I do not know you, so I won’t presume (certainly not on HackerNews, the least representative sample of the Internet) but I have seen many experiments proving that most people who think they don’t like targetted ads actually prefer them -- until they make a very informed but very wrong guess. Typical examples include:
- advertising for something shameful (underwear and dildo are my go-to examples) or that you otherwise want be kept secret (engagement rings);
- repeat ads for specific and unusual big-ticket items. I have told friends working at Amazon that no one I know ever started a vacuum cleaner collection, but they only response is “You would be surprised…” to which I can only assume the world is either weirder than I thought, or their analytics function has missed something.
What you (and most people) probably would prefer is the ability to edit what the ad engine knows or assumes about you: gone are dildos, rings and vacuum cleaners; come books about programming patterns!
I keep telling anyone close to any of those recommendation engines to allow me to do that, but they mumble things about design, feasibility and hacking that genuinely don’t add up to me.
- advertising for something shameful (underwear and dildo are my go-to examples) or that you otherwise want be kept secret (engagement rings);
- repeat ads for specific and unusual big-ticket items. I have told friends working at Amazon that no one I know ever started a vacuum cleaner collection, but they only response is “You would be surprised…” to which I can only assume the world is either weirder than I thought, or their analytics function has missed something.
What you (and most people) probably would prefer is the ability to edit what the ad engine knows or assumes about you: gone are dildos, rings and vacuum cleaners; come books about programming patterns!
I keep telling anyone close to any of those recommendation engines to allow me to do that, but they mumble things about design, feasibility and hacking that genuinely don’t add up to me.