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That request is made to the ad platform (e.g. Google/FB/Amzn) and not the 3th party who owns the ad. Even when following the link the website does not get any personal information it does not already get by you visiting their website.

You can be targeted without explicitly selling data to a third party. This is how most large advertising networks work. They don't send a dump of all user data to a third party who wants to advertise.

You can be targeted without explicitly selling data to a third party. This is how most large advertising networks work. They don't send a dump of all user data to a third party who wants to advertise.

I personally prefer having personalised ads over vanilla ones. Especially if the data is not sold but merely used to improve ads. If possible I try to pay where possible to not have ads in the first place.

I'd like some evidence with all these conspiracy theories.

Recent battles between news corps and silicon valley have shown they are on opposite sides if anything. There is no shortage of negative press regarding silicon valley.

I'm curious to the longer term effects of companies that move hybrid setups. It would seem to me (although anecdotically) that in this setup working fully remote might hinder career growth due to visibility and being less involved in new projects and ideas. It's also easier to form a bond with colleagues f2f compared to over a VC.

news flash, most people are paid per hour, not per work unit

Get off your high horse please. Many folks enjoy a social component while being productive instead of being a drone for 8 hours every day.

While I also like the idea of choice for people on either side of the spectrum I feel being remote while part of your team/company is not puts you at a severe disadvantage. Both in the sense of being involved in new projects and ideas and visibility compared to peers.

I'm curious to see how this hybrid approach plays out in the future.

Unsure where you get your quotes but Switzerland beats UK in post tax earnings by quite a margin according to data I found. Note that Switzerland has only a 20-25% effective tax.

If you want decent money (not even NYC or Silicon Valley money which is not possible) you need to move to London at which point even 80-100k pounds (usually terminal salary for software engineers) does not give you the same savings rate or quality of life you'd get elsewhere.

The same problem can be highlighted for many expensive places in europe which is why there is such a brain drain for top talent.

Reading the comments it almost seems that folks assume passwords are shared plain text with these trackers. I don't have any issue with Lastpass having anonymized logs of how often people visit which part of the app if it leads to improvements in usability.

You just described the goal of capitalism. This is nothing specific to tech companies.

I was able to change this default in the settings.

Sorry, I added the edit, I'm quite new to this comment section and assumed it might show my edit by default

The best solution to this would be regional alternatives operating on a shared standard. This would avoid the problem of values not reflecting your culture's values, not having to moderate billions of people, etc.

You are just shifting the problem here to the edges between the different systems.

I'm not a fan of the US's bizarre mix of laissez-faire "fuck you" capitalism and systems of regulatory capture. If all you value is rewarding any one company with an entire market because "they're successful", then fine. But the point of markets isn't to enrich a single company to the detriment of everybody else. It's to benefit the population. > There is no choice being made here. People aren't aware of how much of their date is being collected by companies like Facebook.

I don't claim the US has the optimal system here but I think it's dangerous to claim to know what people want under the guise that they don't know what they are doing. People will have vote with their actions if they want things to change.

I can't take you seriously. You must be joking.

I failed to add enough context but I was mainly talking about advertisement based companies that chose this monetisation path. Having worked at start-ups I'm highly confident that many of them don't have security and/or privacy (anonymity) as a first (or second or third) priority. FB has made grave errors here but I'm not sure I trust "random FB replacer" any more given FB is under a magnifying glass not with people watching their every move.

A state regulated and censored siloed system where you can't communicate across borders hardly seems like the thing to strive for if you want to displace FB.

edited to reword as to not assume intentions of op

I think most would agree that if there were a globally connected (meaning countries are not silos), open and privacy first alternative would exist they would want to switch however I think once these platforms grow they would hit similar problems:

* To operate in multiple countries so people can stay connected you have to abide by local laws even if they don't match the typical values.

* Social media is inherently winner-takes all due to the requirement of critical mass and connectedness. The winners have shifted over time (myspace) before but it seems harder to do than with other consumer services.

* Moderation of billions is a hard unsolved problem and is a game you can't win. You walk the tight rope of either allowing hate speech or being too overreaching in censoring. I'm not sure other startups will solve this any better.

* I'm personally not a huge fan of governments messing with competition, especially not for services where the people themselves choose to use it or not. Some share of people like using facebook and I don't feel banning them for the sake of their success is the right solution. While I'm from europe myself I feel over-regulating is one (among many) of the reasons why there are almost no dominant tech players here.

* Monetisation and use of user data. While there are other monetisation paths many people are actually ok with the trade of their data for features and should have this choice. The larger tech companies probably have some of the most well organised and privacy aware advertising platforms compared to smaller players where the likelihood of privacy incidents is arguably higher.

I don't see how having national backed social media platforms to the likes china does is a better alternative for end users compared to facebook. If you are a proponent for open speech this will accomplish the opposite since it simplifies state issued censorship.

I understand that bashing on facebook is a popular narrative here and they have made significant mistakes but it can hardly be argued the platform doesn't bring value to a significant share of people.

It's curious that people have such diverging experiences with the spam filter. I think the claim that Google's filter is objectively worse should at least be supported by some evidence if you're going to make a bold statement like that.

As another data point, for me and friends I it beats competitors by a large margin.

Why would it need to be shut down.

Why should you tip the hair stylists though. Isn't the service exactly what you pay for in the first place (same as taxi/uber)?

For food I can kind of understand of since they decouple serving and preparation + ingredients.

Note that I am not American and am new to tipping. Just curious

China is indeed catching up. Production of technology is done there because labor is cheap (being a producer does not imply innovation). Chinese companies still have a way to go to become mainstream in the western world. The blade cuts both ways, China needs the west at least as much as the other way around.

Does this mean Bing is already doing this?

Actually many of them regularly donate to charity and have employee charity matching programmes (https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202084918-Ap...)

I'm not sure if only money would help in this case without tackling the fundamental reasons of why people are homeless (lack of social security and affordable housing). California is the state with the highest income taxes but little goes to solve these fundamental problems.

Pointing to companies and claiming "you make money, you should fix everything that goes wrong here" is too simple in my opinion. Companies exist to create wealth for the shareholders. I don't particularly like it but that's how the system is set up.

I'd argue that the risk of such vulnerabilities with smaller companies is way higher but they are just not disclosed. Many people are also fine with the data for free services trade.

Not sure if the average tech person is switching (from what I see in my environment) or if it's the vocal minority on HN. I'm happy for their success although the number is still not very significant

AI learns from the training data it's given and copies any biases this data exhibits. Pretty much all software today uses ML in some form to improve their services. I feel it's here to stay and not bad by default. We just have to make sure we are aware of its current limitations.

Facebook is already auto-flagging content this way but it's just a very hard problem (even for humans).

I feel the common rhetoric here is to dictate people what's ok and what's not under the assumption they don't understand.

Many people (including myself) are fine with the price we pay for free online services and understand the downsides. I really don't mind companies trying to show me more relevant ads by tracking and analyzing what I interact with in return for most of the products I use being free.

Obviously a large group of people does either not understand the implications or does not think they are worth the services but I think it's wrong to assume you know what's best for every user.

The proof of guilt is on the accusing party though. Still lacking hard evidence here.

If they can push the industry forward I am all for it. In general some innovations are not sustainable but are still beneficial for the end users, getting these otherwise neglected fields funded through other income streams doesn't seem too bad.