[zwaps]

You probably would be well advised to read up on the economics of consumer differentiation and price discrimination.

All of today's ad-tech is set up and developed for that purpose. Whether overtly or covertly, it is the singular purpose, because the case is so clear cut: We are distributing the share of the pie between companies and consumers.

It is therefore clear why people aware of basic economics consider agressive tracking and privacy violations hostile, because they ultimately are or will be.

I am not worried about actually showing ads that are personalized in some way. But as others have pointed out, cookies are not for that. You can target based on the site's content and you are probably showing me a much more relevant ad anyway.

I am worried that every offsite ressource and every ad is used to track me across hundreds or thousands of shady services that operate under zero regulation or control, the combination of which allows market actors to determine how much of my consumer surplus they can extract in every sense, and thus actively devaluing the internet for me, in excess of what happens in the real world!

And the responses of the ad industry lobby groups pretty much prove to me what they think about choice and what they expect to get from consumers.

At this stage, it is entirely rational and ethical to consider the entire ad industry as hostile. As a group, with all side-effects, the notion of just "showing an interesting ad" simply does not exist anymore. At least for the collective industry. Any effort you took to track users, no matter how noble, will ultimately be hostile to me in the future.

[Mirioron]

>All of today's ad-tech is set up and developed for that purpose. Whether overtly or covertly, it is the singular purpose, because the case is so clear cut: We are distributing the share of the pie between companies and consumers.

That's not entirely true though. Better ad targeting increases the "size of the pie" by increasing the chances that a consumer will find something that's useful to them.

>At this stage, it is entirely rational and ethical to consider the entire ad industry as hostile.

At that point, why not consider the entire software industry as hostile? They're the ones that enable this, so clearly they are also the devil. Life is not this black and white. Ads do serve a useful purpose, to which degree cookie based ads do that, I'm unsure, but it would be very difficult to start a business without any kind of advertisement.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

>That's not entirely true though. Better ad targeting increases the "size of the pie" by increasing the chances that a consumer will find something that's useful to them.

Most ads people see are not for novel products solving problems. The ads are just fighting for brand recognition and space in peoples brains. This parasitic and wasteful industry is squandering some of the brightest minds of several generations to dare. Ad cos are also wasting untold billions of dollars suffocating development of infrastructure and industries that increase quality of life.

The house of cards needs to come down.

[jcfrei]

> [...] the combination of which allows market actors to determine how much of my consumer surplus they can extract in every sense

That would only be possible if the online stores could perfectly discriminate users based on price. Which happens to some extent (booking flights is a popular example) but is difficult to pull off and also illegal in most countries. You are not allowed to make personal discounts for each customer for example. Better and stricter legislation to prevent these kinds of personalized discounts would be pretty straightforward to implement if it were a major concern.

[zwaps]

One need not perfectly discriminate. Any discrimination eats consumer surplus.

It is a major concern. It is used in booking sites, and it will be used in other sites. We can not rely on regulation.

My point stands: User targeting is a threat and we, the users, are entirely justified in not liking it.

[dorgo]

> You are not allowed to make personal discounts for each customer for example

It is surprising. Couldn't find anything about it in a quick search. It would also make flea markets illegal, wouldn't it?

I think that some forms of price discrimination are forbidden (but still practiced). Women pay no entrace in clubs, young students pay less etc.

[jcfrei]

Here's a recent example from the EU: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2018/302/oj It addresses geo-blocking customers of online shops (and redirecting them to national versions of the shop with different prices).

[zwaps]

Price discrimination itself is not illegal (for example in the EU), it is only so if it is based on certain parameters. And this you'd need to prove in court, which makes it unlikely that regulation will solve this issue any time soon.

Beyond the legality of the issue, the point remains: Here, companies and consumers are strategically at odds.

[dorgo]

Why is price discrimination bad? It is about charging the highest price the customer is still ok with. Sure, if a merchant knows how badly you want his product he can increase the price. But, on the other hand, he will decrease the price for somebody who wouldn't pay the high price.

It's like bargaining on a fair. A method to determine a price suitable for both sides - instead of charging every customer the same price.

And it's not (only) about how much money the customer has. A rich customer can still be price sensitive and would get a low price based on price discrimination.

Also, in my opinion, ads and tracking are (mostly) orthogonal concepts. A website can track or show ads or both or do nothing. Tracking is often used for ads but not exclusively so.

[labawi]

Sometimes price discrimination may be overall good, but it easily leads to price gouging and I believe there a laws against it, for a good reason.

Should I pay 1.2x, 3x or 100x as much today, just because you know I desperately need the product/service today vs. yesterday?

What happens when I get (wrongly) classified as rich and now can't afford a normal life?

Should medication cost <som of your savings> if it is for life threatening issues? Should basic necessities cost more because my house burned down/got robbed/lost my luggage/whatever and you know I have money?

[adgasf]

The argument against that is that if sellers cannot increase prices in times of crisis they have no incentive to stockpile for such events. This leads to shortages and even higher prices on an unregulated black-market.

I'm not saying that I buy this line of reasoning, but there's the counter-argument.

[labawi]

It's not really an applicable argument here. That's a general time/availability/word situation discrimination, which I think I would be ok with, to a limited degree.

I was arguing against people based discrimination, without any meaningful relevance on availability. Again, I think reasonable and reasonably qualified discounts are ok, but not increasing prices for the same product and service.

[anoncake]

At best, price discrimination is a waste of time and resources. The buyer loses as much as the seller gains, making it a zero-sum game. But since price discrimination requires more effort than setting a single fixed price, the sum is actually negative.

Aside from that, "charging the highest price the customer is still ok with" means to eliminate the consumer surplus. Which is bad for consumers, i.e. everyone.

And aren't prices supposed to be signals? How are customers supposed to compare the costs of each good if you don't tell them? All you tell them is how much they're willing to spend.

They already know that. But you (probably) don't. If you did, congratulations: you've solved the economic calculation problem. This should raise red flags.

[thecatspaw]

> But, on the other hand, he will decrease the price for somebody who wouldn't pay the high price.

I highly doubt that they would actually decrease the price. They maybe wouldnt increase it, but unlike the bargaining on a fair, the seller can not see that the prospective buyer is really struggling to make ends meet, and sell it at a loss to help them out.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Isn't charging different prices for the exact same product online -- i.e. price testing -- illegal, at least in California?

I'm interested how this works. Car dealerships do this all the time in person. I wonder why they can do it, but websites can't.

[girvo]

They don’t normally decrease the price below what the original baseline was. Would be nice if they did, but that’s not how it appears to be used by today’s companies