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Comment by mgraczyk | Hacker News Reader

The frontend that does this is youtube.com

You can completely, 100% opt out of personalized ads. Go to https://adssettings.google.com/ (edit to fix url)

I clear all cookies up to 5 minutes after I've closed a site. I get asked to give my life away everytime I open youtube with no way to just block the request as it used to be possible. To make matters worse, I am unable to select that I don't want to be tracked because when I select "Agree", it simply goes to YouTube, when I select to opt out it goes to Google's tracking servers which are blocked across my home network because I don't want to be tracked. So I'm left with no choice to press agree, or alternatively I can simply use an alternative backend.

Ok but just try not doing that and maybe you'll find that life is way better?

I'll do that once websites stop tracking me. I guess that's never.

Not to mention the extra cognitive load in dealing with all these opt-outs and configurable cookie settings. Everyone one of them is different, everyone of them is located somewhere else, and there is no sensible way to simply say to websites, with a single checkbox in your browser: I don't want to be tracked.

Well there was of course; the do-not-track header.

So now we fight back with ad-blockers and other privacy preserving tricks (like clearing cookies) to keep our sanity and make our compiled profiles a lot less valuable (although Google will probably still profit from it by pretending I do see ads and are influenced).

Personally it's very convenient for me, because I never have to opt out of anything. Nothing bad has ever happened to me and as a person who knows how the targeted ads business works, I'm confident in saying that nothing ever will. It's seriously liberating and worth considering.

If you think "nothing bad has happened to me personally due to aggressive tracking measures" is at all a reasonable argument, then I can only assume you are incredibly ignorant on the implications of it. I don't despise tracking because I'm afraid Google is interested in me personally. But the implications at a societal level are ENOURMOUS.

When you have data on one person, you can sell them ads. When you have data on everybody, you can change elections, culture, and widespread opinions as you see fit. Even if that isn't being abused today (which it probably is) the fact the Google has the capability of doing that one day is scary enough that we absolutely shouldn't let the practice continue.

Do you have an example? IMO the benefits massively outweigh the downsides. Swaying elections has been done historically with newspaper and television. Fox news is still far, far more influential than Facebook for political opinion. Why is this different?

You’re conflating “tracking” with “personalized ads”

I don't want to make a google account so they still track me ;(

You can still opt out even without an account. The opt-out will be remembered until you clear your browser history.

https://adssettings.google.com/

Did you mean cookies instead of history?

yes

Hey thanks! I've seen that link thrown around a million times but I've just dismissed it. I appreciate you actually finding a useful one for me!

Ah, the old "Let me track you using this cookie so that you don't have to sign in and let us track you" trick! I'm guessing between IPs, browser fingerprinting, and usage/viewing habits it's beyond trivial for google to know the computer opting out at 3:00pm today is the same one that opted out this morning before clearing their cookies, and the same one that opted out yesterday for 16 hours and the same one the day before that, etc

As for me, I'll stick to youtube-dl

Nope, google is legally obligated to not do that, and in fact they don't. Google has much more to lose in this than you do, and a strong incentive not to lie.

How'd we ever know if they did? Are there independent audits or would discovery that they have been doing that depend on a whistleblower? If we know anything about corporations it's that they have zero problems with violating laws as long as they'll have mode more money than the slap on the wrist fine or class action settlement they'd pay out assuming they are ever caught in the first place.

I disagree that they would make more money by lying directly and explicitly like that, and yes it would be very difficult to cover up a lie like that. Literally millions of people would know, because any employee at Google or anyone who inspects the code of any google web app would learn of the lie.

Tracking (or “personalization”) should always be opt-in.

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