[LunaSea]

A few years ago, a large publisher (Persgroep) in the Netherlands made a study comparing user preferences between two advertisement solutions, one would be a traditional personal data-based targeting solution and one privacy preserving solution (SOLID).

User ended up preferring the classic version, even when they were informed of its inner workings.

[porridgeraisin]

"publishing" They are an ad company.

"Ad company does survey confirming that people like their ads and definitely don't want an alternative"

is not the win you think it is. Are you hearing yourself?

[LunaSea]

Well I seem to be the only bringing proof and understanding into this debate.

You're free to step in at any time with actual viable alternatives, studies, etc.

May I remind you once more that the possibility to create this magical Internet world you guys live in is already there but somehow nobody builds or uses it. Maybe there is a good reason for this?

[porridgeraisin]

> Maybe there is a good reason for this?

Yes, the unethical path is easier and more importantly, faster to take. If it is not explicitly disallowed in the system, it will be taken.

[LunaSea]

I would say that it is the most popular path among readers that is the winning one in the end.

[porridgeraisin]

Again, if you let the unethical ones exist, they will win.

> Popular among users

Google is popular due to their superior search capability/really good workspace product and of course youtube is brilliant. The whole point is to try and achieve these same things while also maintaining ethics, even if it takes a century longer. Like I said in a previous thread, you wouldn't enslave people to work on Google's TPUs, would you? Even if it would help us achieve AGI in one week.

You can't say, let the users decide, when there is information asymmetry. No one using a phone today is aware of the slavery in the rare metal industry in Congo etc, as much as they are aware of the number of megapixels in their camera.

If you are really in the "let the users decide" camp, then there must be 100% information symmetry. Add to the iPhone box a detailed report of every single part of the supply chain. Add a video of the slave in the mines, not just the PPE suit in the high-tech-looking lab.

Google search should market themselves as selling your ad information to various businesses.

You can't let businesses push the positive side of their business more than the negative side, cause an information asymmetry, and then say that users should be allowed to decide.

If the negative side of the business is hidden in a T&C document, then the positive side should also be forced to be in a T&C. They should be on equal footing. This would mean effectively banning marketing. Which of the alternatives do you prefer?

Back to the point, If you disallowed intrusive/targeted ads, then purely ad supported journalism would be unsustainable, thereby forcing businesses to charge for most of their news. Copy this ditto for other industries.

Doing good things like this could also naturally facilitate other desirable things such as a simple payment system for internet services and remove other blockers needed for the system to work, which we don't have today despite all the trillion dollar tech companies. Why? They have the brightest minds, but the economic incentives need to be set exactly right. Today, those bright minds are being used to add dark patterns to user interfaces, deceive or even outright lie to users, and doing cunning things like tracking my location using their Wi-fi SSID even when I explicitly turned off location. These tracking systems didn't come out of nowhere, nor are they easy to build. They exist because the incentives let them, caused them to exist. If the incentives instead caused more ethical businesses to exist, the same human/otherwise capital would be converted to more ethical systems.

[troupo]

> May I remind you once more that the possibility to create this magical Internet world you guys live in

Ads don't require pervasive and invasive tracking

> but somehow nobody builds or uses it. Maybe there is a good reason for this?

Yes. Because unrestricted unlimited capitalism will always exploit any possible niche and avenue, and people will cheer it on until it's too late.

[LunaSea]

Oh, it is unlimited capitalism that prevents people from paying for their online newspaper subscriptions?