7 ms·
First of all, if you don't practice any tracking limitation, you're almost certainly giving additional parties (directly or otherwise) access to your personal i
by 1shooner 7mo ago
First of all, if you don't practice any tracking limitation, you're almost certainly giving additional parties (directly or otherwise) access to your personal information. This is marketing data brokerage, this is the whole ballgame.
To your point about the actual harm, I've come to see it as a kind of ecological problem. Wasting energy and sending more trash to a landfill doesn't harm me individually, at least not immediately. But it does harm in aggregate, and it is probably directly related to other general harms, like overall health outcomes, efficiency, energy costs, etc.
No, accepting cookies by itself may not do much to me, but the broader surveillance and attention economy that relies on such apathy certainly has.
- cm2012 7mo agoThe effect of that data is serving you better ads. Its not a big deal. Dystopian governments have way better sources of citizen data than anonymized ad exchanges. It basically just powers product discovery in a giant global marketplace.
- gmerc 7mo agoI’m glad you mention this. From today https://www.404media.co/cbp-tapped-into-the-online-advertising-ecosystem-to-track-peoples-movements/ https://www.404media.co/cbp-tapped-into-the-online-advertisi...
- cm2012 7mo agoThis shows a really fascinating dynamic. In theory, the government doesn't need the ad exchanges which have very lossy information. They have access to the ISPs and cell service providers, etc, with a warrant. Dictatorships like China and Russia don't need ad network data to be police states, they just use the core phone, internet and computer data. But in this case, the US gov are using the insecure private data as a run-around to the warrant process. This is definitely unfortunate, and I think laws should be amended to prevent this workaround.
- dwighttk 7mo agoThey don’t need a warrant for the ad exchanges
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- wonnage 7mo agoThis might’ve been true in 2012 but definitely is not the case today “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”
- basket_horse 7mo agoThe counter point to that quote is that someone whose salary depends on something likely has a lot more understanding of the topic than the average person. Not saying theyre always in the right. But the average internet user thinks they are way better informed than they actually are.
- soopypoos 7mo agoWould you write your name down the side of your car?
- 0xffff2 7mo agoWould you not? It would look odd and draw a lot of attention simply for being unusual, but I'm struggling to come up with any way in which doing so would actually harm me.
- soopypoos 7mo agoIf you do it right now I will reveal my answer.
- cm2012 7mo agoMy name is on my car, the license plate can be matched to my name in seconds.
- shevy-java 7mo agoTo those who have access on the registry - yes. But not everyone knows the name because they do not have access to the registry. Writing it down would give more information to everyone else at all times.
- paddez 7mo agoThere's a subset of people in Ireland who are legally required to write down an ID on their vehicle, that can be matched to a name/photograph in seconds. https://www.transportforireland.ie/getting-around/by-taxi/driver-check-app/ https://www.transportforireland.ie/getting-around/by-taxi/dr... --- Additionally, in plenty of European Countries, it's pretty common to write your name on your address: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B01RP4/personal-name-plates-at-block-of-flats-berlin-germany-B01RP4.jpg https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B01RP4/personal-name-plates-at-blo...
- Levitz 7mo ago>The effect of that data is serving you better ads. On the contrary, the ads become worse, since they become better at trying to get me to buy some crap I don't need. The more irrelevant to my profile they are, the better.
- AzN1337c0d3r 7mo agoInsurance is likely using that same data to adjust rates.
- layman51 7mo agoI disagree, because there’s always a chunk of advertising that seems to be all about targeting low-income or people who aren’t financially savvy and I don’t think it’s ethical for an apparatus to take advantage of them.
- cm2012 7mo agoI think if a product is harmful, advertising it should be banned. Alcohol, drugs, gambling ads should be banned.
- johnisgood 7mo agoThat is a pretty simplistic, prohibitionist worldview.
- sophacles 7mo agoWhat about food products that can be used to excess? What about cars or AI or vacations? All these products can be harmful when misused.
- cm2012 7mo agoThose all pass the utilitarian calculation for me, goods greater than harm.
- sophacles 7mo agoWhat utility does a box of cookies have? A bar of chocolate? A can of soda? Those things are about pleasure and have serious harmful consequences if overused - just like tobacco, alcohol and drugs. What about video games? They only have utility in pleasure and the sedentary lifestyle associated with over-playing them is extremely harmful. Sounds to me like you have some random things you decided you don't like and want to ban ads for them, not that you've done any thinking about utility (other than as a bad attempt at rationalizing your anti-some things campaign).
- catoc 7mo ago” it’s not a big deal. Just gets you better ads.” I thought this was just ignorance. Then I checked the profile. They ”have lots of experience with digital advertising “
- shevy-java 7mo agoReally? So the profile is like an ad-bot. Good to know. It was the only account that tried to promote ads; everyone else hates ads, so they don't write in a positive tone about them.
- shevy-java 7mo agoThis is not just about "better ads" - though I don't understand the term better anyway here. This is about profiling people. Ads are just one benefit here. Profiles can be sold to get a better idea of the potential customer base.+ > It basically just powers product discovery in a giant global marketplace. That is also incomplete. See how profiling led to ICE finding people - and ICE has a proven track record of executing US citizens. That is also a fact. It does not mean profiling led to the death of the people here, 1:1, but it meant that it is a contributing factor to the build-up of government troops killing people (which is very similar of Europe 1930s by the way).
- richardubright 7mo agoI hear what you're saying, and instinctually I feel gross about it. But, if enabling advertising allows the website I'm visiting to stay in business, I think that might be a trade-off worth making.
- bahno 7mo ago[dead]
- shevy-java 7mo agoI don't understand that thought process. Why should I give up my data to any private entity? If their business model depends on ads, then I say it should die.
- vntok 7mo agoThen the fix is pretty easy, just don't visit their site?
- drnick1 7mo agoThe business model of the websites I visit is not my problem. I block ads and trackers at multiple levels, very aggressively, and could not care less if some websites disappeared because of it. Perhaps then we will be left with a more sane and useful subset of the Internet.
- duskdozer 7mo agoMost of the websites I would want to see most are smaller and hosted and maintained by individuals or small groups. People already pay for things like Kagi to try to get out from under the mountains of SEO adspam. I have to pay in time and aggravation to stay sane in the face of ever escalating tactics to shove ads in my face and manipulate my online behavior. So I don't think a smaller web would be a bad thing. But I don't see that as likely to happen anyway; companies have found out that advertising and data harvesting is far more profitable, and governments have found the same to be very useful for exercising control.
- gzread 7mo ago
- cortesoft 7mo agoSadly, this still doesn't do anything to show me that I should opt out. I, as an individual, am not going to have any effect on a business if I opt out or not. No business decision is going to be made because I opt out. You might argue that it will matter if enough of us do it. Sure, that is true... but again, it won't matter if I do it or not. If N number of people opting out is enough to ruin the business model, then N-1 is surely enough as well. There is a 0% chance that I am the one who finally causes the system to collapse. I do use an ad blocker, and never click on ads. I feel like that action has a bigger return on investment than no clicking the cookie banner. If having more information about me allows the website to charge more to show me an ad, and I never click any ads, then I am hopefully helping decrease the return advertisers get by using personal information.
- dwighttk 7mo agoYour ad blocker probably has a setting for cookie blocking too
- lossyalgo 7mo agoIf not then install EFF Privacy Badger and Decentraleyes extensions.
- drnick1 7mo agouBlock is enough for all of that. I would minimize the number of extensions used, possibly to one (uBlock only).
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- boisterousness 7mo agoDecentraleyes hasn't been updated since late 2024, so I switched to LocalCDN [1]. [1] https://www.localcdn.org/ https://www.localcdn.org/
- 7mo ago
- kelseyfrog 7mo agoDo you have any napkin math on the ecological impact in quantifiable terms? I'm just super curious what the scope of the problem is.
- guelo 7mo agoI turn off 3rd party cookies in the browser but I don't see first party cookies as big of a threat and I click accept just in case it breaks the website somehow.
- 1shooner 7mo agoI wish that were the clean delineation, but Google's gonna Google: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/10064044?sjid=15369969623041603931-NA https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/10064044?sjid=1536...
- andai 7mo agoTo give a random example of what kind of information the brokers have: years ago I heard multiple reports of women who found out they were pregnant through internet advertising. The surveillance networks detected changes in their behavior and determined that they were pregnant, before they realized it themselves.