Hacker News Reader

Comment by thrwn_frthr_awy | Hacker News Reader

Personalized advertising.

I personally find the personalized advertising great. A lot of the time I am shown things that are actually useful/valuable to me.

I think a lot of the value really depends on the individual. If you're engaging in productive activities like hobbies, you get valuable targeted ads. If you're engaging in activities that are low value like signaling to others in myriad ways, you probably get adds for things like disposable fashion.

Personalized ads are basically a mirror. They feed what the person already wants to engage in. If you want less of the bad types of advertising, then you need to start at the root which is getting people to stop being interested in activities and behaviors that are lower value.

> I personally find the personalized advertising great. A lot of the time I am shown things that are actually useful/valuable to me.

There are plenty of ways to deliver this value without secretly fingerprinting every user and delivering targeted ads at every corner. A search where you profile yourself, for instance; similar to how you provide search filters on Amazon.

All ads are fundamentally ugly in the sense that their effect is the opposite of a great work of art or entertainment. Ads are fundamentally just some pathetic person's selfish attempt to control what other people to think and feel in order to increase their own power through financial profit. In a sane world they would all be banned. Ads exist in their current deranged and disgusting form because contemporary humans have been selectively bred through social engineering to be submissive, cowardly, selfish, and stupid. Personalized/targeted advertising is not something that needs to be discussed.

Ads have been around for more than 2000 years now - would need a massive shift in mores to get rid of them (they survive in a lot of very different societies).

What would be the definition of this?

I listen to a podcast on football. Are they allowed to run ads that are about sports betting and NFL tickets? That is personalized to the group. Is Facebook allowed to run ads for sports betting to all people who are fans of a professional team on their site?

Is Facebook not allowed to run me ads for local restaurants any more?

I’m guessing that people use targeted advertising and personalized advertising interchangeably. The advertising industry knows full well what it means, and I’m sure the legislator should have no problem finding experts in that area to make a legally rigorous definition.

This could be done. The ads on a football podcast could be based on who their broader audience is, not based on a specific user.

> Is Facebook not allowed to run me ads for local restaurants any more?

Nope.

the difference between a cohort that listens to a football podcast and lives in a metro doesn’t seem obvious to me.

Yes! Excellent suggestion. This is at the root of so many data-related problems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com