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Comment by mdoms | Hacker News Reader

> But it’s also worth stepping up another level again, and asking what advertisers are trying to do, anyway. People say ‘privacy’ so often that one can lose sight of the fact that advertisers don’t care who you are - they just want to show ads to people that might be interested in them, and not to show ads to people who won’t be interested. They don’t want to ‘violate your privacy’ - they want to show diaper ads to parents, car ads to people who want a car and watch ads to rich people.

This guy says this like advertisers have an inalienable right to show ads to people. Get the heck out of here.

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No - it's pointing out what advertising is trying to do, which is not necessarily about privacy at all. Meanwhile, it's apparently also worth pointing out that advertiser do not show anyone ads. Newspapers do. The media you enjoy and value shows you ads, and is paid for by them.

Advertisers also want to actually get that private data, so they can refine their targeting.

And then of course there is the problem of leakage (Cambridge Analytica et al).

So it's not quite so benign as you suggest. Every marketer I've ever met has a voracious desire for any/all data about anyone they might consider marketing to.

I have long discovered HN isn't the place for discussions about Ads, Retail, Supply Chain and Business Model. Which is strange because every single one of them are important to Startup.

There is the angle of Apple's hypocrisy in terms of Ads and Data Collection, which is of course out of scope of this article. All while they are expanding their own Ad network [1].

And just want to say Thank You, for your newsletter and blog post.

[1] https://twitter.com/eric_seufert/status/1399833956082761728?...

Edit: You may be interested in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27344667

I mean, they have a right to _try_. Publishers can put (basically) anything they want on their channels, and take money from (basically) anyone to promote their content. Whether that's a winning strategy for publisher or advertiser is down to consumer choices.

Hopefully the worst offenders here (Samsung Smart TV ads?) are rightfully punished by their users here.

Their complaining is music to my ears (or whatever the analogue is for eyes in this case).

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