Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anyway
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderThe only social networking I do anymore is twitter. The list of the thousand people I follow is so intimate, I feel like just flipping through that would reveal everything about me and be a huge violation of privacy. But even on this platform I've spent almost 10 years curating the perfect feed on, the one that should know absolutely everything about me, I still get served endless garbage ads for junk food and pickup trucks. I can't think of…
Tangentially related but getting on my nerves a lot recently: Ad targeting for stuff that I've just bought. Worst offender: Remarkable - really good product, love mine, but I'm still seeing their ads everywhere. I'm not going to buy a second one. It's almost confidence-inspiring. Like how evil-overlord can this be if they can't even get this basic stuff right?
For ad targeting and recommendation algorithms, sure. "Privacy," though isn't about Google shovelling reaction videos into my feed in order to keep me on the site. It's more about every site requiring authentication and more information than they need about my identity, which in turn, gets sold to third-parties or gets stolen in a breach. And then can be used to impersonate me, craft scams targeting me, etc. Agree though that recommendation algos are bad and over-used. They're designed to…
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 527
- Total comments
- 285
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-02-01 | Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anywayFirst breakout · Best thread | zdw | 312 | 109 |
| 2020-12-17 | Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anyway (2019) | Tomte | 1 | 0 |
| 2021-05-31 | Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anyway (2019) | Tomte | 3 | 0 |
| 2021-08-28 | Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anyway (2019) | bryanrasmussen | 136 | 114 |
| 2023-10-16 | Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anyway (2019)Hall induction · Latest 20+ point return | kruuuder | 75 | 62 |