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Comment by tanto | Hacker News Reader

Does your weed dealer provide the service for free? If you want to be treated as a $$$ paying customer start paying. Problem with social networks and $$$ is that network effects will not come into effect as not everyone will be willing to pay.

There are actually ethical information dealers but they require you to pay them as you are paying your weed dealer.

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Most internet service companies, including Facebook and Google, don't give you the option of paying for privacy even if you wanted to.

I think that if it's possible to define a way of operating businesses in a way that doesn't harvest data in a way that's nonessential to the services, then there should be a law requiring this option: to pay out of your pocket directly the amount of revenue the company would have expected to make, in exchange for the company not doing this data collection. But it seems difficult to get to such a definition. I think this law would be very popular.

Indirectly GDPR does this. All data collection must be either opt in, or necessary to provide the service.

Oh, I forgot an important detail. I should have added another aim I would want is that as a result of paying this money, you wouldn't receive any advertisements from the service.

We're trying to build the idea of "paid for storage" that doesn't look at your stuff, but getting people to pay fora service that others provide with advertising for free is hard.

Any company being truthful about what their customers want can't be tracking them 24-7 and sifting everything they type. Almost no-one wants that level of invasiveness. We just put up with it because there are no real (easy) alternatives or aren't aware.

But does GDPR really allow this business model at all? A website cannot as per GDPR say "accept tracking or we refuse service", if tracking is not necessary to provide the service. Can they say "pay or accept tracking or we refuse service"?

That's exactly what The Washington Post does. They have a free option where "You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads" and a "Premium EU Ad-Free Subscription" with "No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking".

https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/

I happily pay for YouTube Premium, just to avoid ads. I wish I could do the same with Facebook

Do you still get tracked and your data collected if you pay?

Of course, but you don't get served ads.

I'm sure it's possible to advertise without tracking. We did it for years.

I'd whitelist a true advertiser who ditches tracking entirely and focuses more on advertising content relevant to the page it's going on instead. Chances are if I'm looking at some Python programming page or server setup tutorial I'd be more inclined to click on ads relevant to the page as opposed to a creepy ad of something vague as heck that I looked up on Amazon 5 years ago that Amazon really wants to sell, or whatever.

I really would love to see advertisement companies that are less focused on tracking and more focused on ad placement that's relevant to the content it's going on, and hey sometimes there's no relevant ads for content and that's cool too, but at least show anything generic or close enough at that point. Also advertisers who don't do pop ups or annoying ads (that I swear could cause epilepsy on some users) are also good stewards of the online billboard market.

> who ditches tracking entirely

Problem is, it never stays ditched. It's always a slippery slope.

I just don't want to participate in this anymore.

I'd be fine with "visitor count" type of "tracking" as long as it's just that, as far as how many per country / region. No following users around the web, aka no cookies needed. Then you could have a page for advertisers to choose sites to advertise directly on for themselves.

minor correction: creepy ads for the things i already purchased two weeks ago. brilliant use of ad targeting spend by companies i already gave my money to

I'd happily attempt a startup/side-project that offers an API for non-tracking advertisements, but I don't think there's space in the market. It'd be very difficult to compete with the existing incumbent advertisers.

So if I pay GM for a car they won't data-mine me? Just yesterday on HN we learned that this is not the case. Why do you think companies wont take your money and then proceed to sell your data anyway?

You should ask for your moneyback, because you're already paying in private data.

I'm probably wrong but I feel like there's a market for an ethical advertiser that does no tracking and placed ads by content only. is that impossible? it was reality until the 90s

I think (but might be wrong) that duckduckgo works like that.

They show ads based on search the content rather than via tracking.

I mean, I've paid both Comcast and Verizon a lot of money for internet access, and they both have done awful, privacy-shattering things while I've paid them. (Subverting DNS, X-UIDH header, etc).

Once there's money on the table, companies are going to take it and assume the number of customers who walk away aren't enough to offset the profits.

I mean, if you give a $$$ option instead of giving up data than you removed the intended targets of most ads out of your advertising pool.

The ultimate goal is to make money, not serve ads.

Of course, but I can guarantee Facebook has run the numbers. They are currently doing what makes them the most money. That happens to be ads.

The user data they sell to advertisers has a lot to do with your social network. Who you know, what their interests are, who they know, etc.

For Facebook to allow individuals to pay to opt out of their data being sold, it affects more than just that individual's data. I.e. it affects all their friends and friends-of-friends data.

I expect that the only way Facebook would be able to offer a pay-to-opt-out plan would be for everyone on Facebook to start doing, which would never work and they would never attempt.

I imagine the most we'll see in this direction is some sort of half-assed attempt where they offer to let you pay them money to stop some tracking, but still continue to most of it anyway.

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