Defeatism here helps noone.
It's quite sad to see. It's also the reason I'm using somethingunique@domain.tld;, if cyberstalkers start normalising to a domain, they'll only hurt their own business.
Often enough the content is there but just hidden until the JS loads for ... reasons, idk.
I guess that's the nefarious explanation, but there's a more benign one: if you want to correlate user behavior, you need some sort of normalization, otherwise john.doe+apple@example.com and john.doe+amazon@example.com would show up as different "people" and cause match rates to suffer. Sure, getting tracked isn't great, but it's not exactly the hypocrisy rage-bait that the OP is implying.
In practice, it's not of course, but that's the answer you'd get if you ask them.
They don't, which has been shown in studies. What has been shown is that showing the same things people already bought give people regret which increases total amount of purchases.
In other word, the goal is to not to give users a good experiences watching ad's. It is to make them buy more, which is an orthogonal goal.
Govt: “I need IP addresses, ideally cellular and known public wifi, of a person using this email address”.
Data broker: “Here’s the list including the most recent cellular IP address associated with that person at this timestamp and their most used public wifi locations.”
Govt: “Hey, cellular provider, where is this subscriber right now?”
Provider: “Here’s the lat/long, last seen 1 second ago. Happy hunting!”
There's a reason these things are opt-out rather than opt-in.
The answer to marcus0x62's question - why would a person want advertisers to correlate their behavior - is that they wouldn't, and if they want to advocate for their own self-interest they should install an ad blocker.
Nobody asks for the steak’s opinion when planning a BBQ.
But if you think that will happen I have an East River transportation startup in New York that is seeking an angel investor.
In a logical world, yes.
In a capitalist world, that revenue target goes up every year. Apple became the richest company on earth selling hardware, yet here they are now drowning their software with ads.
So would I; they're disfiguring ugly.
So would you ban shop signs? What about a shop-sign that simply said "Cafe"? Or "Meals"? That would be the end of chain stores (which I would not regret).
I don't mind shop signs; I do mind posters all over the street-scene.
The Post Office delivers about 4X as much unaddressed junk advertising pizzas and estate agents than real mail, and I object to that. In this country (UK), anyone can stuff whatever junk they like in your mailbox; in the US, I believe only USPS can put anything in your mailbox. Are USPS allowed to deliver unaddressed pizza fliers?
The best argument in favour of advertising is that it makes it possible for a new entrant to a market to make an impression; without it, markets would always be dominated by incumbents, give or take the occasional surprise. I don't know how to capture that benefit, without ending up with the whole world covered in billboards.
> The best argument in favour of advertising is that it makes it possible for a new entrant to a market to make an impression; without it, markets would always be dominated by incumbents, give or take the occasional surprise. I don't know how to capture that benefit, without ending up with the whole world covered in billboards.
I don't think that argument holds much water as ads require a big capital investment. The main reason new entrants need to advertise is because the incumbents are already advertising so you neeed to compete there just to get back the base level of engagement.
Where? I use Apple hardware basically exclusively. Are they that good in hiding the ads, or are you exaggerating a bit?
- App Store (biggest offender)
- Apple News
- Stocks
This year they'll be rolling them out into Apple Maps as well.
So you want to keep cost per impression up. You would not want to saturate and devalue.
Better to play 10 ads at 10c each vs 20 ads at 4 or 5c, as high ad load impacts users propensity to return to the service.
>Sure, getting tracked isn't great, but it's not exactly the hypocrisy rage-bait that the OP is implying.
That in and of itself is nefarious.
Ultimately they cannot win this fight.