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Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

This is ridiculous. If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The majority of users on the internet are not even developers. I want to be able to advertise to a consumer segment which consists of people who are interested in Elixir. "Surveillance" is essential to internet advertising.

This is ridiculous. And it is your problem. Why should I allow any company to track and profile me and everyone else only so that you can save on your advertising budget?

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Because I don't want to waste the time of people who aren't interested in my ad in seeing my ad. It's a waste of money for me. The ad network will not be able to make money from having them click the ad. The user's time will be wasted because they are not interested in what I am selling. It's a lose lose lose situation. I want to create more win win win situations where everyone benefits. Tracking and profiling is needed to increase the rate that this happens.

> "Because I don't want to waste the time of people who aren't interested in my ad in seeing my ad."

And that there is why sites like https://readthedocs.org/ do this strange thing called ethical advertising. Instead of spying on me, they advertise things at me I am genuinely interested in, intuited by the fact that I'm reading technical documentation, and they do it in an unobtrusive way, rather than splat themselves in front of the content I'm trying to read such that I can't even read it at all.

You wanna advertise at me? Come find me on sites where your product is a good fit for my interests and advertise at me respectfully rather than supporting a corporate surveillance state that I want no part of. I for one will continue to block ads everywhere I browse except those that manage to respect me as a fellow human.

You could target the same people by buying ad space in like-minded “venues”. There’s a gaping hole in the market for good “content-linked” advertising, searching, aggregation and so on. Link to content, not people. Work with customers who’re already self selecting, rather than following people around all the time.

As a side-line, this’d probably cut back on a lot of click-bait trash articles. It, likely, would help bring the signal-boise level of the internet at large back to something more useful.

Well, I can dream, anyway..

This is DDG’s model, right? Instead of stalking me all around the internet to find out I’m looking for a new car in order to show me adverts for a new car they show me the advert when I search “best new cars 2021” which is probably a pretty solid indicator that I’m looking for a car that doesn’t involve any tracking.

This is what we do at https://officesnapshots.com and it works pretty well: office furniture ads on office design content.

Yeah, this! See? You get it! Why's it so hard for others to understand?

Because I don't want to waste the time of people who aren't interested in my ad in seeing my ad.

Than don't run ads. Essentially nobody is interested in seeing ads, targeted or not.

It's a waste of money for me. The ad network will not be able to make money from having them click the ad.

I don't give a fuck how much money it costs you or if the ad network goes bankrupt, why should I?

The user's time will be wasted because they are not interested in what I am selling.

As I said, then don't run ads if you actually care about wasting user time. Even if you have a conversion rate of 10 % you are still wasting time for the other 90 %.

It's a lose lose lose situation.

I would consider it a win if all ad companies go bankrupt and I never have to see an ad again.

I want to create more win win win situations where everyone benefits. Tracking and profiling is needed to increase the rate that this happens.

This is not win win win, this is win win win LOSE - a few users get a product they want, you get some sales, the ad network gets your ad budget, and everyone else gets nothing but being tracked and profiled.

And the downsides of that tracking/profiling fall entirely on the person being surveilled.

>The user's time will be wasted because they are not interested in what I am selling.

I'm not interested in what you're selling. In general, I'm 100% not interested in anything anyone is selling through advertisements. Where can I indicate this, so that advertisers stop wasting their money on me?

Use an adblocker.

Too bad that advertisers are busy breaking my adblocker again and again. Why could they be doing this? Surely they wouldn't want to waste money by showing me their ineffective advertisements, right...?

Advertise on search. Someone searches for IDE or something similar...show the ad. It's better than running around profiling people and showing them ads for things based on that profile. No tracking needed.

You’re asking us to give up our rights for your convenience.

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