Also this is 54% of people who saw the prompt. The standard practice for this sort of prompt in products that are trying to _optimise_ acceptance is to pre-ask the user first, almost "If we asked you if we can track you, would you be likely to accept". So that's 54% of users who are probably ok with the idea of personalised ads or however the app pitched it, then go on to say "actually no".

Essentially this number is far lower than the total population.

Facebook does pre ask.

Everyone does, because a) you get to control the messaging to the user, and b) once they've declined the OS prompt, you can never re-do in your app, whereas if they decline your own prompt, you can ask them again whenever you like, like when you know they've just had a positive experience.

Couple of possible factors (with speculation)

— Most apps nudge you to accept tracking before the dialog comes up. Probably influences some users - A lot of people probably don’t even read the dialog properly. - a lot of people who have apps like facebook installed are either unaware of the tracking stuff or don’t care

This. I saw many non-tech savvy people just blindly hitting OKs to whatever dialogs shown on their phones.

I believe that most people live relatively uneventful lives, and truly believe that they have nothing to hide from anyone, and resultantly do not value their own privacy whatsoever. The loss of privacy from surveillance capitalism does not bother them at all, and practically it is all upside, because they lost nothing of value to themselves.

It does not enter their minds that mass abandonment of privacy means that it renders privacy harder and harder, or even impossible, for the tiny minority of society that needs it to operate: human rights advocates, investigative journalists, labor organizers, political upstarts, et c.

On the contrary, they do realize that loss of privacy makes life harder for "troublemakers", and they see that as a benefit. Don't make the mistake of assuming that everyone shares your moral code.

The best comeback I've heard to that sentiment is, "would you like a camera in your bathroom?". And then the other night I was talking to my aunt and she mentioned that she has an Alexa in the bathroom so she can listen to music and I realized it might not be as good a retort as I thought.

A better retort might be: "Do you want your health insurance premiums to be set based on which recipes you Google?" This one has the advantage of having a material impact and being almost-real[1].

[1] https://www.coverage.com/insurance/status-update-your-social...

I agree to an extent, but I think you're grossly oversimplifying the way that the average non-technical user views their privacy online. It's true that many people don't really care about advertisers tracking them, but they do care about other privacy-related aspects of their digital experience such as having their location tracked or the content of their communications monitored. As evidence of the latter, I present the enduring popularity of Signal and the fact that WhatsApp thought E2EE was an important enough feature to roll out across their entire user base.

The small minority of society that needs privacy (we should be honest and say that it includes some really nasty criminals as well as the good guys) really needs that kind of privacy, the kind that the average user is at least somewhat interested in. Ad-tracking isn't a huge concern to your average union organizer.

Occams Razor: very few ppl actually care and just press a random choice so they can move forward and use the app.

Unpopular opinion on HN, but I’m 100% OK with being tracked because it means:

1. I get to use products and services I like without paying money from my wallet. I have plenty of data to share that’s effectively worthless to me.

2. I get exposed to new products and services (through ads) that I’d like to buy. I like buying things!

You want companies to use your personal information to manipulate you into buying products you don’t need?

Manipulate is a big word...

If you're on Netflix, obviously you'll want at least some of the suggested content to be relevant to you. If you love basketball, of course you'd want to be reminded of The Last Dance documentary. The same goes for any other decision in the marketplace, you want relevant products to be presented to you. And that requires information about you.

Of course there's a limit to this. I'd always want at least some content to be atypical, to let me get exposure to things outside my bubble. But it doesn't change the notion that I mostly want content relevant to me.

Now if you ask me: do you want to see ads? I'd say no, most of the time. Because I don't enjoy being distracted by people trying to sell me things when I'm doing something else, e.g. checking my friends' summer pictures.

But if you're showing me ads anyway, making them more relevant is a net benefit than to be spammed with garbage. And if that runs much of the web otherwise for free, that's great, too.

Everything but food, clothing, and a place to live are things we don't need. There are countless additional luxuries that make life more convenient or enjoyable. I found out about Instant Pots from ads, and when I finally decided to check it out and found it interesting I bought one. It has significantly improved my after-work quality of life multiple times a month with large reductions in food prep time.

I found out about glowforge the same way and added a very useful & revenue generating tool to a small side-business I run.

So I don't mind a little bit of targeted ads. I don't regard them as inherently bad. I do however believe that each individual should have complete control over the process as it relates to their own personal data.

I totally agree. But I don’t think Facebook (or anyone else to my knowledge) gives the user proper control over their data. My fear is that by feeding them this information, they’ll be able to gradually manipulate me in ways I otherwise never would have been interested in. For example I noticed that YouTube gradually started pushing me conservative leaning self improvement videos a la Jordan Peterson and co. I have never knowingly watched that type of video, and now I’m getting “alpha male” ads for supplements and courses.

Yes! I don't earn money to watch it sit in the bank. If there's something fun out there that I might like to buy, show it to me!

This mindset is so weird to me. I can't imagine just wanting to buy things for the sake of buying things. I generally only buy things because I have problems I recognize and want to solve. And the more heavily advertised a solution to one of my problems is, the more I inherently distrust it to actually be a quality lasting product/service instead of something that's just desperately trying to program me that it's actually good.

I go back and forth.

I like to buy things myself, but I generally have a purpose of some sort, or having used similar things, am targeting a very robust thing that I can camp on and use for a decade or two.

A good friend is always buying products, trying them out, gadgets and such. And they spend a lot, but they are always super happy with their new things and frankly, give me a lot of their older things so they can get more new things!

(that's crazy, but they do them, and we are great friends, and I make good use of the stuff falling my way too)

That said, I generally don't gauge off the AD campaigns. Big spends are a rational choice as are modest ones and or guerilla type campaigns, which the latent rebel in me is a sucker for.

What I can say, knowing someone like that, is they are entertained by new things. I'm sometimes that way, but it's rare. Like a great watch might do that, or some cool tech thing I can use with my hobby computing / making. But, my entertainment is more centered on doing stuff, and or hanging with people, maybe doing things with them.

I do hate getting a thing that sucks. Shuts me down for quite a while.

I LOVE a good score, like a thing that is just awesome and I know it will perform for ages.

I'm doing the same as paulcole. If I already want to buy things, like a new table for my living room or new tiles for my bathroom, then I do want to see what's on the market beyond my bubble. That's not because I'm manipulated into buying them[1]. If I see a new ad and I like it, I do check if I can get same product for a cheaper price from a company who's ad budget is not baked into the price.

Basically I can use targeted ads as a free product discovery engine. Seeing an ad doesn't mean I'm going to mindlessly buy it. I know some people do that, but there's a way to make use of the situation.

[1] there might be an evil conspiracy among kitchen table manufacturing companies who teamed up with Hollywood producers to sell me the idea that I want a loft style new kitchen table :)

When I die, I can’t take my money with me. Gotta do something with it.

You can't take anything else, either. Not your toys, not your memories.

I guess im talking about something else. You’re talking about being shown ads that are related to your interests which is fine with me.

I’m talking about Facebook radicalizing people and manipulating their viewpoints and selling them on things they otherwise would have never wanted in a million years if they hadn’t used Facebook.

I’m not talking “Facebook showed me a cool pen and I like to collect fountain pens so I bought it”, no issues there. I’m talking “Facebook radicalized and manipulated me and now I am buying extremist books and courses that I otherwise never would have”.

The latter is why I disable targeted ads. Because it just an order of magnitude beyond “showing me relevant products”

If you can be manipulated by ads to be a terrorist I guess you have greater problems than tracking. In this case I'd say it's better for the public if these people are keep getting tracked.

It's not about him. Society at large has a problem if any people at all are able to be manipulated like this. And clearly, some are.

Not sure where you grabbed terrorism from…

"radicalizing people and manipulating their viewpoints"

it doesn't matter though

how do you know what they need or what ads they seeing?