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Comment by air7 | Hacker News Reader

"Such extensive data collection allows the profiling of users in order to show them personalized ads and marketing campaigns to increase the revenue for the mentioned companies."

On a bit of a philosophical tangent: Targeted ads increase revenues because they are focused on people with a higher proabability of responding positively to the ads. If you asume agency of the user then this is a good thing, a win-win. But by treating this negatively you are asuming that the user has no agency over their actions. They reply to the ad, but it hurts them or they don't really want to. And we should protect users from this "temptation". This is the line of reasoning behind banning the sale of addictive substances to minors. Note that I am not talking about privacy issues, only about the quoted reservation which is quite common.

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Another philosophical tangent: we should protect humans from advertising on principle.

Our minds are sacred, our cognitive functions are inalienable. Not a single corporation on this planet is entitled to this. Our attention belongs to us. It's not currency to pay for services with. It's not a commodity for them to sell to the highest bidder. They don't get to insert their brands into our brains without our consent. That should be considered mind rape and any measures taken to stop it should be considered legitimate self-defense.

Side note : I consider adverstising to be like a friend's recommendation if the options are curated, researched and non-scammy. If you have nothing against influencer economy, you should have nothing against advertising. I just want ads to be done ethically.

My (actual) friends have never spent a single dime in recommending a product to me, and they never talk about products where they have a personal stake. So I can't relate to your perception.

Advertisers spend money with the aim of convincing strangers. There is always a conflict of interest.

Ads have suggested lot of life improvement products for me i.e. better bedsheets, duvets, aromatherapy products, etc. I love those. I would have never checked those out. After trying them, I have suggested them to my friends. Lot of minor improvements. Here's the thesis, if we consider youtube recommendations and instagram recommendations to be so good that they are addictive, the same can be said about ad recommendations. Buy-conversions track whether the product has been effective and could be recommended to similar demographics. People have no problem choosing life-partners based on how algos recommends profiles on dating apps but they have issue with ads. They want this particular aspect to be "organic" what a irony.

> I would have never checked those out.

Why not? Can't you go to a store and ask to see products? Open an app and see what they have to offer you?

When you seek the products out, it's not advertising, it's information.

I didn't seek them out. For me, it could be said they never existed. Ads recommendeded them. I am not dumb to blindly purchase any recommendation.

Well, I search for products I want constantly. I'll describe what I want to Google or an actual salesperson and see what comes up. Then I'll refine the results if necessary. I don't consider that advertising. I'm looking for information and others are supplying me with it.

Well then you are dependent on the particulars of the search engine algorithms and what it surfaces to you. This is similar to Walmart preselecting 3 products from a category and asking you to make a choice among them. I would love to have some diversity in it.

Diversity is provided by friends and family. Trusted human beings. Not the highest bidder in the auctions for our attention.

Also, without advertising, search engines and the web would be a lot more trustworthy than they are today. When searching I used to get many real websites created by humans, now I see ad-funded AI-generated utterly worthless SEO spam. Advertising is literally the root cause of the enshittification of the web.

Limited number of family and friends and their limited exposure to the products they have personally experienced is too limited for me. I would like to atleast check out what is out there. Then do research and then buy. Don't project your personal way of doing things onto others.

So you ended up spending money that you were not planning to spend in the first place, because the advertisers succeeded in provoking in you a sense of necessity where none existed before.

I would rather keep advertisements specifically restricted only to those who already have a need, and are interested in choosing a commercial solution for that need.

I earn money to make my life better, not to just increase a number in my bank account. I hope you understand the concept of surplus income. Otherwise we can go back to stone-age "just existing", "being in the moment and intimate with raw sensations" as nature intended to be.

To take your point further, why not abolish, ban luxury market segment. A $10 shirt does the same job of $500 one. Well Apple created a necessity in making you to buy a $1000 dollar phone, it does the same job as $400 one.

I would allow market place to decide what new ideas should take hold in society. Taking an uber or online dating was frowned upon, not anymore. People can change, society can adapt, better processes can be put in place to avoid hurt sentiments of all parties involved.

I do not advocate to abolish or ban any market segment, but rather to limit their ability to advertise only to individuals who are already on the market for the kind of product or service being advertised.

Also, congratulations on your surplus income. Many people do not enjoy that luxury.

Well the point of internet is provide abundance to everyone at every price point and product category. Initially it was only about information and now it is about good products and services. Ads help in that. Not every small niche product has physical store in every city or has an app, listing on Amazon doesn't properly convey the worth of their products to new buyers. Physically seeing products is not necessary because you can always return it if not satisfied.

Consider another area where recommendation results in ecommerce like activity. Food delivery apps. One could say why not visit the restaurant and eat there. Through delivery apps, I come to know about new items / cuisines, restaurants, their reviews and buy them. In fact the situation is far more worse in delivery apps because you can't return a food item once tasted. Not so with other category of products like clothings, etc.

I feel like Benedicts Evans should make a primer on why ads exists and how better ads could serve society.

Ads help in that by selling my attention to corporations. I think that's a violation of my boundaries and will resist it by any means possible.

> Through delivery apps, I come to know about new items / cuisines, restaurants, their reviews and buy them.

I use these store and delivery apps extremely often. I have issues with their tracking of my behavior but I don't consider them to be advertising at all.

I opened the app because I wanted to see the products and offers. That's not advertising, that's information which I specifically requested. Advertising is when the app gets in my face with nonsense I couldn't care less about while I'm trying to do something else.

Well, I go to Instagram to spend surplus time which I was gonna waste anyway. If instagram shows me an ad which it thinks fit my demographics and helps me improve my lifestyle, it is a win-win for all 3 parties [aggregator, sellers, buyers] involved. I don't care how I reached there. I am knowledgeable enough to distinguish what is relevant to me. Amazon results are litered with ads. It is similar how to Walmart would preselect products for you and you have little to no-choice among them. Do you get a personal choice in what should be put on shelf. Walmart does the selection based on internal data it gathered. It can build a profile on you.

I consider advertising to be fundamentally different from word of mouth networks and friend recommendations. Friends do not have conflicts of interest. They recommend things to you because they like it and think you would too, not because they stand to make billions in profit.

Advertisements are inherently untrustworthy: you must assume ads are showing you the positives and hiding the negatives.

People are generally exposed to reviews by third parties. They do their research and only then buy. Most products can be replaced / returned if you are not satisfied. Limited friend circle and their limited exposure to existing and new products should not be a determining factor in deciding what should I like or not. It should be my personal decision.

Politicians / media are inherently untrustworthy. Yet society chugs along.

> It's not currency to pay for services with.

Tell that to the people who need to watch a YouTube video and don't want to punch in their credit-card info. Unless someone is picking up the hosting and delivery costs, advertising will always make the most sense.

Now, don't get me wrong; ad-free YouTube at no cost would be great! It's not a business though, and without advertising arguably none of those services would exist. I don't know what you are proposing if not completely tearing-down our relatively accessible status-quo.

> people who need to watch a YouTube

"Need" is too strong a word. Nobody "needs" to watch a YouTube video. Maybe they want to watch one.

> without advertising arguably none of those services would exist

Then let their existence cease. They're corporations. They don't have human rights. They aren't entitled to life.

> I don't know what you are proposing if not completely tearing-down our relatively accessible status-quo.

It's exactly what I am proposing. A status quo where mind rape is normalized for the sake of convenience should not be allowed to exist.

> "Need" is too strong a word. Nobody "needs" to watch a YouTube video.

Circumstantially, maybe not. In high school and college, I had plenty of homework assignments that involved a YouTube video. After classes, YouTube continued to be the biggest asset to my professional development. Having access to conference talks and long-form tutorials changed my life.

For the sake of argument, let's just say I'm fixing my sink and the first result on 5 search engines is a YouTube video. What do you expect the average person to do next?

> It's exactly what I am proposing.

Well, good luck with that. I'm very curious to see who shows up to pick up the bill in your new world. It sorta sounds like your mental model feigns the existence of capitalism and free will, though.

> I'm very curious to see who shows up to pick up the bill in your new world.

I will pick up the bill for my own consumption. I have less than zero tolerance for advertising but I still buy a lot of stuff. The difference is I do it on my own terms. I won't have them actively advertising to me. When I want something, I'll ask them. When I actively seek out their products it's not advertising but information.

>Nobody "needs" to watch a YouTube video. Maybe they want to watch one.

Youtube's giant selection of people demonstrating every DIY repair topic (car repair, appliance repair, iPhone battery replace, etc) you can think of -- that's available nowhere else -- has literally saved me thousands of dollars (no exaggeration).

I guess one could twist that into "you didn't really _need_ to save thousands of dollar$, you just _wanted_ to."

Youtube is much more than frivolous music videos and you're too dismissive of how it helps people.

EDIT REPLY TO: "Doesn't justify their advertising."

I wasn't responding to the advertising business model. My issue was the "nobody _needs_ to watch a Youtube video" is way too dismissive.

>There's always other sources of information. There's always better sources of information.

Not always. Last week, I needed to replace an oxygen sensor on my truck and wanted some guidance on how to do it. Yes, a pdf of a vehicle service manual has diagrams etc but that book doesn't show a video of someone actually doing it. I need to see somebody actually put a wrench on the the bolts and unplug the sensor cable. I watched 5 different mechanics do it and I'm glad I did because there are some tricky issues that my inexperience would not have solved on my own. Vimeo and other video services didn't have this car repair content. Only Youtube.

YouTube videos have helped me a lot as well. Doesn't justify their advertising. There's always other sources of information. There's always better sources of information. I make it a point to read books now. Libraries should be valued.

> Doesn't justify their advertising

Doesn't justify their invasive advertising.

> There's always other sources of information

There are, sometimes, different sources of information (you would be giving up a massive amount of resources).

> There's always better sources of information

Not necessarily. Sometimes information is scarce and hard to find.

> I make it a point to read books now. Libraries should be valued

That is not an exclusive alternative.

I would completely tear down the ad-driven status quo in favour of people paying for things. People shouldn't have to punch in their credit card info to access a youtube video and they shouldn't need to sign up for a subscription to youtube or any other site in order to access individual pieces of information. Payment should be only for content consumed and should be frictionless and consistent across all providers.

It's a pipe dream now, with the exploitative business models and consumer addictions well established, but there's an alternative history of the internet where this could have happened.

> I would completely tear down the ad-driven status quo in favour of people paying for things.

As someone that grew up poor but now works in tech, I'm very hesitant to say that people paying for things is better than the ad-driven status quo.

A good portion of people just wouldn't be able to pay and likely have a worse life by their standards (not yours or mine).

I'd view extreme poverty as a problem for the state rather than advertisers, universal basic income (UBI) being one obvious approach, and access to information for those too poor to pay for it as a challenge that has been long addressed by public libraries. Solving these problems is neither an explicit goal of adverts nor something they achieve well as a side effect.

Customers have this expectation because VCs paid for growth. Then for another decade or so Google continued to give it away. Is it any wonder many people have a clear misunderstanding of the costs of software?

I’ve spent some time thinking about this. A lot of things in life can be avoided if you have more money. Waiting in long lines, having uncomfortable seats, doing regular chores, etc.

But it seems advertising can’t be completely avoided (as much as I’d like it to). I’ll go out of my way to spend money wherever it removes ads (eg YouTube, podcasts, etc), but no amount of money will remove the billboards I have to drive by on the way to work. I’ll never be able to go to a sports event without advertisers bidding for my attention.

You would think at least some of those issues could be avoided by living somewhere “more expensive”, but it seems like affluent areas actually have more ads.

What measures can we possibly take?

Nb: I recently took a trip to the USA and was appalled that they play full volume video advertisements while you’re filling up with gas. At least that’s not a practice that’s caught on elsewhere.

> At least that’s not a practice that’s caught on elsewhere.

Including elsewhere in the USA.

> What measures can we possibly take?

We build technology.

The number one example is of course uBlock Origin. It shows people a better world with no strings attached. So good it should be built into browsers. It can't block ads in videos... Yet. How long until someone makes an AI video filterer that deletes ads from video streams though? Have the AI watch ads so we don't have to. Given this technology, how long until augmented reality glasses with adblocking builtin start showing up?

If I go to a gas station and there’s video at the pump, I do not go to that gas station again.

> no amount of money will remove the billboards

São Paulo got rid of billboards in 2006: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa>

Yeah. I love it. I want to see similar laws in my own city.

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

> Nb: I recently took a trip to the USA and was appalled that they play full volume video advertisements while you’re filling up with gas. At least that’s not a practice that’s caught on elsewhere.

On most of these pumps you can push the second to top button on the right side of the screen to mute the ad.

According to the guy that owns the gas station down the street from me, this gets tracked and if the owner/advertisers see that enough people are muting the ads and they're not profitable, they'll stop paying to have them play at the pumps.

> no amount of money will remove the billboards I have to drive by on the way to work. I’ll never be able to go to a sports event without advertisers bidding for my attention

I don't want to be too pedantic, but it's worth noting that having a substantial amount of money can indeed resolve this issue.

For instance, being chauffeured means you don't have to pay any attention to the road unless you choose to do so.

Moreover, ad-free services like NFL Red Zone are available, or to your point about attending a sporting event with sufficient wealth having a private box can insulate you from 99% of sports event advertising.

> You would think at least some of those issues could be avoided by living somewhere “more expensive”, but it seems like affluent areas actually have more ads.

For whatever reason there are no (or very few) billboards in Northern Virginia, so that's one option. I wish there were more places like that, it's so refreshing driving through and not being bombarded with ads fighting for my attention (which is supposed to be on the road...).

But in general I think you're right it's extremely hard to get away from. I think the main reason it's hard to "buy out" of advertising it that the very fact that you can afford to "buy out" makes you that much more valuable to advertisers.

In case you visit again or it comes up for others, you should be able to push the second button from the top on the left to mute the video.

> it seems like affluent areas actually have more ads

Are you talking about cities? Most affluent people in the US live in quiet suburbs

> I recently took a trip to the USA and was appalled that they play full volume video advertisements while you’re filling up with gas

I've lived in the US for most of my life and I've never seen anything like that. You gotta specify what part of the US you're talking about because that's a very weird thing for you to assume is common

"They don't get to insert their brands into our brains without our consent."

You consent by going to free youtube.

Big ads in cities are more difficult to avoid, but then again, someone wearing a sports shirt of his favourite soccer club is doing advertisement. Someone wearing a cross for his religion, etc.

I don't think drawing a arbitary line and saying "this is mindrape" and "this is legit" is really working.

That being said, I do want to paintball big ads and alike.

> Big ads in cities are more difficult to avoid, but then again, someone wearing a sports shirt of his favourite soccer club is doing advertisement. Someone wearing a cross for his religion, etc.

Yeah, but those give more room for consent than something like a youtube ad.

You passively see those advertisements while doing something else. When you see a television or youtube ad, your full attention is much more likely on the computer and on that ad.

"Yeah, but those give more room for consent than something like a youtube ad."

Who forces you to watch youtube?

> You consent by going to free youtube.

You consented to being touched by wearing that clothing.

Yes, but other persons do not consent to view that ad.

But my point was, that it is not so simple.

That is a very eloquent explanation, for an opinion I share and wasn't able to put so plainly!

I always get weird looks when, watching TV, I change channels during ads.

Thank you. It's an opinion I've refined over time via conversation with like-minded people here.

I don't change channels when watching TV, I mute it and pick up my phone until it ends.

It’s not as simple as the dichotomy you’ve presented. I exercise all the agency I can summon to avoid seeing ads, yet still I am presented with them and tracked so that companies can present them to me. If I had the choice I would deny them any ability to track me. So, don’t I lack some agency here? Is it my fault? And if I see an image or text I am not prepared for, my lower perceptual faculties process it before my prefrontal cortex can reason about it. Advertisers and psychologists know this, it’s why they keep doing what they do, because it works.

> On a bit of a philosophical tangent:

My PHIL101 prof is rolling in his grave right now.

"Actually, spying on people is a good thing since blocking the spying is robbing them of agency. I thought you people liked having agency?!?1"

"Have you considered that by making mugging illegal you are robbing people of the option of defending themselves?"

> If you asume agency of the user then this is a good thing, a win-win. But by treating this negatively you are asuming that the user has no agency over their actions.

Some people don't have complete and absolute agency, impulsive buying is a known issue. I bring this up because I have to constantly monitor my impulsivity due to ADHD, it creates a struggle when targeted ads bombard me with interesting stuff that I don't need but my brain tells me "but it could be useful for X".

It's exhausting, I don't want it (or at least would like to have more control over) but I can't shield myself completely from targeted ads, ad blockers on the web help a lot, and I should completely avoid popular apps with targeted ads like Instagram. I would like to see what my close friends are up to on their Instagram Stories but I simply shouldn't use it as I normally get bombarded by "interesting" ads all the time which drains me by constantly battling impulsivity.

I too have ADHD and I too find it extremely exhausting and disrespectful. I know how you feel.

>Targeted ads increase revenues because they are focused on people with a higher proabability of responding positively to the ads. If you asume agency of the user then this is a good thing, a win-win. But by treating this negatively you are asuming that the user has no agency over their actions.

That's hand-wavy and not entirely true. I have full agency and still it's easier to ignore or mentally block out an ad about cattle supplements (I don't own cattle) than it is an ad about an accounting conference (I need continuing education credits for my CPA).

Ads are interruptive by design. The more targeted an ad is, the more it slows me down in my day. That is bad for me

It's not about temptation. It's about not wanting to see ads. I don't care to know about what the ad people want to show me, and I resent being shown ads at all.

If I want a product I'll search for it. I don't want things coming to me, I want to go to them.

Hey can I have 20 bucks?

No? Ok. Would it be okay if I ask you that another 10 to 20 times today while you’re in the middle of other things?

Advertising sucks.

We're rationalizing manipulating people to extract more profit out of them.

Can we all agree this is insane or am I going insane?

I simply cannot rationalize this. It's gross.

> I simply cannot rationalize this.

Without ads, how are companies supposed to get the word out about their product?

Email seems like a worse medium. Calls / texts even worse. Blog spam / SEO content is maybe the least worst? Paid (biased) reviews?

Without ads, we'd probably see a lot more paid placements (which might not be labeled as an advertisement, similar to food companies buying prime shelf space in supermarkets unbeknownst to shoppers). More influencers pushing brands directly to audiences (another form of paid placements).

I won't argue that ads are a good thing, but they serve a role in the economy. It's not obvious to me what would happen if companies suddenly couldn't advertise anymore.

E.g. you open a new restaurant. Is it ok for a restaurant to geotarget ads to the local residents? Buy an ad in the newspaper? Or do we say "not allowed" and rely on word of mouth?

If that was what advertisement was all about, maybe we wouldn't care so much.

But in the majority of cases those advertisements are lies. Fake photos, fake reviews, fake claims, fake everything. I can't justify accepting all that lying just to "get your word out". That's not what's being done.

Paid placements are already ubiquitous.

The restaurant example is all about the small company, which already gets screwed with current marketing landscape. They put tons of money into a black box with Google/Meta Ads hoping it'll work. They say X amount of people saw your ad, most of the times you can't track any real effect from these ads, and you have to accept it. The recent issues with YouTube counting ads incorrectly is most certainly not a unique incident and we have no clue what's actually happening.

Maybe if all we had were these small local businesses advertising it could actually be useful. After all, those are not the ones collecting copious amounts of data violating everyone's privacy for the sole purpose of selling ads.

Perhaps a version of opt-in ads or trustworthy places where you can get real recommendations are the way to go. But because of ads and SEO now this was also destroyed. I find it infuriating that when you do want to buy something, you have to sift through so many garbage lists created for the sole purpose of showing ads and referrals. Ultimately you can only really trust a few experts sources for basically anything. The normal folks who fall for the "top X" list websites or the ads get screwed the same way because those are just another form of false advertisement.

I don't know if there's a perfect solution here, but it damn well isn't the one we've got.

> Perhaps a version of opt-in ads or trustworthy places where you can get real recommendations are the way to go.

Also unfortunate on the B2B side, sites like G2 and Capterra (basically yelp with B2B) have both turned into pay to play.

Then again, I’m not even sure what a realistic business model would be for a unbiased review site. (Maybe the answer is it shouldn’t have a business model at all)

The profit motive inevitably destroys these types of businesses.

There's a reason threads here on HN in the category of "what did you buy/read/do recently?" are so popular. People want reliable information that advertisement is definitely not giving us.

Thinking about it, nothing beats recommendation from a known trusted individual. Be it for a restaurant, an appliance, a car, etc.

This tells me how little advertising is about the discoverability of products/services. This creation of needs is 99.9% of the time unnecessary. It's only there because people want to sell regardless of how useless their product is.

If people need something, they will search for it.

Ads are the problem not for those who click on ads and feel excellent about it, but for those who don't and get unwanted content shoved down their throats. If the "higher probablity" from your comment is tiny, which it is, then the latter group is roughly the same as that exposed to generic (and equally unwanted) ads.

That is, profiling does very little for the vast majority users, but at a cost of massive privacy issues. Trying to look at one without considering the other is disingenuous at best.

How do I get my time back when I see an ad for something I don't want to buy? Can I get the profit from the ad when it wastes time off my life?

If not, fuck them. I'll do everything I can to block ads and poison their data on me.

What? You are seriously arguing that the illegal and consent-less selling of people's data is a win-win?

> If you asume agency of the user then this is a good thing, a win-win.

I think a relevant difference is between "intent" related ads, say keyword ads on Google: I search for a thing and get the related info. There are cases where this is okay and helps to discover things.

And the pure tracking based ads, trying to influence me to do things I didn't inherently plan to do.

I heavily dislike the life manipulation, which often enough also seems to work. (As proven by bug companies spending tons of money on ads)

Or in a different realm: I'm fine with political parties having room to share their ideas and goals and advertise for them, but if companies use targeted ads to send very specific ads to different demographics, there can't be a proper debate anymore as everybody saw something different (maybe even contradicting) and don't know where others are becoming from (see Cambridge Analytica) This is absolutely harmful for society.

I think you might appreciate this article (if you haven’t seen it already): https://meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/

The article suggests that advertising works by manipulating cultural norms, but then it would not seem to work if ads were targeted to individuals and not to the population as a whole. For instance, the cited ad (Corona beer at the beach) was in fact widely distributed without individual targeting.

Also, the fact that misinformation campaigns work suggests that misinformation is at least one possible purpose of advertising.

I'd say the article is more about non-targeted ads, but nitpicking the example doesn't really help.

An ad can target an individual about their dandruff issue which only works because previously the non-targeted ads created social stigma around it. It's all connected.

Ads are fucking evil. No amount of rationalization can get around that. The only reason we even attempt to normalize this is because we have to generate profits at all costs.

I'd argue misinformation is embedded into advertising. There's a reason "honest ads" are a meme. Aside from a few exceptions, misinformation is the entire point of the ad: buy my thing because it's the best (it isn't) and will solve all your problems (it won't) and if you don't you're a loser (you aren't).

> manipulating cultural norms.

The following strategy employed by producer fits the bill.

https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-09-netflix-algorithm-facebo...

'Norsemen' producer gamed Netflix's algorithm with Facebook ads He was pretty sure Minnesota residents would dig the Viking comedy.

I have a different opinion on behavioural tracking: in most cases and contexts human behaviour is very low entropy; each person is unique and so on but we are also quite predictable and malleable and in many situation we collapse into far fewer modalities of behaviour.

By gathering enough data it become possible to predict more and more of our individual behaviour; I believe that keeping this as hard as possible is a noble cause.

What agency does a lone sheep have against a pack of wolves? The issue is information asymmetry. The corporations have many more resources available to convince me to buy their product than I have when deciding how to spend my money.

When I'm asked for permission to "share data with a third-party" I want to know who that third-party is? Will it be the same tomorrow as it is today? What will the third-party do with the PII? If the third-party is someone I trust and would value a working with then I might agree to it. But it's just as likely to be an organization I detest. The information is out there in press releases, journals, and legal documents. But collecting, compiling, and cross-referencing isn't something that can be done on the spot when that consent prompt is displayed. How am I supposed to make an informed decision on how to answer?

Restricting what advertisers can do isn't taking agency away from me. It's giving me the support to better exercise my choice against better armed adversaries.

I don’t think anyone cares about this as an “issue”. The issue is privacy. The statement you’re quoting is their motivation to do so.

Used to feel similarly, and extrapolated this sentiment to drugs, gambling, and other vices. Quite a grim realization, but without the shaming, the banning, the control, people will allow "their agency" to take them places that only cause them and others harm. This is why law, shaming, and religion are important, because they are strong forces that protect people from "their agency", and the ills it can cause.

Who has more agency, who is more free here: a man who is a drug addict or a man who isn't a drug addict but otherwise would be without drug laws and shaming?

You may say the drug addict has more agency. You might be right, but it's not good for him or his family, and that's where law and shame come in to protect him from "ill-agency".

>This is the line of reasoning behind banning the sale of addictive substances to minors

Yes.

> Targeted ads increase revenues because they are focused on people with a higher proabability of responding positively to the ads.

I have no problem with targeted ads, in fact I prefer them. If I'm browsing a climbing subreddit, show me ads for climbing gear. If I'm searching for luggage online, show me ads for suitcases.

What I strenuously object to is sharing data outside of a specific vendor. If I'm browsing for suitcases on eaglecreek.com, Google and Facebook should never know and never be able to serve me any ads based on something I did outside of their services.

We do not have "agency" in the sense of a magic black box which makes optimal decisions regardless of the information we have, nor "no agency" in the sense that we'll immediately do anything because ads tell us to, but ads are incentivized to exploit human psychology as much as possible and being exposed to that is probably bad.

Except that it turns out that the most valuable eyes are of children with access to their parents' credit cards.

I would have a slightly better opinion of targetted ads if you could see how each ad you see was targeted.

It would scare the shit out of you ...

"You are seeing this ad on ShittySite.com because you clicked on an article about new cars on NewsSite.com 13 days ago and searched for 'Tesla' 10 days ago and subscribed to the 'Car Buyers' newsletter 8 days ago and viewed a video about used cars 7 days ago and ..."

Scary things exist, knowing them does not make them more real but allows me to react

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