> Why would they have that information in the first place?
IP based geolocalization?
> But all of this is irrelevant to the thread you're replying to, because my user id is anonymous.
Just because your hacker news user id is anonymous doesn't mean your account can't have an ad targeting profile built based on it if HN decided. They are sort of independent, and most sites don't care so much about who you actually are, but rather that you can be shown relevant ads.
To clarify, I happen to be technically sophisticated enough to know that yes, unless I use a VPN, websites can guess what city I'm in based on my IP. But I'm saying rhetorically, as someone surfing the Web, it doesn't feel like part of my contract with HN that they know my location.
Everyone knows no one reads terms of service, but even if people did, they don't generally specify location, just that they collect "information about your visit". Or they might mention that they collect your IP, but most people don't know what an IP address it is, much less have an intuition for how specific of location information it reveals (some probably think you can backtrace the IP and send the cyberpolice after them).
That's why ad targeting profiles shouldn't be built on that kind of incidentally-provided behavioral data. As per the Six Fixes, ads should only be targeted to the content of the page I'm looking at, just like a dead-tree newspaper.
Note that this can be achieved either technically, i.e. anonymous browsing, or legally, e.g. requiring my permission to track me to build an ad targeting profile. That's not a conflict, that's anonymity and control over data about me as two sides of the same coin.
IP based geolocalization?
> But all of this is irrelevant to the thread you're replying to, because my user id is anonymous.
Just because your hacker news user id is anonymous doesn't mean your account can't have an ad targeting profile built based on it if HN decided. They are sort of independent, and most sites don't care so much about who you actually are, but rather that you can be shown relevant ads.
> I favor Maciej Ceglowski's Six Fixes a lot
Those are very interesting. Thanks for sharing!