Hacker News Reader

Am I the only person who prefers well-targeted ads? If I see a targeted ad for a power supply IC on a random website, sometimes that's interesting and useful. On the other hand, Twitter is terrible at targeting and the ads are just annoying. Half are ads for random "as-seen-on-TV" quality products and the other half inexplicably think I am an oncologist.

View on HN

I suppose there is nothing against well-targeted ads as long as the user has consented to having their data being used for targeted-advertising purposes.

The current landscape, however, does not prioritize user-privacy and serves ads to unsuspecting users who do not always know the terms they agreed to.

Moving away from the present opt-out to an opt-in model would give the user a say in how they would like to be tracked across the web. This is also what Apple is trying to do with its "nutritional-info" (not fanboying Apple here) labels. A user is free to consume the content they would like, but they have a right to know how their data is being used.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com