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Comment by bcrosby95 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, by now everyone knows they are being "secretly" tracked since it's been in the news for the last decade.

And yet privacy isn't a strong selling point for most people. It sounds like they have spoken and they don't give a damn about it.

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I see it as the opposite... the ad industry are specifically worried here that people are going to be given the choice, and they believe that the peoples' choice won't be good for them.

In your bubble, people may be very aware of this but most people do not follow tech news very closely. There’s also a big gap in understanding what this means: I would bet that far more people know that Google or Facebook track everything you do on their sites than appreciate all of the tracking across the web, bulk credit card or email mining, and the many forms of smartphone-based tracking.

Finally, if the apologists are right and most people really don’t care, this wouldn’t be an issue because people wouldn’t opt out when given the chance.

If people don't care about being tracked, then why would the ad industry be concerned about people having the option to stop tracking?

It sounds like that, but I don't think it's really true. I think that only means that with the previous tradeoffs available, they chose to keep being tracked. No reason not to try something new and maybe they'll choose something different.

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