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Comment by aydwi | Hacker News Reader

Slightly tangential, but I got curious how is Google selling the whole "Privacy" Sandbox idea. Found this little nugget right on the homepage[1]:

"Tailored content is critical for the open web and this includes showing people relevant ads."

Regardless of the amount of word-soccer they play (including in the article linked above), it is visible how scummy of a corporation Google is in the current day.

Additional reading for the folk who seem upset with my remark and have resorted to downvoting: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/dont-play-googles-priv...

[1]: https://www.privacysandbox.com/

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I don't particularly like the ads, but I understand they are needed to sustain many businesses (either online or elsewhere.) Would I prefer alternative payment methods? Maybe, depending on the publisher, and the price of the content.

I'm not completely sure what's the end goal of Google here, but if it this can reduce privacy invasion and tracking (as performed by most sites these days), and be similar to iOS' IDFA, where you can opt-out or reset the token, I'd prefer that.

That would essentially end targeted advertising and the companies that benefit from ads will fight that to the death.

I would be ok with every company dependent on advertising finding a different business model (or going out of business)

The problem is, there is not really a rational reason why you would not want to opt-out. The only practical reasons are:

- You don't know you can.

- You don't know how.

- You don't bother.

This is what irks me about this and similar "personal choice" solutions that try to get you to internalise the conflict: If there was an actual risk of a significant number of users opting out, the companies wouldn't offer them. (Or pull them back - see how quickly DNT died when a player attempted to remove the friction from it)

I don’t like ads but also accept some ads are required. What I think shouldn’t exist is targeted ads - call them tailored or whatever the hell you like, but ads should be a static ad for a company/product just like they were on billboards and in newspapers before the internet, and it doesn’t matter if I see it or someone else. They shouldn’t use information about me to target an ad.

I much prefer relevant ads to irrelevant ads

I much prefer for it to be a choice by me rather than my vendor.

You don't have to spy on people to give them relevant ads; you can just match the content on the page rather than their entire history. For instance: If they're on a page for computer hardware, show them computer hardware ads instead of mining the last few years of their search history to decide to show them an ad for soap on that hardware page.

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