[stephenr]

I don't care what they "can do". It's fucking creepy and I'll never accept it.

A site can just as easily say "show me ads for <page specific tags> as hard-coded "recipes", and knowing where I shop just goes into the creepy factor even more.

[tomtang0514]

Okay if I understand correctly, you just hate targeting ads with tracking not any ads right? Then instead of using ad blocker, you can opt out from cookie tracking on NAI so all participating companies of NAI (which covers almost all major players in the ad network industry) will not use your cookie.

[stephenr]

No, it isn't just privacy invasion that bothers me. Ridiculous screen-covering ads, bandwidth hogging, battery draining etc.

But forget all that - your suggestion, to avoid a tracking cookie from the various companies in what is frankly an industry with a terrible track record for doing the right thing, is to use the NAI "don't track me" "feature"... Which requires that I accept cookies from any domain and let them put a cookie on my device?

Are you aware of how stupid I would have to be, to believe that works?

[tomtang0514]

I work for one of the ad network. And I know the people in my company who implemented that specific piece of code for that specific opt-out feature. It's one of the most safety-critical feature we have so we do regression test before every single release regardless if we modified that code or not. So I'm pretty sure that opt-out feature works. Because if it doesn't, someone gonna sue us.

I find it really hard to communicate with you because before we even start this discussion you seems already tagged the entire ad industry as an "evil empire" who try to steal your personal information all the time. The ad industry is not an angle for sure. It's just a business that try to make money, like any other business. Intentionally ruin people's life is not the interest of any mature business. Believe or not, doing things that make people hate ads is the last thing the ad industry wants. Because the more everyone hate ads, the less effective those ad campaigns will be, and the less ad companies get paid. Most of the problems with ads today are not introduced in favor of anybody, it's just not as easy as you might think to find a overall better way. Do you recall how many years it has been for people to actually produce a practical substitution for gas engine since everyone realize it's messing up our planet?

In the end, I'm interest to hear your vision on how to fund high quality online contents today without the profit of targeted advertisement.

[stephenr]

> I find it really hard to communicate with you because before we even start this discussion you seems already tagged the entire ad industry as an "evil empire" who try to steal your personal information all the time.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its a fucking duck. The Ad industry doesn't try to steal peoples information all the time, they successfully create very detailed profiles on people. You yourself admitted this when claiming that "only targeted advertising is effective".

> So I'm pretty sure that opt-out feature works.

...for the ad networks who are members of NAI and who abide by its guidelines... by requiring a cookie on every device I use, and requiring that every device is set to allow third-party cookies, which further increases the chances for me to be tracked online.

Ad this point, I don't need to demonstrate the shady practices of the ad industry - they do that well enough by themselves.

I don't care if you work for an ad company, and frankly I don't care if the adoption of content blocking software causes your employer to go out of business and you to lose your job. You chose to work for that company, knowing full-well what they do.

The ad industry made choices about how it would operate its business, and is now paying the consequences. Same goes for you, as an individual.

[tomtang0514]

Through out this entire conversation I was listen to your problems with ads and explain the ones you might misunderstand. You just simply don't believe in anything positive. And after all this you are now taking it personally?