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Re:The 'Fuck You' Pattern by XorNot on Monday June 28, 2021 @08:54PM (#27670337)
My recent Amazon experience when I bought a stereo audio mixer: "Here, look at 50 other stereo audio mixers even though we know you already bought one! And also have data showing you viewed all of these and didn't buy them!"

On some level the way company's advertise is basically an argument against them having my data being a threat, because they can't manage to come up with anything better then that, in a product space where there's a whole massive ecosystem of technology which might be useful to me.

And thats...really just me complaining about the ads not targeting well. Like, I am quite interested in knowing if my nascent desktop audio management could be better! I don't know what's out there, and I've given you a price range estimate through how long I searched before spending!

Re:The 'Fuck You' Pattern by Wowfunhappy on Monday June 28, 2021 @09:06PM (#27670435)
But see, they're still putting you in a box! Now you will be more likely to encounter stereo mixers than other types of products. Sure, it's obvious and on a small scale, but when every website is doing it, what's the cumulative affect?

Choice is good. I've certainly groaned at my share of ads on traditional television, and so I can understand why someone might find targeted ads preferable. I just don't share that desire!

Amazon in particular irks me because they don't give you a choice, no matter how deep you dig into settings! You can turn off browsing history, but it's stored in a cookie per-device and also seems to randomly come back on sometimes. Even then, they'll still use your purchase history for recommendations. I used to manually go through and mark everything I bought as a gift, and this worked for a while—but then Amazon apparently decided I'd given to many gifts and started ignoring the signal.