...how do you believe Google ad targeting works?
Not by selling downstream clients access to my browsing data. Like, seriously: who do I call at Google and how much do I have to pay to get your browsing data? They don't sell that.
It's fair to allege all kinds of externalities and privacy impacts and such around the advertiser-driven content economy. And HN is 100% here for that.
But this is stepping across the line into a simple lie. They don't sell data.
This is a distinction without a difference to me and many others. I'm sure the adtech industry like to believe it because it lets them cope that they're the good guys, unlike those sneaky data brokers.
As a deliberately hyperbolic example: "We're not selling child slaves, we only offer a marketplace where clients can bid for the use of the labor of our child slaves."
The problem is the intrusive violation of privacy involved in building giant databases of personal information on every person on earth, not that someone-other-than-Google is doing it.
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