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Comment by blantonl | Hacker News Reader

The joke about the $1.39 made me laugh, but it also made me wonder:

At what point will there be a tipping point where the pitchforks come out and the general public's "patience" with regulation catching up to this crap begins to unravel and actual violence or "direct action" begins to occur against these actors?

Because while we're focused on individual political officials actions as a distraction, these types of warehouses are getting bigger and bigger, making more and more money for the owners, and becoming used more and more for malicious activities.

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> what point will there be a tipping point where the pitchforks come out and the general public's "patience" with regulation catching up to this crap begins to unravel and actual violence or "direct action" begins to occur against these actors?

There is no public consensus on this. American voters are fine with free, ad-supported software. They’re fine with surveillance in exchange for convenience.

They likely don’t understand the cost. Personally or systemically. But a combination of digital-privacy thought leaders (a) overlapping with communities embracing political nihilism, (b) experiencing a filter bubble where popular support is perceived where there is none and (c) having been corrupted (politically speaking) by crypto has stymied policy progress.

There are no pitchforks. There is no angry mob. To the degree there is consensus overseas, it arises from nationalism with respect to security (India) or competitiveness (Europe).

> There is no public consensus on this. American voters are fine with free, ad-supported software. They’re fine with surveillance in exchange for convenience.

Is that true though? When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy, and if they're actually given a choice, most will probably take it.

The issue about not understanding the cost is real, but that's not unprecedented. There was a time when most people didn't understand the cost of cigarettes and tobacco, but that problem was solved through government intervention.

Edit: to clarify, I said the tracking is “opt-in”, but it’s not a default. iOS explicitly asks you to choose between tracking or no tracking. It does not assume any default.

> When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy

Americans want privacy. There isn't consensus around the acceptable level of tradeoffs [1][2].

> was a time when most people didn't understand the cost of cigarettes and tobacco, but that problem was solved through government intervention

In 1964, the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee marked a turning point for smoking in America [3]. The Tobacco MSA was entered into in 1998 [4], by when most smokers recognized their habit as an addiction. The government intervention followed evidencing harm, public discussion and massive changes in public behavior. We are still in the first phase for ad-funded tech.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/04/how-america...

[2] https://netchoice.org/zogby-memo-to-interested-parties-ameri...

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894634/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...

> Americans want privacy.

They are also completely ignorant about practical aspects of it.

Almost half of the US population is rocking Android phones.

While Apple is in general better at privacy than Google (better can be far away from good), I think an Android user can theoretically be better protected. It just needs a lot of attention. But he would at least be able to do something against the "exceptions for the manufacturer". A locked down environment will always be comparably insecure. Not that Android phones aren't locked down...

> When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy, and if they're actually given a choice, most will probably take it.

I've seen this or equivalent statements a lot in discussion related to privacy, tracking, and the ios ecosystem. However, I don't think the results show what you're saying they do. All I see is that people accept the default behaviour of their devices. Unfortunately, there's no mobile ecosystem where you can easily opt out of tracking to compare to.

> All I see is that people accept the default behaviour of their devices.

There is no default though. The popup gives you two options like “Ask not to track” and “Allow” with no way to dismiss it.

Yes, I would add though that the option that's perceived as closest to "Do nothing/Add nothing/Skip" will get extra perception points as closer to default.

> When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy...

Or it could be a clear indicator that people will leave the defaults where they are, which is why there have been figurative wars over getting a particular browser to be the default browser of an operating system.

It actually asks you though when you install apps. No default selected you have to make a choice.

> Is that true though? When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy, and if they're actually given a choice, most will probably take it.

Is it? Or is it a clear indication that most people will stick with whatever the default option handed to them is?

Of course giving the option to opt out without consequences will entice people to opt out. But what if the software stops working unless you pay for it after you opt out? That changes everything.

Then the question is no longer "Am I okay with tracking if I can shut it off and everything's still the same," but becomes "Am I okay with tracking if it means I don't have to pay for the software or service?"

That’s true. I think that will be the real test for the market.

Appstores/marketplaces will need to clearly show which apps are free without tracking so that consumers are aware that there are privacy-respecting alternatives, and don’t feel like they have no choice.

However, there’s also the issue that the definition of “tracking” and “privacy” is too vague. If Google or Facebook offered a paid service with privacy, I personally still wouldn’t trust them to not collect data on me.

Why should people have to buy extra services for a non free piece of hardware just to remain ad free on that hardware? Apple is double dipping here (probably triple dipping if you also include AppStore fees and charges).

People want to be able to own the things they buy, without further nonsense.

If you don't want to pay for the operating system, just buy some hardware and put Linux on it. Apple isn't double dipping because their OS isn't free, and nor is their hardware. They are different units of the same company, and both units have to pay their staff.

To whit, anywhere the software is provided "free" it is actually just included in the price. It is no coincidence they don't let you upgrade the actual version of that software without paying (or jail breaking as the case may be). Most phones and tablets are kept at whatever version you bought them at, by design.

If you buy a hardware firewall, you still have to pay for its software and maintenance. If you buy a car, you still have to buy winter tires at the appropriate time of year, and pay for the car's regular checkup. For tires, you even may have to pay for yearly rotation, balancing, etc. This business model shows up in many variants all over the place. Different divisions or people work on something, it's a separate pay item.

It also doesn't help when companies try things that can produce relevant ads for a user without tracking the users themselves, and they get blocked at every turn.

For example, Twitter allows you to prune a list of ad subjects. You can add and subtract to that list. This could effectively reduce the need for tracking, but people reflexively block the ad accounts, rendering any form of ad campaign ineffective.

I'm not saying that's the answer, btw. It may be, or it may not be. I am saying though, that people are so used to blocking ads and not paying, that finding solutions to keep online companies viable is extraordinarily difficult without tracking.

If Twitter turned around and told everyone who did that, that they have to pay for a subscription, they'd quickly go out of business.

>Is that true though? When Apple made tracking opt-in, pretty much everyone refused. I think that's a clear indicator that the overwhelming majority do want privacy, and if they're actually given a choice, most will probably take it.

That option already existed in the settings. People couldn't be bothered to go set it because they don't really care.

> They likely don’t understand the cost. Personally or systemically.

How would you explain the cost to someone? Most of the discourse seems to boil down to some mix of "it's creepy" and "it could be used for a nefarious purpose", which is not super convincing.

> how would you explain the cost to someone?

For most commercial surveillance, I can't. Provable harm from the Equifax breach remains unquantified. We're only beginning to discuss those data for e.g. Facebook and teenagers. To give analogy, we're in the 1960s on the smoking-regulation timeline [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894634/

It is very difficult. In most cases people aren't affected. Those that might understand the need for privacy are those that lost their jobs because of posting on social media or being naked in the wrong place. Currently the data that is shared between ad networks is rarely public, but embarrassing information could be found everywhere and what is considered as such might change with time. Is isn't just the access log of your head of state to youporn or something like that, it is also the info about trivial consumption choices that can come back at you.

Legislators made it far worse because they demanded additional data to be saved for "security purposes". So not even here people are informed about the problem. On the contrary, we regularly have old farts making everything much worse.

Frankly, those that believe they can save some bucks when they share their data probably aren't the best to understand the larger picture. The data is valuable for different purposes but it is also difficult to put a price tag on it.

There’s the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

It is very concrete, but that would automatically alienate quite a few people...

What was the cost of the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the average user?

There were a lot of people in the data set, certainly, but how many can quantify damages?

If anything the Cambridge Analytica scandal was (disturbing) "win" for privacy loss: a lot of the Cambridge Analytica demographics markers were baked into the Facebook ad platform and became standard ad demographics soon after. The Cambridge Analytica scandal as played out looked like Facebook was stamping out bad privacy practices using its platform, but the real message was Facebook eliminating a competitor to their ad business by eliminating their access to Facebook's data. Lucky for Facebook the PR mostly stuck with the face value of "stamping out bad privacy practices", but even a lot of the people that saw/realized it was simply Facebook eliminating a competitor have mostly shrugged and continued to use Facebook (though Facebook did add some opt-outs at that much more modest uproar, versus all the loud thundering noise Cambridge Analytica got).

It may have influenced the result of the 2016 US presidential election.

IIRC, the Trump used that data set to send targeted ads to ~90M independent and republican voters. Independents got ads attacking Clinton and emphasizing prominent Trump supporters. Republicans got turnout-oriented ads.

Provided he won by less than 100k votes (and lost the popular vote), the cost to the median US citizen was likely quite large.

I didn’t know the same demographic markers had been baked into the platform. This is very concerning.

Cambridge Analytica had no way to buy Facebook ads, which were the primary platform of these micro-targeted ads during the campaign, specific to people in the gathered data they had without Facebook platform support. Facebook ads never had an API that you could just give it user IDs or emails and target them specifically (and one would hope that Facebook would eye any such ad campaign with suspicion even before scandals like Cambridge Analytica). Cambridge Analytica had to encourage Facebook to add most of its same demographic markers into the platform to pull that off. That's definitely one of those "it takes two to Tango" sort of things where if it wasn't in Facebook's platform, how did they target those ads in 2016?

Certainly they cross-compiled that data with other ad systems and phone lists and who knows what else, but given the scandal with respect to that specific campaign was primarily about their micro-targeted Facebook ad buys, Facebook is still left culpable as the platform owner at the end of the day.

But I'm of the belief that micro-targeted ads should be illegal in general, and all of the micro-targeting enabling ad platforms seriously questioned for what they've enabled in the last decade or so. The fact that they are generally acceptable and multi-billion dollar revenue generators is its own reminder of what this thread is about that the average person doesn't seem to care about all of these invasive data privacy issues.

I didn't know FB had been actively involved in the process, I thought they had just been criminally negligent regarding the amount of data third parties were allowed to gather.

> the average person doesn't seem to care about all of these invasive data privacy issues.

I know, anecdotally, I became half a pariah in my family for refusing to register and share pics of my kids on WhatsApp. That was after the FB purchase, but before they changed the terms of service. I didn't trust FB, and was ultimately proven right.

Semi-related to that, when Facebook did finally roll out it's opt out from certain ad demographics tools in I want to say 2018-ish they included a view of your own demographics (if you could find your way through Facebook's maze of Privacy Settings with many corridors all alike), a Slack I was in at the time and I went through all of our personal demographics and one lasting result of that conversation was renaming one of the channels to #friendsofexpats because "Friend of Expats" was the creepiest, almost threatening sounding demographic tag that we all seemed to share (among other creepy, almost threatening demographic tags that don't actually sound useful to non-evil advertising). Because that was memorialized in a channel name that one has stuck with me since.

> There are no pitchforks. There is no angry mob.

This is true. Even Snowden's revelations didn't have much effect outside of tech circles. US congress even got away with passing a law to retroactively make some of the revealed illegal spying on Americans legal. The public either does not care or feels impotent.

Governments love corporate surveillance as it allows them a source of data without having to worry about scrutiny they might face by collecting the data directly.

It feels hopeless that surveillance capitalism will ever be able to be reigned in.

> Snowden's revelations didn't have much effect outside of tech circles

This is not true. There were lasting changes in public perceptions around the surveillance of Americans [1]. And bulk collection under the Patriot Act was repealed [2]. That is far from complete, but it's also far from nothing.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/04/how-america...

[2] https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-prais...

Congress retroactively legalized some of the spying:

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/intel/RL34600.pdf [PDF]

The reforms to bulk data collection were immediately after the revelations.

Congress has been continuing/expanding surveillance in the years since. But, perhaps not to the degree they would have without Snowden's revelations? I want to believe that Snowden's great sacrifice made lasting changes, but I don't think the evidence supports it.

E.g.,

> Congress extends patriot act section 702 spying powers (2018)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/congress-demanded-nsa-spying-r...

> Congress extends patriot act section 215 spying powers (2019)

https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/congress-just-te...

> With practically no public notice and no public hearings, the House of Representatives passed the College Transparency Act (CTA) on Feb. 4, 2022, by slipping it into a much larger unrelated bill called the America Competes Act, intended to better position the United States to compete with China. (2022)

> creation of a comprehensive data system that would include the personal information of every student enrolled in college or another higher education institution, and track them after their [sic] graduate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/04/04/congress...

> Congress retroactively legalized some of the spying

Extensions of §§ 702 and 215 didn't roll back the reforms in the USA Freedom Act [1], which was a hodgepodge of intelligence reauthorizations and admittedly minor reforms. (But reforms nonetheless.)

> House of Representatives passed the College Transparency Act (CTA) on Feb. 4, 2022, by slipping it into a much larger unrelated bill called the America Competes Act

Anyone claiming CTA was slipped into the ACA wasn't watching the ball. I first heard about it around 2021 [2], which was itself a re-introduction of an earlier bill. It went through discussions across two administrations. The only opposition was from higher ed, who didn't want the record keeping burden.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act#Title_VI:_FISA...

[2] https://www.cassidy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cassi...

> The only opposition was from higher ed, who didn't want the record keeping burden.

That kinda makes my point.

I appreciate that from your perspective I am being far too pessimistic. But, I do not see reason for optimism.

Still, I hope it turns out that you are right.

"It feels hopeless that surveillance capitalism will ever be able to be reigned in. "

It will likely by some combination of: 1. starts to impact the 1% (e.g. Congresswoman Feinstein didn't care about privacy a whole lot until she found out the NSA may have been bugging HER, etc) 2. an active interest in counter-measures (up to and including not buying or dismantling IoT options; people are already on forums in growing numbers looking for 'dumb' appliances and looking to hoard car parts to keep the ICE cars rolling indefinitely if possible) 3. a second Cambridge Analytical with any measurable, discrete, bad outcomes that follow (e.g. someone uses breach data to stalk a person, a group of shareholders get fleeced [aka see 1])

There is no silver bullet here in my view. A confluence of events will at some point likely hit critical mass and force it. Almost no one thought data sovereignty regulation would take off, but GDPR, CCPA, and a growing list of similars have proven that was a misstep on the part of tech to avoid a balkanized regulatory universe, but they simply could not agree to give up on iota of adtech dollars....so they will lose it by endless smaller cuts. The legal/compliance industry will reap those profits instead.

> There are no pitchforks. There is no angry mob. To the degree there is consensus overseas, they arise from nationalist impulses with respect to security (India) or competitiveness (Europe).

If only the "anti-vax" mob could have been motivated towards upholding Internet privacy... We'd perhaps have a far more relevant and meaningful protest in the U.S.

> if only the "anti-vax" mob could have been motivated towards upholding Internet privacy

They’re a natural demographic! But connecting to them requires showmanship, crossing a partisan line for some, and bridging to the anti-Big Tech crowd. No easy work.

Correct, and this is where full-throated advocacy for government intervention is necessary. At this stage, not even for a change in practice -- simply an across the board disclosure of what the practices are, trade secrets/capitalism/ etc be darned.

I've thought about this many times, and my answer is: when there is a massive, at-scale leak of seriously disruptive personal information. Think Google search history, medical files, or databases of credit card transactions. When it takes enough peoples' lives off the normal track, people will finally be fed up.

That already happened with the OPM breach in 2015 It seriously messed up people's credit, work life and daily lives. [0]

No slow down at all of data gathering.

There's been dozens of the exact kind you're describing and nobody cares [1].

[0] https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/arti...

[1] https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/information-technology/wor...

Also the Equifax breach seriously messed up people's credit, work life, and daily lives.

Given Equifax's one job is to protect people's credit you would have hoped they'd have gotten more than a slap on the wrist of a class action lawsuit. At the very least, you would have expected their clients (banks) to have had trust issues in remaining their clients and something of a long term impact on their revenue. (It's done nothing but grow its revenue since the data breach.)

What's really rich about the Equifax breach screwing up people's credit is that Equifax also makes up the credit ratings. It's the corporate equivalent of "nice reputation you have there, would be a shame if something happened to it" type of protection racket. And before anyone accuses me of hyperbole remember that Equifax themselves call it "identity theft protection”.

> Equifax's one job

Oh, they've got their hands more pies than credit ratings

> Equifax also offers fraud prevention products based on device fingerprinting such as "FraudIQ Authenticate Device."

> selling consumer credit and insurance reports and related analytics to businesses in a range of industries.

> Equifax sells businesses credit reports, analytics, demographic data, and software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equifax#Products

Obviously I was being hyperbolic, which is partly why I emphasized it. Though this list doesn't actually read to me as being anything more than "monetizing everything they can even remotely related credit ratings". It's not really a different "product" selling credit ratings for their intended purpose to banks and selling them to non-bank businesses for looser moral purposes, is it?

The north american credit rating agencies have seen numerous leaks of immensely disruptive personal information. This happened so many times that there are talk show episodes about it.

This happened. The vast majority of people do not care or do not have time to care.

I love how you brought up this meme (which used to be a consensus opinion fwict ~2009) and it immediately got discredit with multiple examples! Clearly this is not a way forward ("waiting for others to be outraged" - guess what? They already are!! You are all just too coward to change your behaviour) we /must/ move to FOSS and p2p, all energy should go towards solving the tragedy of the commons in cyberspace and then the resulting communication structures will help us solve our issues in meatspace. Anything else is just wishful thinking or waiting for the tools to be available from the programmer class.

The outrage would only be temporary (again). And then things would go back to 'normal'

Someone should leak everyone's nudes from google photos/iCloud etc.

Including names and everything.

That would wake people up.

They did it was the fappenning. The only difference is it happened to celebrities so the police got right on solving that.

This should be done to politicians that lobby for data brokerages. They only do the correct thing when personally affected.

> This should be done to politicians

oh c'mon, nobody wants to see that. Send me a goatse [dot] cx link or something more vanilla

John Oliver supposedly did just this earlier this year: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/apr/11/john-ol...

But there's been nothing on it since. Given how Oliver's show tends to run, I figure the topic will be back towards the end of the season.

I know that one happened.

But because it was celebrities people just thought "oh it wouldn't happen to me".

John Oliver claimed that he did that 4 months ago -- buying sensitive data about members of Congress, but once he got his YouTube views, he dropped the topic. Controlled opposition.

https://google.com/search?q=john+oliver+privacy

The best way for us as individuals to regain power and protest over misuse and collection of our data is to defiantly and deliberately "corrupt" that ill gotten data...

Go into really kinky sex shops and just browse around... Go to Chuck E Cheese and crash a kid's birthday party and jump in the ball pit (especially if you don't have kids). Buy diabetic socks, especially when you don't need them, or even lingerie for the opposite gender from Target. Host wild phone conversations with your friends in a nonsensical language, and do it as much as possible... Cover your front phone camera with black tape when it's not in use... Talk frequently about the opposite of what your real plans are directly into every microphone placed on every Internet connected device... Never use the same password you use on important resources for social media...

Adopt a great new pseudonym, and never verify yourself on any of your social media accounts, they can't demand that info, they're not the Government.

Hack the planet. :P

That reminds me of AdNauseam: adnauseam.io

Fundamentally, AdNauseam's approach is the correct one: corrupted data is far worse for adtech than missing data. Highly suggest installing AdNauseam, and then applying its ideas to your everyday life. Maybe occasionally buy things with friends' credit cards, then pay them back in cash?

> Fundamentally, AdNauseam's approach is the correct one: corrupted data is far worse for adtech than missing data.

No chance. No one cares if the data they have on you is accurate or not, least of all ad companies. They'll happily push ads at you all day and it doesn't matter to them what they're for. Companies will continue to use that false data to force you to pay more. An employer who refuses to hire you because of a false understanding of your spending habits or political views will never know the difference and neither will you. You'll just not get the job, you won't know why.

The data collected on you will be used against you no matter how accurate it is. Feeding the system "corrupt data" is still just handing them ammo to hit you with. It will always be better for you to avoid handing them data at all.

> No chance.

That's not a coherent response to my point - I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

> No one cares if the data they have on you is accurate or not, least of all ad companies.

This is wildly, factually incorrect. There's literally no reason for anyone to gather data if it's going to be consistently inaccurate. In the case of ad companies, they want correct data because they think it allows them to target ads better - they definitely care about accuracy.

> They'll happily push ads at you all day and it doesn't matter to them what they're for.

This is irrelevant. The problem of "I'm being shown ads" is completely orthogonal to the problem of "an organization is collecting a bunch of personal data about me". My comment was explicitly about the latter, yours is about the former and so shouldn't be a response to mine.

> An employer who refuses to hire you because of a false understanding of your spending habits or political views

That's an edge case that's easily worked around - just make your noise-introducer not add hazardous content.

> The data collected on you will be used against you no matter how accurate it is.

You're assuming that the data collected is actually useful as a weapon, and there's no reason to assume that. Your noise-detector could just add interests in a bunch of different products (avoiding the hazardous ones) - very low risk, and very confusing for an adtech company.

> It will always be better for you to avoid handing them data at all.

This is true in theory, but unfortunately very difficult in practice. Ad Nauseam's approach is the realistic, pragmatic one that survives contact with reality.

> In the case of ad companies, they want correct data because they think it allows them to target ads better - they definitely care about accuracy.

If they cared, at all, they'd provide a means for people to confirm the accuracy of the assumptions they make about you and correct mistakes. They also wouldn't bother with buying from data brokers who gather data from any number of unreliable sources. It's quantity over quality every time.

I'm not even sure ad companies actually think all the data allows them to better target ads or even that targeted ads are preferable. They have to convince their clients of that though. Really all they care about is pushing ads and collecting money.

> just make your noise-introducer not add hazardous content.

Good luck. There are an endless number of things that might prejudice someone against you. Your lifestyle, your politics, your religion, the people you associate with, your sexual history, your hobbies, your medical conditions, etc. The longer you go filling your dossier with random information the more likely it is that you'll end up hitting one of them.

> You're assuming that the data collected is actually useful as a weapon,

No one is collecting your data for your benefit. It is always to benefit themselves at your expense. Every scrap of data that is taken from you will be leveraged against you or sold to someone else on the promise that it could be.

The reason there is a multi-billion dollar a year industry around buying and selling the most mundane aspects of your life is because it gives others huge advantages over you. It allows them to take more of your money, to punish you, to erode your ability to enact change, and to manipulate you into supporting positions favorable to them.

The data they collect allows them to do this no matter how inaccurate their assumptions about you are. You may not 'deserve' to be targeted by an extremist group who got your name and address from a data broker, but they'll still punish you for what they think you are or have done. You might not have as much money as your dossier suggests, but a store is going to raise their prices for you based on that data anyway while charging your neighbor less. You might not actually eat out as often, but your health insurance rates are still going up if the insurance company gets the wrong idea. You might not have actually been looking up rope, hacksaws, tarps, and duct tape on November 12th, but the police will still question you if they see it in your search history and will gladly throw you behind bars if they think you'll be easy to convict for the crime.

Ad Nauseam's approach fails to have any meaningful impact on the outcome. You'll still get abused and be taken advantage of, just sometimes it will be for the wrong reasons.

You can't always avoid giving any data away, but stuffing your dossier with more and more data (no matter how random or inaccurate) will always be worse for you.

> Every scrap of data that is taken from you will be leveraged against you

False, because if I feed false & non-incriminating pieces of data to a surveillance system - which is not an edge case, but the exact idea that we are arguing about in this thread - then it will not be leveraged against me, and in fact it will decrease the amount of leverage that the system has against me.

> or sold to someone else on the promise that it could be

Right, at which point it will make that system worse, as well.

> The reason there is a multi-billion dollar a year industry around buying and selling the most mundane aspects of your life is because it gives others huge advantages over you. It allows them to take more of your money, to punish you, to erode your ability to enact change, and to manipulate you into supporting positions favorable to them.

Yes, I know this, and the point of feeding fake data is to prevent people from doing this. There's no point in putting this in, because that isn't the interesting part of the discussion, it's whether fake data actually works. Why do you keep putting completely irrelevant material into your comments?

> The data they collect allows them to do this no matter how inaccurate their assumptions about you are.

No. No no no. This is false. "Inaccurate data", just by itself, is worthless. It doesn't do anything. It's only inaccurate data along specific dimensions ("incriminating" data) that actually matters, and it's straightforward (if not easy) to "shape" the fake data that you feed to surveillance systems to that which is simultaneously (a) damaging to ad systems and (b) not incriminating at all.

And the rest of this paragraph? Pure speculation. You cannot make a connection between these kinds of negative outcomes and Ad Nauseam (and related techniques) because it has never happened.

> Ad Nauseam's approach fails to have any meaningful impact on the outcome.

You have precisely zero evidence for this, and I have counter-evidence: Google specifically banned Ad Nauseam from the Chrome Store[1], which is very good evidence for the fact that it is effective in ways that adblockers and anti-fingerprinting tools are not.

Your entire comment is filled with ridiculous assertions, completely irrelevant tangents, illogical leaps, and pure speculation. None of it lines up with reality.

[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-bans-adn...

> You cannot make a connection between these kinds of negative outcomes and Ad Nauseam (and related techniques) because it has never happened...Your entire comment is filled with ridiculous assertions, completely irrelevant tangents, illogical leaps, and pure speculation. None of it lines up with reality.

I clearly can't convince you, but I strongly encourage you to educate yourself if you honestly think none of the things I described have ever happened or could ever happen. Pretty much all of it is happening and/or has happened.

Extremist groups buying data to target and harass others? Already happened with people at abortion clinics (https://www.mass.gov/news/ag-reaches-settlement-with-adverti...)