses, that I trust and want to support, I will join their rewards program that allows them to track me). I don't have a credit card, so they can't track me. My bank can only track me when I pay with my debit card, which I don't do often. The thing is, in the offline world, you can control much better who's tracking you. And this is why people get upset at CCTV cameras too; while you can see the people around you who are observing you, and choose to modify you're behavior by whether someone's around or who is around, CCTV means that you may be observed, recorded, and tracked at any time without consent.

josephagoss 14y ago

You make a good point and I agree with you, I just wish you had not put "period" at the end of your sentence. If you point stands good, but putting period like really is kinda close minded, don't you think? If your point is strong you should have no need to throw your hands up in the air and say "end of discussion" which is what period pretty much means. Your making the call that this discussion is over because you know best. I had to post this, your 'period' distracted your entire argument for me.

throwaway64 14y ago
fair enough, i just feel its an issue that needs a strong stance, but i understand your concerns. I removed it.