@mnot very "are we the baddies" vibes. At least somebody is starting to get it.

Save the evils of psychological manipulation in search of profit (aka advertising) for a future level of soul searching but this is at least the right track.

@azonenberg @mnot Read this in the intro: "And if we’re being honest, the precision targeting story was oversold anyway."

This reads a lot like: "Now that it doesn't make money, we should also admit it's an ethical liability"

It's a good first step! Maybe they'll end up concluding that "respecting privacy is actually good for business" - I'm sure the business case is there, if they weren't so intend on developing the opposite case.

@benjaoming @azonenberg @mnot IME they were never particularly good at actually precisely targeting the ads. At best I'd get the same "demographic" targeting that TV would provide. Cars, fast food, movies etc

The only time I actually saw ads that genuinely interested me was from a service that delivered ads based on the content they existed alongside. For example ads for example a webcomic had ads for other webcomics. And that doesn't require any creepy profiling of viewers.