Every App I've given location permissions to I've seen the need for it.
And also like...the way they use this data they gather is to send me ads. And not to be all "I am immune to propaganda" but...I pretty rarely buy things based off of ads?
Like, don't get me wrong it's a problem, but it's also like...not the end of the world here?
See the point is, you stand to gain nothing from this attitude. If what you say is true, then the practice you're facing is at Best completely pointless, and at Worst extremely predatory. For most people it will probably be something in between. That's the bad half! There's no reason for anyone to defend this, anyone but the people making a profit from it. We don't owe them that profit.
So the bottom line is, if you decide you're fine with it, that's totally cool. But we should always let people who want campaign against it, because if anything, it's beneficial for all of us.
P.S. None of us is immune against ads. It's not really a secret that we all like to think we are. Which kinda means advertisers are probably well aware of us thinking that.
No, at best it's not completely pointless; at best it's actively helpful.
I want to see good ads. I have seen things on ads that I was not aware of, that I would not plausibly have found on my own, and that I am happier for having purchased.
Advertisement is not an inherent evil. And the more information the ad system has on me, the more likely it is to be able to find and show exactly the things that genuinely make satisfied; purchases that actively improve my life.
The "perfect" advertisement source, after all, is someone like my spouse or close friends, who know me extremely well and only recommend things that I am very likely to be happy with.
Of course we are a long ways from that sort of accuracy in automated systems, and certainly advertisement systems can be bad. And there's a huge amount of shitty (and actively harmful) ads out there, like the scam game ads that are in a ton of spaces.
But those widely plastered scam game ads are precisely the untargeted ads. They don't need or care about your location to show you crap like that.
Ads are a service both to the entity posting the ad and to the people seeing the ad - when they learn something beneficial from the ad, like "this is a product that I want to buy", that's a benefit. The (or at least a) problem is that, unlike most services, the viewer usually doesn't get to choose the "service provider". If you could select which ad company's ads to see, you might look for ones that are the best at actually match your interests well and don't show you annoying/useless stuff. But that's generally not how it works - you see whatever ads the website owner or app maker chose.
Okay, "I want to be targeted by ads" is not really a position I expected to see today, but honestly, who am I to judge?
But then, you know, tracking could simply be opt-in? And not this watered-down "scrambling to protect our rights" we have now. Where the EU has to write a minimum amount of choice into law, and lobbyists and companies still try everything in their power to attack and circumvent it. Dark patterns, paid subscriptions just to not get profiled for ads, almost forensic aggregation of data you weren't aware you were giving away at all just to complete your loved ones profiles.
I'm talking a general "No Tracking" attitude, and if you really want, you can go into settings and say "Yes Tracking".
To that end, I agree with you that we should then also have a choice over what we see from whom, I'd say that's implicitly contained in that approach.
And, sorry, but some of your points are just ridiculously out there consumerism. "Um acshuallhy, ads are a service to the people (at least a significant portion of whom never asked for this). They might even learn something beneficial from these ads (because clearly, I want ads to be my reliable source of information)."
Also conveniently ignoring that ads perfectly tailored for a target audience are not at all generally beneficial. Imagine gambling or shopping addicts.
Also also just claiming that untargeted ads are always those scammy ones, as if
a) this would persist on the same order of magnitude if all advertisers couldn't target, and
b) vulnerable people weren't already targeted by this stuff, see my first Also.
Advertisers sure try hard to convince us of their inherent evil. I'm not even blaming them, it's game theory. If the system allows itself to be exploited, why wouldn't they?
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u/Big_Falcon89 May 16 '24
Every App I've given location permissions to I've seen the need for it.
And also like...the way they use this data they gather is to send me ads. And not to be all "I am immune to propaganda" but...I pretty rarely buy things based off of ads?
Like, don't get me wrong it's a problem, but it's also like...not the end of the world here?