by ecib

The entitlement of these fuckers is just off the charts. They have zero right, none, to the tracking they’ve been getting away with. We, as a society, have implicitly accepted it because we never really noticed it. You, the user, have no way of seeing it happen. Our brains are naturally attuned to detect and viscerally reject, with outrage and alarm, real-world intrusions into our privacy. Real-world marketers could never get away with tracking us like online marketers do.

Imagine if you were out shopping, went into a drug store, examined a few bottles of sunscreen, but left the store without purchasing anything. And then immediately a stranger approached you with an offer for sunscreen. Such an encounter would trigger a fight or flight reaction — the needle on your innate creepometer would shoot right into the red.

Fuckers indeed.

Side note, while I'm bummed that reporting suggests that Apple might be delaying some of these proposed changes, I'm delighted that there's a company that is evoking this kind of response from online advertisers. If politics dictates that this change takes a few extra months to get here I'm fine with that, as long as it comes.

Gruber is absolutely right that the only reason we "tolerate" online violations is because they are hidden from us. Part of that is inherent to the technology itself, but much of it is on purpose.