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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

There's an inherent conflict. No one _wants_ to be tracked, there is no direct benefit to being tracked and only downsides. And advertisers want to track you. So there was no way to respect the flag other than making it obscure so only a few dedicated people turned it on.

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> No one _wants_ to be tracked

Plenty of people seem to genuinely believe that “personalized ads” are good for them.

They are told to believe that.

and yet if they had question prompted to them even most of them would click "no"

No, they don’t. They will click whichever option gets the modal out of the way.

No-one is too absolute, but could ne used as a rough rule of thumb.

Depending on the study, 0.16% to 7% want to get tracked.

https://noyb.eu/sites/default/files/2025-07/Pay_or_Okay_Repo...

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

I think getting ads that are relevant to me is better than compete nonsense. BUT, I also don’t want to give advertisers any information to do it. (Maybe A.S.L. is ok to share?)

Yes. I know my two thoughts are in conflict, for the advertisers. Too bad for them. Figure it out.

In other words, advertisers wrangled out of something that could help people because they claimed it wasn't the true intent of people?

Advertisers are the scum of the Earth, as someone with ADHD who doesn't ever consent to my attention being stolen in that way. I really don't care what their opinion is, since they're intruding into my headspace without permission

To play devils advocate there is a direct benefit to being tracked, at least theoretically search and ads will more relevant to you. I get no one wants ads but you do see ads here and there. It would arguably be better for you if everyone of them was relevant than not. Similarly search or even LLM answers could be better if the preferences of the asker are known

No, in not making excuses for tracking and I do lots of stuff myself of avoid being tracked

I’m only responding to the false premise that there are no benefits. There are. You can just choose to believe they aren’t worth the cost. I believe they aren’t but I have friends who opt into all tracking and even register their presence with multiple apps. They believe they’ll make more positive connections

> theoretically > they believe

Exactly. From my experience: the times I've found an ad relevant and worth clicking is about one-to-a-gazillion. Maybe relevance is higher for others but that still doesn't necessarily translate to real value. (ie. your life was improved in any way)

Also, this all presumes the targeting actually works and the current sea ads for shoes I just bought disagree with that. It's all just spam.

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