Is this a serious question? Just because you want to target something doesn't mean it is ok to do it. Geez, the arrogance. You want to do X, so the rest of us have to give up our privacy? Technical feasibility is not the same thing as ethical, courteous, or just plain being respectful of other people. The whole industry seems to have done some sort of massive mob rationalization of inappropriate behavior. It's not ok.

If I am on a tech site reading about disk drive failure rates, feed me an ad about an SSD sale. If I am reading about mountain climbing, show me ads about climbing equipment. Fine. But don't start following me around the web with adds about ascenders for the rest of the afternoon. Or travel insurance. Or ... It is none of your business what I browsed half an hour earlier.

Thank goodness at least one business (Apple) has enough customer focus left to try to address some of this nonsense. All the better that it helps them against some of their competitors. That just makes them more motivated. Bully for that. At least we are still the customers rather than the products with Apple.

Couldn't agree more. I hate it when people respond to concerns with "I make money that way, how could I possibly go on otherwise" as if it somehow legitimitized their unscrupulous activity. Their profits are nobody's problem but theirs and there is absolutely nothing wrong with putting them out of business if that's what it takes to stop their abusive surveillance capitalism. If people's use of privacy-focused software and products reduces their revenue, so be it.

You got too emotional when reading my response.

I was just asking the question because I was genuinely curious whether there was technically a way to do so w/o cookie targeting. I have no interest in doing such targeting. I was interested in whether a HNer had a creative workaround.

The way you asked the question suggested you were trying to find alternative methods to track people. That implies the method of tracking (cookies) was the problem rather than the tracking itself. My response to that is tracking people isn't something that should be done to begin with. People should not want to track others. It should not be possible to track people in any way, let alone make any money from the practice.

Ok I understand. Thanks.

>You got too emotional when reading my response.

I read a dispassionate rebuttal of your point. Calling the reply "too emotional" is not an okay tactic.

“Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

And you just responded to the weaker interpretation of his argument (which is easier to criticize) when you called it "too emotional."

And you responded to the weaker interpretation of my argument. And so we are in a loop.

my orig response was an innocent, curious question while his was an impulsive rant/essay.

>You got too emotional when reading my response.

I'm not sure there is any stronger interpretation available here. You're baselessly speculating on gp's emotional state. That is the opposite of "assume good faith."

You are arguing with a straw man.

I actually agree with your point. I was just asking the question because I was genuinely curious whether there was technically a way to do so w/o cookie targeting. I have no interest in doing such targeting. I was interested in whether a HNer had a creative workaround.

> I was interested in whether a HNer had a creative workaround

There is still fingerprinting. If you take that away also then it gets trickier and fuzzier. But hey, if I can recognize you by the way how you walk then it should be even easier to do so by the way how you move the cursor or how you scroll. Or the time you usually visit my website. IP-address? Ping-times, animation delays.. And if somebody pays me good money I will find even more opportunities :-P

What if I'm a women who recently bought Chanel perfume and I want you to fuck off?

Let's translate this to brick-and-mortar:

> What if I want to target women who recently bought Chanel perfume? How would I go about doing that unless I do video surveillance and face-recognition targeting?

Suppose a woman walked into a dress shop, and the clerk said, "We find that our $LINE line of dresses over there works really well with the Chanel perfume you just bought."

Do I have to explain why 1) people think it's creepy, and 2) why people think you don't have a right to do that?

If those women gave you permission to contact them, that’s how. If someone bought Chanel, you don’t have a right to that information unless they explicitly gave you that right.

What about the retailer that sold the perfume? They'll usually auto sign up the customer to their product emails and/or adapt their landing page to customer's interests (like Amazon).

> They'll usually auto sign up the customer to their product emails

Fortunately, at least in the EU that's illegal.

Under GDPR this kind of self advertising falls under legitimate use of an email address, so if you inform the user you'll send them the emails, it's legal to do so without explicit opt-in. (AFAIK IANAL)

Get them to sign up to your mailing list and send them an email ad. Anything else should be off limits.