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Comment by goldcd | Hacker News Reader

"As someone who spent most my life producing them" - I can only assume you were escorted from the premises..

I'm more pragmatic. I earn and spend money. Given that I'm going to spend money, I'd like to spend it wisely. That's why I might use amazon to check out the reviews for say a "sliding mitre saw" - I know some are better than others. I go to amazon as they have a load of reviews - and have all the sliding mitre saws, they don't care which one I buy - as long as I buy one. So makes sense for amazon to know what I want to buy, know which is going to make me happiest, and just shove up a "here's a saw for £x, that has 4.7 from a thousand people". The traditional advert wants to sell me something I don't need/want. The perfect modern advert tells me what I actually (probably) need - and removes the friction.

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You've just neatly made the case for ads without personalisation or tracking.

If I go to Amazon and search for mitre saws, I'll see mitre saws, and probably some ads for mitre saws. If I visited Amazon via an ad derived from a google search for "buy sliding mitre saw", they can direct me to the right page, and know my search term.

They do not need to know what sites I visited last week, how often, or where I go next, or where the device currently is. Amazon already has my address, anyone else will require it on order. Nor do they need to continue showing ads for mitre saws now I'm on Youtube watching a music video or reading a news site. 99 times of 100 retargeting is trying to sell me on something I just decided I don't want (maybe I just read and didn't like that product's specs in my brief ad-driven visit to the site), or I decided I got something more urgent or fun to do right now than buy mitre saws. If it's approaching someone's birthday retargeting gladly ruins the surprise if you share a house or device with anyone.

None of what you have described needs a continually growing personal profile made for me, across as many sites and niches as possible, in order to work nicely. Just context relevant ads - that's very different to personalisation.

Except to follow this to the logical conclusion, amazon will be the only person I can buy my "sliding mitre saw" from.

In the end I didn't buy mine from Amazon - I picked up my maybe #2 option from a local wholesaler that had an offer on and gave me a discount if I picked up the saw and the compatible base. In this case I was just using amazon to confirm that the item was 'fine' Now I didn't check in this case, but I am aware that other online merchants discount their stores based upon tracking - and who doesn't like a discount? I like to think 'they' knew that I "goldcd wanted a decent saw for a mid-price" and were all undercutting each other to try to get me to enter by details.

Your process sounds like a Tower of Babel to me. The interests of these entities are in great conflict and their power over your limits of time and awareness are increasing all the time.

In the end, your purchase is relying on so much effort to curtail price exploitation, and it misses the potentials for manipulation and misrepresentation. You feel like an independent player but a minimal systemic analysis shows you could just as likely be misled. Of course, the systems you depend on are designed to do exactly that, unless it somehow benefits them more to help you out. What are the chances? Well, it benefits them not to tell you that. Your confidence appears foolish, I am afraid.

Trust and aligned interests are out the window with these systems. We can do trmendously better to one another.

Except Amazon does care what saw you buy. They want you to buy the one that makes them the most profit.

> They want you to buy the one that makes them the most profit.

Which is quite different than the one that's best solution for your problem given the money you want to pay. This is the fundamental immorality of most ads; the place they disturb the voluntary exchange of value the free market should be all about.

If you can't tell a good sliding mitre saw from a bad one by inspecting the tool you're not worth the better one anyway.

Sorry but sadly, reviews are gamed, a lot.

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