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blibblelast Wednesday at 2:33 AM1 replyview on HN

how does the user browsing the site right now benefit from activity tracking?

the specific user right now, not a hypothetical user at some point in the future (if the business continues to exist)

answer: they don't


Replies

bfleschlast Wednesday at 3:09 AM

They need to tell themselves that "data privacy" is a non-issue because otherwise they would have to take responsibility for feeding Facebook/Google all of their users for many years, which directly resulted in fake news laced political advertisements which micro-targeted voters in the presidential elections.

The book "careless people" clearly documents how Facebook engineers were embedded in the Trump campaign to run fake news advertisements micro-targeted to US voters.

It takes a lot of strength to resolve such a fundamental cognitive dissonance, especially if your self image is the talented techie who made money without hurting anyone.