I know it is a popular opinion, but I never understood it... why would you rather have non-personalized ads than personalized ads?

Because I know personal ads were made possible by obtaining private information about me, whereas non-personalized ads likely weren’t. I’m not going to interact with either of them so I prefer the ones without privacy cost.

They're creepy as fuck. Same reason someone might not like being followed around everywhere, even if the person following them just writes down stuff about them but never does anything else. Spying ads are like that, but worse: it's like that person also occasionally runs in front of you to slap an ad-bearing sticker on some surface you're about to encounter, based on stuff they've written down.

Spyvertising is that, but at an industrial scale. If one's creepy and ought to warrant intervention by law enforcement, the other's much, much worse.

I am deeply annoyed by ads with bad context fit. When I read about something I don't want my attention to be hijacked to other topics.

E.g. when I look at code I don't want ads for photography equipment, but ads for coding courses or books may be juuust acceptable. It also has the nice benefit of not needing personalization, so the sibling comments' points are also included.

I don't trust whatever company is holding their informational profile of me to hold it securely. Or what the extent of the information they've gathered can indicate, no one is going to stop at "just enough"

Honest question, why do you care if it isn't secure? What would be the downside of one's internet activity being public?

> What would be the downside of one's internet activity being public?

Are you for real?

Want to know what your employer has you working on? Let's see what searches you've done.

Want to know what your employees are doing? Let's see what things they're buying.

Fuck that obnoxious bullshit.

Yes I am for real and I genuinely don't see why either of those things are bad.

Well your employer probably doesn't want you to leak work to competitors.

You probably don't want your employer to know that you have cancer, are hiding a fling, and could soon have family problems requiring you to take a leave of absence.

Personally I'm not convinced by those arguments, because

- I think it should be my right to share the details of my work with anyone.

- It's already illegal to discriminate against people because they have cancer, and I don't think that imperfect enforcement of privacy on the internet is going to significantly affect anyone's chances of this happening to them.

- If someone does something and faces consequences for it, I don't think that's a bad thing.

Honestly seeing people's responses here and elsewhere on the internet is kind of a Kafkaesque experience for me because everyone seems so convinced that internet privacy is valuable yet no one seems to actually have thought through their position (no offense to you personally). I guess I can only conclude that my base values differ in this area.

> I think it should be my right to share the details of my work with anyone.

I agree! So why are you letting third parties get that information without you having any ability to provide or decline consent?

> It's already illegal to discriminate against people because they have cancer, and I don't think that imperfect enforcement of privacy on the internet is going to significantly affect anyone's chances of this happening to them.

You think people don't do things that are illegal?

> no one seems to actually have thought through their position

Can you explain that better?

> I guess I can only conclude that my base values differ in this area.

I think that much is clear.

- your work is not yours if done for others. It is theirs. You get the paycheck in return.

- it is also illegal to steal from homes. Do you lock your front door?

When you search for information on a medical issue for a friend and your life insurance premiums go up.

That’s hypothetical but big publishers already make financial calculations about your profile based on your page visits. So the rest is extrapolation.

We have no control over the correctness of information and no way to correct it.