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Comment by nobodyorother | Hacker News Reader

Is this an inevitable consequence of our society, or is there a way to actually do marketing ethically? What negative feedback loops actually apply strongly and over the long term to this behavior and creating these sorts of systems?

This is a pretty horrifying society we've built.

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It's a consequence of northern America.

Did you know that other countries don't allow ISP to do that.

This has nothing to do with your ISP - it’s phone apps that are sending location information to advertisers.

If they can. IP tracking doesn't work well in cities and you don't need to give Facebook (and others) location access. The only apps that need it are navigation and ridesharing and they only need it while you use the app.

The problem is that platforms enable this kind of behavior. Once it's the open, someone will take advantage of it, and then others would only put themselves at a disadvantage by not doing it too. The real question is, how did our infrastructure become so exploitable?

That's not to say there aren't companies that don't play this kind of game. But on a spectrum of care and don't care, most are in the middle.

>Once it's the open, someone will take advantage of it, and then others would only put themselves at a disadvantage by not doing it too.

The answer to that problem in every other industry is regulation, either self imposed or more commonly through government intervention. But folks in the tech community, rightly or wrongly, don't take too kindly to the idea of regulating the Internet.

Life, uh, finds a way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

That doesn't mean that we should avoid all regulation - government action is sometimes the only way forward when dealing with certain situations, especially given the industry's reluctance to self-regulate. Regulatory capture is a concern, but it's something that we should be actively trying to fight, as opposed to avoiding regulation entirely.

Yes. It just suggests that regulation is _hard_ to get right, and what might on the face of it look like a good idea might not be.

The people with the money and lawyers and accounts often find away around regulations.

Every time this comes up as an excuse I have to ask: how is no regulation at all any better? Sure the regulation might get fucked up by "special interests" but at least you have some voice in it through the political process. Right now you have none.

I completely agree. The analogy I often use is a lock on your front door. Sure, the lock can be picked or someone can batter down the door. If someone robs your home exploiting one of these weaknesses you will probably respond by purchasing a more complex lock or stronger door. You aren't just going to leave your door unlocked from then on out because your previous attempt at protection failed.

Non-targeted and non-interactive marketing can be done ethically (if you grant that any marketing can be ethical). Perhaps we are all just waking up to the true nature of marketing, and seeing its unbridled ugliness for the first time.

For the first time?

https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-marketing-a...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvp97SMZc6M

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