[notoverthere]

This isn't even a realistic use case of tracking. Nobody needs tracking cookies to get reminders about buying birthday cards.

Online stores can (and do) remind us about this stuff via email. No third-party tracking cookies needed – you're already a customer of theirs. If they want to get in touch, they already know your order history and contact details.

Or, you know, we can add our own reminders to a personal calendar.

[hef19898]

Now you gave me an idea: We gonna launch a start-up working on an AI-based reminder calendar app. And in order to improve the invest... ahm, user experience we gonna track them across the web to enable our AI to propose futire reminders!

[mulmen]

I don’t think the article makes the case that tracking cookies are required. It only claims that automated reminders can benefit people, which is far less controversial.

The article gives instructions on how to turn this off and concludes with the classic warning about being the product.

[acidictadpole]

It's less controversial but also not really relevant. Those kinds of reminders shouldn't be using cookies, and don't need to.

[mulmen]

The part about tracking being arguably good is a separate paragraph that is clearly written in contrast to Google’s tracking.

At no point does the article claim cookies are required for “good” automation.