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by picardythird 1751 days ago
I don’t understand what you’re attempting to achieve with this. You’re weirdly abstracting about something that doesn’t need to be. People want to be able to have a private email correspondence about, for instance, dildos, and then not have to be served dildo ads outside of that context.
1 comments

> I don’t understand what you’re attempting to achieve with this.

I was hoping to achieve a "yes" or "no", to at least one of the two questions. I don't know what GP thinks "scan" means when describing how a computer processes text, and was hoping that an analogy to a more natural concept would allow for that to be made clear. What's the actual action being taken that's the violation? It's clearly not simply being able to read the message, but is it "thinking" about it (for lack of a better word)? That's how I interpreted the initial comment, but it seems very reactionary, so I wanted to make sure I understood it.

> People want to be able to have a private email correspondence about, for instance, dildos, and then not have to be served dildo ads outside of that context.

Totally fair, but that's no longer about privacy (unless your concern is someone else watching your monitor over your shoulder, in which case that person is the one breaking your privacy).

So if I tell a friend a secret, and they plaster it on my wallpaper, and then I have a different friend over for dinner, my different friend is the one violating my privacy?
In that case no-one has violated your privacy - your wallpaper is private, so friend A didn't, and you invited friend B over, so they definitely didn't.

I would entertain the idea that friend A is being a bit of a douchebag by painting stuff all over your house without you asking them to, but if you subscribe to that thought process you'd already be running an ad-blocker and this scenario wouldn't ever occur in the first place.

Having to use an ad-blocker for this purpose is a band-aid for a much deeper problem. Running a website isn't free and I want to support them by not blocking their ads. But when the ads are part of a scheme that targets my private and personal information, I'm no longer willing to hold up my end of that contract.