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A comment on U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says. Parent comment

Re:U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison R... by JohnFen on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @07:01PM (#19324290)
> I think the discussion on privacy and ad based platforms should really be orthogonal.

Except that those two things are inseparable. The privacy problems are a direct result of the desire of the advertising industry to be able to target people based on their behavior, which necessitates spying on everyone.

If we could somehow eliminate that targeting, then we could discuss the two as separate topics.

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Re:U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison R... by tjoff on Thursday March 07, 2019 @02:22AM (#19326173)
They really aren't though. It's just that that is the stance the big players have. And the reason they have that stance might be because it is the only stance that can motivate their existence.

You can still target content rather than users.

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Re:U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison R... by JohnFen on Thursday March 07, 2019 @11:47AM (#19329552)
> You can still target content rather than users.

Indeed you can. By "inseparable", I don't mean technically inseparable, I mean that the advertising industry has decided that personally targeted ads are the only sort of value. That means that, unless there is some sort of sea change in the industry, the two things are inseparable in practice.

If I see an ad, I can safely assume that it comes with spying. I'll be right far, far more often than I'll be wrong.

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