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This sounds a little too far in the other direction to me. From working with a handful of advertising platforms interested in the web property that I've worked with for the past 8 years, I agree with your point re: incompetence. However, I disagree that it's _only_ the big boys who are gathering large portfolios of data on individuals that span multiple web properties, apps and spheres of data. It seems to me that your data is part of the marketplace and anyone can play.

Regulations would be nice. A technological solution that fundamentally obfuscates an individual so that they can buy their groceries without being big-brothered would nicer.

>> 99% of the companies in the ad industry are NOT leading the way when it comes to tracking you... The 1% however (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook)

This representation by percentages is a bit disingenuous. Yes, numbers-wise you may be correct, but if you consider the companies' enormous resources and amount of influence and impact, Google et al make up the 90+%.

My point was that most ad tech companies are not the issue. It is the big boys which is the issue. And, that ad tech wasn't the issue. Ads using targeting data is a symptom of the problem, not the problem it self. The collecting of the data (by the 1%) is the problem.

>Google and Apple being the main offenders here, due to their cell phones.

I didn't realize Apple had a behavioral advertising division. Can you share more about Apple's tracking, maybe some links or whitepapers?

I would provide links for several of the claims you make because they just seem not true. You have a very biased perspective, of course you're going to blame the giant platforms if you work in the ad industry.

I also work for an ad tech supplier. And yes, there is lots of incompetence and inefficiencies going around. But they sure are trying anyway.

I recently saw the Minority Report targeted advertising scene[0] as an aspirational video in an internal document outlining business goals.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ

Agree with you 100% until the end:

> It is the data collectors - Google - Apple - Facebook. They are the irresponsible parties at fault.

Like you say, targeted ads (revenue generative purposes) are not the problem. They are in fact neutral-to-beneficial. It's government surveillance that is the problem.

To say that FAG are the problem is wrong. FAG are motivated by revenue, and operate in first-world (corrupt, but only economically corrupt [for our purpose]) regimes. They will absolutely protect their data from misuse. When they misstep, they get backlash and take corrective action. When the make mistakes, they actually learn from them. Not because of the slow but heavy hand of government, but because of highly reactive market pressure.

So we don't have to worry about them, they are not irresponsible. Google and Apple, eg, does not sell your data to the bad guy, not directly. They sell access to demographics that they only know and they have strong internal controls. Google is f'ing crazy the way they protect data, and I mean from internal abuse. Even in the face of GDPR, does your startup do anything to protect PII from internal abuse? No. Yes, FB has sold direct access to "you" but they have learned and will continue to learn and be subject to public/market pressure.

Who we have to worry about are the people that are not on our radar as first-world elite HN readers: governments. Snowden was revelatory that even our own [US] government is dangerous, to a degree that dwarfs anything FAG does.