Targeted Ads Privacy Debate

The cluster debates the trade-offs between personalized, targeted advertising—which many see as more relevant—and the privacy invasions from user tracking and data collection, with strong preferences for non-targeted or contextual ads to avoid surveillance.

📉 Falling 0.3x Politics & Society
5,002
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#2885
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Activity Over Time

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Keywords

FB HN IG OK DDG I.e POI ads targeted advertising targeted ads personalized ad privacy tracked tracking ads don

Sample Comments

cupofcoffee Feb 1, 2021 View on HN

What's wrong with showing personalized ads?

dkarras Nov 15, 2024 View on HN

Someone might think: surely seeing ads targeted for them instead of random ads must be useful / beneficial for the user!

PH95VuimJjqBqy Oct 16, 2023 View on HN

people don't want to be spied on, if they have to suffer ads they'd rather suffer generic ads than be spied on.

tantalor Apr 23, 2025 View on HN

It's not the ads you are consenting to, its the personal data collection and targeting.You could have non-personalized, or contextual ads. But those are much less effective.

nemomarx Apr 5, 2025 View on HN

ads targeted to me are more likely to convince me to spend money - so it's in my interest to make sure ads know less about me so I make less impulse purchases?

JohnFen Jun 25, 2024 View on HN

Targeted ads require the collection of personal data that I don't want to be collected. Untargeted ads don't.

thendrill Apr 8, 2021 View on HN

As long as you don't frame it as data gathering for targeted ads.

amelius Sep 8, 2023 View on HN

That's a huge assumption on your end, that people like the results of ads more than they do not want to be tracked.

greiskul May 27, 2019 View on HN

What for? What is your threat model? Getting ads for things you are actually interested in?

pyrocat Mar 28, 2014 View on HN

So your complaint is that the ads don't know more about you?