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Yeah and there's a reason the tech moved on from that. It was a LOT of work on both ends to negotiate and monitor the relationship. Instead now we have a central broker who both parties work with that has set up a computerized way to manage these relationships.

Personally I think the solution that lets us keep ad supported content and easy ad placement would be for Google to force companies to provide bots they could run internally so the profiles never leave Google's datacenters and strictly monitor the output so the buyer bots don't leak information back to the companies. I think that would do a lot to alleviate the privacy concerns and breaches and is honestly how I though ads were being sold for the longest time instead of profiles being sent to companies buying placement.



> Yeah and there's a reason the tech moved on from that. It was a LOT of work on both ends to negotiate and monitor the relationship. Instead now we have a central broker who both parties work with that has set up a computerized way to manage these relationships.

I'm not disputing the necessity of a central broker. Contexual ads based on search keywords or website content used to work fine without surveillance, and can perfectly be automated by a central broker.

Years ago, I didn't have much issue with online ads (with the exception of popups and spam emails). Nowadays, I'm forced to block them altogether to avoid the extensive surveillance by adtech. It doesn't have to be this way if adtech respected user privacy.


> I think the solution that lets us keep ad supported content and easy ad placement would be for Google to force companies to provide bots they could run internally so the profiles never leave Google's datacenters

Honestly, that wouldn't do much to alleviate my privacy concerns, as it does nothing to protect my privacy from the likes of Google (or other ad-slingers).




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