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There are many in tech whose jobs rely on selling personal information in ways that users would never consent to if they were made fully aware of what was being collected, how it was being collected, and how it was being used. I can't imagine it feels good to constantly deal with the cognitive dissonance required to participate in such schemes.
This is not tech specific, this is the world we live in. It is built on ignorance.

- It is the steak I ate at dinner. - It is the AC I turned up in summer. - It is the car I drive etc.

Society does indeed effectively force us to participate in a number of immoral systems and choices but the ones you listed are not equivalent to voluntarily choosing a job whose fundamental basis is deceiving people into violating their privacy for your personal gain.
> - It is the steak I ate at dinner. - It is the AC I turned up in summer. - It is the car I drive

I know that this is just example. But are these specific things common?

The problem is that this is a fake narrative. You're right, of course, I wouldn't approve of Facebook selling my contact list.

But compared to sharing of my private medical information within the government and to external private parties to enable government tax collection ... THAT I object to 100x more, but it never seems to make the news. I would like to see a blanket ban on government departments sharing ANY data beyond "this person exists", with exceptions approved on a case by case basis by congress plus heavy fines for government departments found in violating of these rules. Maybe even personal criminal liability for government employees actually doing the sharing if that's necessary to stop it.

This has been my approach for the last 10 years: I live to make adversisers pay out the nose for my attention, then I don't buy products. I'll fill out surveys, invent names as long as the terms are vague enough to allow it, and do anything in my power to give large data-miners as much information to choke on as possible.

I personally think the best way to fix online advertising is to make it so expensive that door-to-door salesman suddenly make financial sense.

This is exactly why I like the concept behind AdNauseam, the UBlock Origin fork that will click every single ad it encounters (but still hide the actual ads).

I'm sure advertisers have had to invest into detection algorithms because of that addon.

Edit: links:

- Website: https://adnauseam.io/

- Addon for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

- Addon for Edge: https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/adnauseam/...

- Source and instructions for installing on Chrome: https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam

Note that Google removed AdNauseam from their Chrome Store for interfering with their ad business. The fact they removed AdNauseam but not uBlock Origin is a good sign that the addon is doing something right!

> Note that Google removed AdNauseam from their Chrome Store for interfering with their ad business.

No, you misunderstand, they removed it from their store because extensions are supposed to "have a single purpose that is clear to users"[0].

/s

[0] https://adnauseam.io/free-adnauseam.html (third paragraph)

https://adnauseam.io
There are some AIs being planned for you in the coming years...
in all seriousness, i'll take the contrary opinion, i love targeted ads. saves me time, and there's no way to keep my data private anyway, so i might as well get some value out of it. i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies" which would just get rid of the friction, and as a downstream fringe benefit, show me better ads.
The thing is that your personal information doesn't just subject you to targeted ads. It also makes you vulnerable to propaganda, behavioral modification, and all sorts of psychological manipulation. Advertisers have known this for decades, and the internet has given them the perfect delivery method.

While you can't be entirely invisible online, you can certainly make things more difficult for adtech by changing some of your tech usage habits. Avoiding psychological manipulation is a worthwhile and achievable goal.

Isn't the root issue here "propaganda" in ads? If so, should we focus on banning that?

Otherwise, if an ad is straight facts, even if it's making a specific argument based on your personality, is that intrinsically bad? Is it bad that we are exposed to convincing counter-arguments? Shouldn't we occasionally re-exam our beliefs, especially in light of new information?

More philosophically, should we, as free-willed people, be prevented from seeing "untruths"?

Do you love targeted pricing too? Like user X is more likely to buy product Y so make the price +10%. It’s a good thing that targeted pricing is illegal in many places, but oh wait, there’s an AI pricing layer which cannot be reverse engineered so evidence of price targeting can’t be found. The problem with user data is it lasts forever, and as the political and technological environment further shifts into "profit-friendliness", your user profile will grow and be more and more valuable as it provides more advantages to the counter-parties you’ll be trading with in the course of your life. It will likely affect your insurance premiums, your interest rates, your every day purchases, but I guess it’s worth it for those swell ads.
Do you have money burning a hole in your pocket? I don't want to be constantly prompted to buy and consume things.

When I have a problem, I research solutions and buy a product or service if necessary. I don't care what those with the largest marketing budgets think I should buy. I also follow companies on social media that I know and trust if I think I might be interested in their future products.

> i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies"

There's almost that. It doesn't always accept all cookies but it does hide the warnings: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

I can't wait for insurance companies to start charging higher or lower rates based on the personality traits they've gleaned.
> and there's no way to keep my data private anyway

This is learned helplessness. Instead of giving up we should mete multi(m|b)illion fines to corporations who think that your data is theirs https://noyb.eu/en/breaking-meta-prohibited-use-personal-dat...

Then it should be opt-in. You are free to post your personal info online.
This browser extension doesn't work everywhere, but it works some places. You can auto-decline all cookie prompts, or if you're so inclined, auto-accept: https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic
I also wanted to mention that I allow Google to have as much of my activity history as they want, and I don't find their ads to be any more relevant.
I agree - I mostly get ads for things I'm actually interested in (e.g. furniture), and I don't usually buy anything from them, but it at least makes me aware that there may be a new style of products available for when I next need to make a purchase. Also on occasion there will be an advert for something which I wasn't aware existed, or which shows me a new idea to consider. I'm also happy to see ads as an alternative to having to pay for access to a site.
Same here.

They have our data somehow anyways, and will always find clever non-direct ways to access it. They will also show me and I think it's fair for most free services/websites.

At least let those ads be interesting for me: which is a good thing; I've discovered and bought many goods from ads.

I am one of those few who loves ads. Some banners catch my attention to the point that I start analyzing the design and marketing choices made by their creators. I save the most outstanding banners to my hard drive to enjoy them later.

Is this a full-blown pathology or just an eccentric kink? Who knows, but the presented sarcastic article resonates with me.

Needless to say, I watch hours of YouTube videos full of ads from the 80s and 90s. I just can't get enough of them.

I don't love them by themselves as much as you but definitely get lots of value from ads in terms of finding and buying cool things. Interestingly the internet has only learned to properly advertise to me as an individual. I have way more purchasing power from buying decisions I make in behalf of my company and in terms of corporate advertising for B2B SaaS products google and friends are leaving a lot of money on the table. Most ads I see for B2B things are for tools my company already uses.
Send me a dump of your email inbox and browser history and in exchange I'll send you some tailor-made ads once a week.
Similarly I have a really old email account that's infested with spam. I mostly keep it around because the spam box is genuinely entertaining and I sometimes get really creative ones. The kind of spam you usually don't even find in your spam box nowadays. Like the real "Nigerian prince" classics
I'm nowhere near your enjoyment but I don't mind most ads on the web. I don't even notice them. And tracking me actually makes the experience even plesurable. I just search for some hobby electronics gadget and suddenly my internet is filled with beautiful photos of circuit boards and microchips, sensors and actuators.

Video ads on the other hand ...

Nothing wrong with actually finding some of the adds interesting.

I'm just not sure if I want the tracking and targeting. But context sensitivity is entirely fine. If I were on the site talking about sausages, meat grinder adds for example would be entirely appropriate.

Woah! I'm genuinely curious what kind of things you've collected over the years!

If it's not too much trouble, could you send me a dump of everything? or just your favorites? Sounds like a fun rabbit-hole :)

hello@taylor.town

Ever since I left all social media and blocked (as much as I could) trackers in my apps and networks, I rarely see any targeted ads now.

I now see completely irrelevant ads for things like stair lifts for the elderly. I quite enjoy not being targeted.

Recently I contacted Citi bank which kept sending me spam, including "bank statements" I could not access, which makes perfect sense given that I don't have an account with them.

I was told that they had no record of me and that if I want to be super duper sure they're right I should send a physical letter with a scan of my Id to their offices.

After another few months of getting spammed by them, I sent them a GDPR data subject request instead. After a few days I received a message stating that:

1) my email was removed from their mailing list (yay)

2) they didn't/process have any of my personal data, but

3) since I shared my personal data with them _via the data subject request_, they're obliged to keep it

I'm not angry, I just enjoy the irony and absurdity of the entire situation. In a sense, large orgs like this are as coherent as GPT-3 is away of what it's talking about.

The exact same kafkaesque situation is what inspired me to write this post!

I don't want to send my personal information in a "delete my personal info" form to organizations who I never trusted with my data in the first place

I wonder, how much my personal information is actually worth? The stuff you have at least? And if I were to approve it for the sale, what would be my cut of that value be? As surely I deserve it?
There's some napkin math in this article[1].

User data is worth much, much more than the the value users extract from "free" services. Especially considering this data is sold continually and perpetually. It doesn't just get purged from the market when the user stops using the service, and it's even bought and sold if the user never signed up for the service (shadow profiles).

We should definitely receive a fraction of these profits, or at the very least have control over the price and terms of sale.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/10/30/sh...

According to the Equifax Data Breach Settlement Fund,

it's worth $5.21: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34279700

The article has several links at the bottom of the page. He forgot to include "Do not sell my personal information" in his list. That would have made the sarcasm complete!
In this context, "my personal information" really means "Your records of my interactions with your company", right?
They mention credit history, so lets take financial records as an example.

Technically the complete list of things you have purchased is a record of interactions with your bank, but I think it's incredibly privacy violating for a bank to sell infomation about what products I buy.

Technically the docs to prepare a tax return is a now a record of an interaction with turbotax, but I don't think Intuit should be able to sell infomation about where I work, what charities I've donated too or what investments I have.

Being a "record of an interaction with a company" doesn't give the company the right to do what they want with it.

I am curious what makes the author think that expert reviews are free of any incentives for abusing their influence. Also, if you ever built anything useful in your life, you should know that it's not possible to count solely on word-of-mouth, even in a upotian marketing-free world.

Listen, I get you are disappointed by bad actors, but going to the other extreme is never a solution.

> I am curious what makes the author think that expert reviews are free of any incentives for abusing their influence.

Author here. I definitely don't think that!

The internet is swamped with annoying listicles like "100 Vacuums That Will Change Your Life in 2023".

Affiliate links and SEO offer perverse incentives for expert reviewers.

But word-of-mouth survives! At we speak, there is an affiliate-free product thread on the front-page of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34272687

EDIT: wrong link :)

Is this an excerpt from Faust?
I cannot believe we are still in this ridiculous situation with these dreadful cookie approvals on Every. Single. Page. How did we let Europe do this to us?
Blaming the EU is exactly what the people forcing those popups onto you want.

They don't need to track your information but they can make a quick buck selling you the latest far right conspiracy theory or fake medicine, but for that they need consent thanks to that pesky law that says they need to be careful.

By making the popups as annoying and obnoxious as possible, the populace will blame those darn EU law makers.

It's not unlike variable speed bumps installed into the road by crash injury lawyers intended to automatically slow down cars with airbags or seat belts to get everyone to stop taking normal precautions just so they can extract more profit.

Legislative bodies are slow, but dark patterns are being investigated by DPAs already. It's only a matter of time before these dark patterns will become punishable offences as well, which should clear the way for a cleaner internet.

Meanwhile, my solution is to not give websites that insist on badgering me with their manipulative consent forms any of my business. I can live without most Medium blogs.

Yep. Annoying as hell, this should have been a browser setting. Global/per site/etc. But we should not blame EU here, we should blame predatory advertising tactics.
Why are you upset about web pages asking if they can track you, and not upset about the fact that web sites WANT to track you?

I mean, ostensibly, it really is the latter that upsets you, but then I question why you're blaming Europe.

> How did we let Europe do this to us?

Blaming the EU for this feels pretty disingenuous. GDPR is definitely well-intentioned and in the interest of the consumers, the horribly annoying popups you get everywhere are just a form of malicious compliance from companies who want to track you anyway and make opting out as annoying as possible.

Note that it's perfectly fine to have a page without a cookie popup. HN doesn't have one, for example. It's just not in the interest of companies to forgo user tracking.

I can't believe we're still in this ridiculous situation with these dreadful lung cancer warnings on cigarettes. How did we let government do this to us? ;)
Funny, we didn't have this problem 15 or 20 years ago. The banners are a reaction to the Ad Tumor's voracious appetite for tracking that we just got around to noticing.