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Comment by colinsane | Hacker News Reader

sorry, i don’t mean to be dense here but could you spell out the implications for me? why is what you’re suggesting more scary?

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They're saying it's scarier that ad companies can figure out these things without the data because it means that you can't protect yourself by withholding your data.

> you can't protect yourself

but what are you protecting yourself from? What's the threat model?

You're protecting yourself from targeted psychological manipulation. It's like the difference between someone spraying a cyber-attack over the entire IPv4 space, or spending a while trying to drill into a specific server. The latter is much scarier and harder to resist, but it's basically what targeted advertising is these days. They supposedly want just to help you find what you want to buy, but they do this by trying to make you want things you wouldn't actually need otherwise.

I like to think I'm immune (the only ad I've ever taken up was years ago for Privacy(.com), and only because I then knew about it later, and could choose to pursue it on my own), but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point before I started being allergic to every type of advertisement imaginable, some ads managed to get my attention for one reason or another. (maybe subliminal messaging's done something before, I dunno.)

I'm not too concerned about it since I know it's been kept to a minimum, so at this point basically everything I've done is something I actually wanted to do, there are no concerns about having been manipulated. But that's just because I've managed to avoid seeing targeted ads almost whatsoever.

Of course, someone who has been successfully manipulated would also think they've escaped manipulation. Isn't that the scariest part

Depends on the method of manipulation but yeah that is the scary part. It's probably part of what scares people into being so privacy conscious in the first place. Though for me it's more that I get really, really annoyed getting told to do things, because it triggers pathological demand avoidance. But that's just manipulating me in reverse (it's really easy to make me hate/avoid something just by annoying me with it)

At some point a reality check should be possible. Do you find yourself spending money on advertised-things?

That's the metric I usually use. It's absolutely inconclusive, but it works for peace of mind at least. Have I seen any ads for something I bought? Usually the answer is "no". I'm still at the mercy of sort order on sites like Amazon and eBay, but that's much less scary because if I really care, I can sort by lowest price first.

By my own moral compass. If a company says "lots of people on Amazon are looking to buy what we have, let's make sure we're present in that market", that's completely moral. Compare that with, "a child is preparing for their math test tomorrow by watching a video, let's interrupt them and make them watch a commercial about our sugary, addictive, and unhealthy drink".

Is it even possible to not spend money on advertised things?

Mostly by not spending money frivolously.

The house I live in was advertised when it was on sale, all the food at the store gets advertised, all the non-bespoke clothes I can buy get advertised, as do most of the bespoke ones, every car gets advertised...

The difference is whether those ads were exposed to you before you bought it. Was it a factor in your decision?

Not whether it's something in the world that's ever been marketed at all, because literally everything has.

Generally yes. Especially the grocery store is constantly advertising hundreds of items, and I've looked at their ad pages more than once. And it's pretty hard to find houses outside of advertising platforms, and I used to watch enough TV that I'd seen ads for every clothing store and every car before I had a chance to find them on my own.

Among other things, I would say the unknown collation of personal history, interests and spending activity that is often auctioned off to the highest bidder.[1][2] In an even more automated society than today, social scoring becomes the norm, and with it access to services.

With prolific cases as Robodebt and the Toeslagen Affaire, we can only hope these automated scoring systems remain isolated from governmental overreach.[3][4]

[1]: https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchase...

[2]: https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/23/how-your-attention-...

[3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme

[4]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_sca...

Deanonymizing people across datasets for one. Maybe attacker or maybe next gov that goes full Hitler and subpenas tech companies to introduce social karma and you are put on a no-fly list because you expressed interest in UK royalty or have a cousin in Iran. Invisible bubble and radicalization for another.

Firstly there is the emotional response: I don't want to be followed around in everything that I do for someone else's benefit, and I not at all convinced of arguments that targetted advertising is done for my benefit.

Then there is the fact that a large amount of data about me is being stored, possibly insecurely for people with even less scruples to analyse. I have very little to hide (white, middle class, straight, male, cis, no criminal activity beyond some unlicensed TV/film access, etc – there is little or nothing about me that would be frightening for anyone else to know) but there are many out there who do have things that could be (unfairly) held against them with terrible consequences. Consider women in Texas where there is effectively a reward/bounty program to encourage snitching on those who have had, or are considering, an abortion, or people in law enforcement who don't want certain groups to be able to derive their home address with any accuracy, people in one or more closets through fear of being ostracised from their family/community and left pennyless & without support, and so forth. I grew up with friends who were gay when it was still effectively illegal to be, despite what the Sexual Offences Act (1967) said, and when getting beaten up for being gay was almost acceptable (“act more straight, and it wouldn't have happened”: something a friend was once told by a policeman that saw no cause for arrest) – the fear of consequences from collected information “getting out” and/or being used to derive other information (true or otherwise) is real and for many people not at all irrational.

Back to my icky feelings, which are perhaps a little bit less rational: I wouldn't be happy with someone following me between shops, watching what I'm perusing, then to the pub and noting who I was there with, then back to my home, in order to be able to serve me relevant ads (perhaps for shoes that would be more comfortable for that much walking? or for condoms because they noticed I was accompanied by a female friend, and you never know, right, nudge nudge wink wink), and I'm not happy about the same happening in a more virtual environment. How do I trust that is really (or only) why I'm being followed? And I how do I know who else my stalker is selling news of my activity to?

[actually, the “I have little or nothing to fear” isn't entirely right – any of us could suffer from plain old identity theft in various ways]

I understood this to mean the amount of information they have is enough to uniquely fingerprint you and associate that with your derived wants and needs.

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