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Comment by justinpaulson | Hacker News Reader

"AdNauseam serves as a means of amplifying users' discontent with advertising networks that disregard privacy and facilitate bulk surveillance agendas."

Is it really a privacy issue to track what ads you click and use that information to target advertisements to you later?

I never understand the outrage against targeted ads. You are going to get ads no matter what. That is how "free" content works. Would you rather the ads be catered to your interest and show things you that you might actually like an not know about, or would you rather have the ads be random things that you may have no interest in at all. Either way, you are getting ads. The ad companies are using this information to rob your house when you are away on vacation, or to reveal your embarassing secrets on social media, they are using this information to target ads to you and show you things that might actually interest you.

Why the anger over this?

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>Is it really a privacy issue to track what ads you click and use that information to target advertisements to you later?

I found it hard to reply to this and I think its because you framed the question in a strange way. Targeted advertisement is not only based on what ads you click, but also the sites you visit and the stuff you view on them. If targeted advertising only worked based on what you'd click I wouldn't have a problem with it since I never click ads and it would be that easy to opt-out of it.

Targeted advertising itself is a whole other thing. In order for it to work, they need to gather data about you and this doesn't always happen in obvious ways (e.g. clicking on an ad) and that means you can't always opt-out of it, which makes it a breach of privacy in my book.

So what? If they are using that information to cater ads to you, what is the problem? What are they using this information for other than targeting ads?

It doesn't matter, it's a breach of my privacy regardless of what they use it for.

Well I think giving out information to a company over the internet isn't really privacy. They aren't collecting any information that you aren't freely giving up. So I think the debate is really skewing what the term "privacy" means. No one is breaking into your computer and finding out what is in your private files, they are just collecting data you are openly giving out. Your public record.

>>They aren't collecting any information that you aren't freely giving up

They don't present a choice. Most non-tech people don't have a clue they're being recorded. Especially not that they're being recorded in great detail across multiple sites so that advertisers and marketers (many of whom have exceedingly questionable ethics anyway) can target them better.

It may be semi-public, but its also done secretively and without permission. If someone followed you out of your house and took a note of every shop window you looked at, every book you picked up, everything you did, would you be happy?

There is some expectation of privacy even in public spaces. The balance has not yet been struck properly with the net yet. For now the technology is just making it easier to violate.

i) I see an unfamiliar term. I search for it. For the next X weeks I am showered with stupid useless adverts for something that I have zero interest in.

ii) I am[1] a person with alcoholism / gambling addict / person with anorexia / etc. This informs my search habits. Showing alcohol ads is immoral anyway, but showing those ads to a person with alcoholism is sub-optimal for many reasons.

iii) I like gory movies. My 5 year old son enjoys watching some YouTube clips. There's no mechanism to prevent fucking YouTube from showing me ads for gruesome videos even when the clip I'm watching is some child's show.

iv) I am ad-tolerant. But ads just fucking suck and targeted ads suck about the same as random ads. They don't push what I'm interested in, they push what the ad-buyer wants me to be interested in. When I search for "metal detector" I'm not shown ads telling me how to chose a metal detector or why detectors differ. I'm shown ads from metal detector sellers who are peddling some kit of unknown quality at me.

[1] I'm not, but imagine a person that is.

I can see the argument for ii. But the ads could just as easily be for rehabilitation clinics.

For i, a single data point is not creating all of your targetted ads. And so what if it is, it is still closer to what you might be interested in than completely random ads.

iii. Is your own problem for sharing devices and accounts with a 5 year old when you use it for "adult" things.

iv. Sure, ads suck, but that metal detector ad is at least close to something you might be interested in. What if you searched for metal detector and got ads for high heeled shoes and candy bars?? How is the metal detector ad not better?

You have made some good arguments though, and I think ii. really makes the most sense. I wouldn't be surprised if that very thing is happening.

> it is still closer to what you might be interested in than completely random ads.

This is projection; "interest" is not the only criteria add are judged by. For instance, I immediately killfile anything animated on a page; something moving next to what I am trying to read often makes the reading impossible. Even though "interesting" ads may be somewhat popular preference, when humans are involved the variance is going to be large.

> Is your own problem for sharing devices and accounts with a 5 year old when you use it for "adult" things.

You are assuming more than one device even exists. Regardless, in the real world there idea that there is any kind of clean separation between devices and accounts is patently false.

The basic idea that it is even possible to predict interest from record of which ads were clicked on or what queries are searched for is very presumptuous, but it the larger problem is "data mining", especially in the long term as the data accumulates. I recommend this[1] very interesting article published couple years ago, about some of the data mining that Target has been doing for at least a decade.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...

Anything that actually interests me I will research for myself. I'm not going to click your ad and swallow your marketing blurb and then buy yours. I know that you're the last person that is going to give me anything close to honest information about how your product or service stacks up to the competition.

So no, targeted ads are no different to random ones - spin, misinformation, occasionally outright lies.

"Is it really a privacy issue to track what ads you click and use that information to target advertisements to you later?"

Ad networks track quite a bit more information than just what ads you click.

There is already a lot of fraud on ad networks. This probably won't affect the raw amount that much. The main effect will be to make it easier for existing fraud to hide.

The problem is that out of these three choices:

* highly intermediated advertising ("adtech")

* user privacy

* fraud control

...we can only have two.

http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/adtech-fraud/

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