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Comment by allemagne | Hacker News Reader

This is mostly very true, but I think the author understands this better than you're implying. The point of this tweet is to influence public opinion. This:

>The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative.

would hopefully not be true anymore due to negative PR, companies would take action out of pure self-interest, and it would stop this situation from happening to future people.

There's of course still the broader problem of companies ravenously and irresponsibly gathering as much data on individuals as possible. To me any increase in a company's liability for the information they're hoarding, even in the form of righteous outrage that on its surface seems to anthropomorphize them, is a step in the right direction.

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>This is mostly very true, but I think the author understands this better than you're implying. The point of this tweet is to influence public opinion.

I suspect your parent understands this, and you're not understanding his/her perspective, which is that the general public needs to have a better understanding of how the Internet and monetization works. And that it is problematic to expect almost anything of value from a company you are not paying money to.

They key takeaway in the comment is something everyone needs to understand:

>You've made the decision to let a business deep into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are the consequences.

Yes, the tweeter may be able to influence the company's decision in some minor way, restricted to still births. And it will solve only one small problem. You'll still get plenty of these problematic ads in bad circumstances.

I don't think the author of this tweet is trying to educate the general public. I simply think she is trying to engage companies so that their ad targeting accounts for her case and someone else in the same situation doesn't face what she faced.

> would hopefully not be true anymore due to negative PR, companies would take action out of pure self-interest, and it would stop this situation from happening to future people.

Company X spends Y months advertising baby items to you, then at month Z- due to no fault of your own- a still birth occurs. Company X continues to advertise baby items for A time frame until the algo realizes you are not interested. Unless there's a market for people advertising for services/products for still births- they need better adwords- then there's no loss to the company being paid for the advertisement.

Although extremely sad and very common- not so much so in a 1st world country- company x has no reason to stop. It's the advertisers who are "at fault" and even then, who are they to care about someone else's feelings? Maybe people using these 'free' services need to utilize better coping skills.

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