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Comment by yjftsjthsd-h | Hacker News Reader

Why would an ad company ever use this instead of tracking users? Even if it exceeded <5% of users (or whatever Firefox has these days), why not just keep tracking and add this one more data point? It's a little like how "if you aren't paying, you're the product" turned into "if you pay, you're still the product".

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Well of course it would have to go beyond Firefox to be effective. But if PPA can show that advertising can function without surveillance, then the business case for surveillance-based advertising goes away. This would make it easier for governments and browsers to more aggressively limit surveillance. Those who continue to use surveillance instead of or in combination with PPA would be seen as bad actors.

> Those who continue to use surveillance instead of or in combination with PPA would be seen as bad actors.

The current ad industry can hardly be seen as worse actors than they already are. Yet it doesn't seem to deter them in any way.

> But if PPA can show that advertising can function without surveillance

It cannot show that advertising can function without surveillance because PPA is surveillance (with privacy enhancements built in).

If it succeeds, it means that surveillance will be even further baked into things.

This.

I never read any discussion about the obvious question: Who guarantees that enabling Privacy-Preserving Ad Measurement will keep all the other tracking away from me? No one! I've never read anything at all about the thought process behind this.

As you said, with current (EU) law and regulations, it's just one more data point.

So it's worth nothing.

Because it's easier and because it makes it impossible to make a case for any other kind of tracking under laws like GDPR once this exists.

People running ads in paper and public signs should just sue advertisers for anti-competitive tracking technologies as they have no way to compete against that.

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