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Comment by bfrog | Hacker News Reader

I wish the US would get its act together on stuff like this but it’s too busy getting campaign funds from such schemes

It's not just that; the US just doesn't believe much in regulating businesses, even if they're demonstrably harming society. They really believe "The Invisible Hand" will make everything better in the end.

> the US just doesn't believe much in regulating businesses

The US has tons of strange regulations like banning car manufacturers from selling cars themselves without a middleman or dictating what kind of showerheads are allowed to be sold.

Fun fact: most showerheads can easily be modified to allow maximum water flow rates. 30 seconds and a pair of pliers is often all it takes.

The US is nothing if not inconsistent. The car-selling thing is due to state laws, not federal, and really the result of corruption: the dealerships are politically connected. The showerhead thing is due to environmentalism, so the US does sometimes make regulations with that impetus. There's no environmental aspect to banning targeted advertisements; it's purely social.

> There's no environmental aspect to banning targeted advertisements; it's purely social.

Arguably, the process of targeted advertisements consumes more power.

Look at your adblock stats. Now imagine most of these scripts probably would have loaded even more stuff if you didn't block them. Depending on the sites I visit, I have like 30% of my web traffic removed.

AdBlock is an environmental thing! And true, I don't wanna know how much these "real time bidding on ad space" things cost to operate, energy wise.

That's what a politician might say, but there is an absurd amount of regulation in most industries. What it results in is debatable.

It's worse than that: the US makes laws based on who pays them the most.

Yeah I don't think there is much hope there so long as corporations are donors to political campaigns (Something that still looks weird when I type it, but presumably doesn't sound strange to a US person).

Sadly, it’s not exclusive to the US. In Brussels we might jokingly dismiss the lobbyists and their think tanks, but they fund politicians just the same; but admittedly via non-profits and other more intricate schemes. I’m very proud of some EU accomplishments, but we’re mired in lobbying too.

Has nothing to do with campaign contributions. The government likes it that the data exists, because if it does, that means they can access it.

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