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Comment by dkrich | Hacker News Reader

I'm not surprised so many people only see this issue from one side, which is some version of "Keeping all of your data locked up is the most important thing in the world and ads are always bad. If you disagree with that you are either not technical or stupid."

It seems that nobody ever considers the other side, which would be that people are now targeted with ads that they want to see instead of poorly targeted ads that just waste their time. Another plus is that small advertisers can now afford to advertise alongside companies with much larger budgets by micro-targeting. I've engaged with lots of ads on Facebook and its not because I'm stupid, it's because they are showing me things I'm interested in. There's nothing wrong with being concerned with how data is being used but this constant dialogue from the "never ads" crowd is pretty tired.

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> It seems that nobody ever considers the other side, which would be that people are now targeted with ads that they want to see instead of poorly targeted ads that just waste their time.

That’s a tall drink of kool aid.

Nobody wants to see targeted ads that will get them to spend more money than random ads. That’s a basic corollary of nobody wanting to spend more money in general.

Caring about advertising “working” to support businesses is like caring about blacksmiths losing horseshoe replacement work when automobiles arrived.

I'm as anti-tracking as anyone, but people generally only open their wallets for things they view as a fair deal, barring extortion.

How can you possibly prove this?

The observations I have made tell me that for some stuff people will buy because it's a good deal (usually non-essential luxury stuff) but for things they actually need in their day-to-day, they pay extortionate prices because there are simply few or zero options.

This is just pure nonsense. I don't doubt you believe it, but Facebook's earnings/advertiser's spend coupled with demonstrated user behavior very quickly put your logic to rest. The statement that nobody wants to see ads that would cause them to spend more money sounds more like a personal preference (and one that I would strongly question in the real world) than an objective fact about society at large.

> Facebook's earnings/advertiser's spend coupled with demonstrated user behavior very quickly put your logic to rest

I don't follow your leap of logic.

I could just as easily say those earnings reports proof how effective psychological warfare is at exploiting the weakness and insecurities of humans in order to part them from the fruits of their labour.

That's potentially fine and easy enough to solve.

Simply make "I want to see targeted ads" an opt-in choice, then. I suspect the take-up would be a fairly small percentage of the population, but if it would satisfy your needs (and others like you), as well as mine - then I'm all for it!

> Simply make "I want to see targeted ads" an opt-in choice, then. I suspect the take-up would be a fairly small percentage of the population, but if it would satisfy your needs (and others like you), then I'm all for it.

This is disingenuous, I suspect that you know why. The reason few people would opt-in is not because few people support or agree with the premise. The reasons is the very act of "opting-in" to a thing is a huge barrier.

If receiving CPR was "opt-in", I would expect 1/3 of the population would just never get around to it or somehow be confused with the process. I bet you even could drive the opt-in rate down to 10% just by requiring a separate paper form that had to be requested and mailed to specific address.

Targeted ads are a method by which lots of people are able to make a bit more money. These aren't exciting changes but it is the difference between lots of people having hobby and making it their job. As most people don't care enough about the privacy of their internet history to take trivial steps like using private browsing windows. Why should the obligation to be on the large number of people who don't care when the small number of people who do care can take trivial steps, like private browsing?

Woah there! disingenuous?

Using the example of life-saving CPR as a "similar" example seems to be extremely disingenuous of you, and I suspect you know why.

* CPR - almost universally considered a good & essential thing for all humans by any measure (sure, a small number of religious groups might beg to differ).

* Targeted ads - well... not so much. wow.

What? It was just an example about how defaults affect behavior, not a sneaky attempt to blur the idea of right vs wrong.

Although I am guessing you would suddenly start arguing for right vs wrong if I took your own idea about defaults and suggest that all governments which want to restrict Facebook's power (which is probably all of them by now) should just default to blocking access to Facebook and Instagram and Whatsapp unless people go to some government building and sign a release form saying that they are aware of all the consequences of using social networks and that they should not come to the government for help if, say, said social network swindles their kids of real money.

I would say that, regardless of whether the outcome is right or wrong, we know that the default is incredibly powerful, so it's disingenuous to suggest that changing it makes no difference. Which was the original point as I understood it.

I took it as a thinly veiled attempt to paint advertising as axiomatically good.

If the poster didn't intend the post to come across that way, he may be experiencing an inherent bias in his opinion, in that he believes advertising is self-evidently good and simply didn't consider that other people might not agree.

I'm not sure that's any better.

What if the choice were between relevant ads and irrelevant ads? (targeting is the mechanism by which you can make ads relevant)

For an example of irrelevant ads (minimally targeted), start reading your junk mail.

When targeted ads means seeing nothing but ads for TVs for the next month after buying a new TV, I'm willing to take my chances with the untargeted model.

I would call those ads irrelevant ads, and that's a failure in ad targeting today. It's not like ad publishers enjoy wasting money serving impressions to you once you buy the product and fulfill the need.

Because you always have the option of not using the platform in the first place and/or deleting your account. Your willingness to sign in repeatedly knowing the trade-offs signals your agreement to the terms. Facebook doesn't owe anybody a free ad-optional platform to engage with people, they aren't a government entity.

>>Facebook doesn't owe anybody a free ad-optional platform to engage with people, they aren't a government entity.

Unless you are just claiming that shadow profiles are not a real thing [1], I think Facebook is becoming more like a government entity in the sense that you cannot "opt out" of Facebook any more than you can "opt out" of your government, or you can "opt out" of having any friends in your life.

Unlike a government, which, even at its most corrupt and inefficient, is actually supposed to be built with a system of checks and balances to help serve its constituents, and in theory can at least be overthrown via coup or elections, the only thing you have with Facebook is this expectation that they don't "owe anybody" anything.

Make no mistake, Facebook is devious enough to know this, and it also knows there are lots of "useful idiots" (and I don't mean you, I mean the others who think this point shouldn't even be up for discussion!) who keep saying Facebook doesn't owe anybody <anything> without acknowledging that we have a phenomenon here which has never been seen before.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/shadow-profiles-facebook-has-infor...

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