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Comment by lajhsdfkl | Hacker News Reader

>Bunch of strawmen here.

Learn the definition of the words you are using before using them. The only thing this statement shows is you are arguing in bad faith, have no interest in attempting to gain new perspective and simply want to shut my argument down since it doesn't agree with your priors.

>If you only count the number of redheads, you are in the clear. If you follow them around, find out where else they go, where they live, how many people live in their household, the household income, etc., you might violate some laws.

I'm not following them around. In fact, I'm having a bunch of people come to my server and leaving their ip address, name, birthday, etc and I am not coercing them in any way and I am providing them a service. Then I use this information to target ads at them.

So again, explain how it is unethical for me to use information that I have observed from my porch?

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I'm a bit baffled how you think that recording personal information of people you see from your porch, without even telling them what or why are you doing it, is anything but unethical.

Let me un-baffle you: It's not personal if the data is anonymous. If in the evening you leave your porch and have a list of: 5 blonde, 6 raven, 5 brunette and 2 redhead, nobody's personal rights where violated. Hair color alone is not personal data.

So it's unethical if I am able to personally identify them? So if I have a house party open to everyone in the block but to enter they need to sign their name in a guest book and I have cameras all over my home to prevent property damage, is what I'm doing unethical?

If you are so baffled by it you can explain in simple terms why it's unethical?

I'm not disagreeing with vilmosi, I just want to add that I think it's important to really talk things through, instead of just being baffled/angry that some people have different ethical views.

It has long come to my attention that the way we engineers look at ads differs a lot from what average people think. A lot of average people like ads. Many of them are actively interested in the latest deals. Example: I disabled ads in one of the apps my mother was using because "obviously" they are annoying. My mother became annoyed and wanted them back because she's always on the lookout for discounts. My wife wants me to sign up for snail mail advertisements from local businesses because she too is interested in discounts and new goods.

Don't fall into this trap of thinking that people universally hate ads, or that everybody perceive ads as brainwashing them into buying stuff they don't want.

I personally hate ads, I block them wherever I can and I use a vpn for any traffic I don't want associated with my name. I still understand that people trying to monetize their service is not unethical and that the world would be significantly worse off if we were to ban ads as a way of monetization.

Also I have had the same experience as you, I know people many tech illiterate folk that actually like seeing ads.

> So again, explain how it is unethical for me to use information that I have observed from my porch?

I never said that making observations from your porch is unethical. Yet, you think I should explain to you why it is. Classic straw man.

What I say is that collecting/trading/processing of personal data without consent is unethical. And that is the core business of today's ad-networks.

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