TomB wrote: ↑Fri Aug 09, 2019 12:29 pm
But both Google and Youtube are really in the business of focused advertising.
I think the bottom line is that Google and Youtube aren't in the business of focused advertising,
they have bills to pay, G & Y were once ad free, I Google was, but they still needed to pay for their access to
the internet, servers to store the content and bandwidth to serve up content costs money,
especially as they got more popular. Ad revenue pays for that.
Best analogy I can think of is television advertisers pay TV networks for ad space on shows
which helps finance the shows you would watch. ( remember " This Show Was Brought To You By ... ?)
The TV ad analogy works the same way online ads do, if you watch cooking shows then the ads will be
predominantly about food, cleaning supplies, cooking utensils, Watch sports ? cars, tools, home improvement.
TV ads are truly anonymous targeting, based on what the supposed demographic audience will be for that particular show.
Internet ads are also anonymous, in that they don't know your personal info, but they do know your general location
your accessing from ( IP address ) , and where you've visited because of tracker cookies.
example ; you went shopping on Engulf and Devours' site for socks, then for tools at Tim's Toolshed, then looked at restaurants
cookies have your trail. You'll begin to see ads related to where you've been.
It's much more privacy intrusive.
I agree with you about companies using my information with out my consent, but the internet is still the wild west
where privacy is concerned, they do have a regulatory body, and I'm not sure how effective they are since the internet
changes so fast. Bottom line is you/we take control, use Firefox as a browser, nuke all the cookies after web surfing,
install ad/tracker blocker. Small inconveniences.