<story><title>Pornography sites found to be riddled with trackers from major tech companies</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/opinion/google-facebook-sex-websites.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aviraldg</author><text>No, the equivalent is you walking into a store to buy DVDs, and the store manager keeping a record of what sells well, and what you show interest in, etc. to drive decisions about what to stock next.</text></item><item><author>letstrynvm</author><text>&amp;gt; prompting outrage when there isn&amp;#x27;t a good reason for it.&lt;p&gt;Can you expand on why there&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x27;no good reason for it&amp;#x27;?&lt;p&gt;The equivalent is my peering in your window to see and note down what you rub one out to... every time.  And you don&amp;#x27;t know what I do with that information or where it will leak to.&lt;p&gt;That sounds perfectly fine to you, does it?</text></item><item><author>aviraldg</author><text>I feel like all these articles follow a pattern: they take a common, well known aspect of technology (in this case, analytics trackers), search for any cases where a major tech company is involved, and come up with the most clickbaity headline possible (&amp;quot;Google and Facebook Are Quietly Tracking You on Sex Websites&amp;quot;, when it&amp;#x27;s actually the website owners adding this tracking code in the first place, explicitly for the purpose of understanding user behaviour.) These headlines are then shared and reshared by nontechnical users, prompting outrage when there isn&amp;#x27;t a good reason for it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>Interestingly this example led to one of America&amp;#x27;s few, narrowly-focused privacy laws: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Video_Privacy_Protection_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Video_Privacy_Protection_Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It makes any &amp;quot;video tape service provider&amp;quot; that discloses rental [or sale] information outside the ordinary course of business liable for up to $2500 in actual damages.</text></comment>
<story><title>Pornography sites found to be riddled with trackers from major tech companies</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/opinion/google-facebook-sex-websites.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aviraldg</author><text>No, the equivalent is you walking into a store to buy DVDs, and the store manager keeping a record of what sells well, and what you show interest in, etc. to drive decisions about what to stock next.</text></item><item><author>letstrynvm</author><text>&amp;gt; prompting outrage when there isn&amp;#x27;t a good reason for it.&lt;p&gt;Can you expand on why there&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x27;no good reason for it&amp;#x27;?&lt;p&gt;The equivalent is my peering in your window to see and note down what you rub one out to... every time.  And you don&amp;#x27;t know what I do with that information or where it will leak to.&lt;p&gt;That sounds perfectly fine to you, does it?</text></item><item><author>aviraldg</author><text>I feel like all these articles follow a pattern: they take a common, well known aspect of technology (in this case, analytics trackers), search for any cases where a major tech company is involved, and come up with the most clickbaity headline possible (&amp;quot;Google and Facebook Are Quietly Tracking You on Sex Websites&amp;quot;, when it&amp;#x27;s actually the website owners adding this tracking code in the first place, explicitly for the purpose of understanding user behaviour.) These headlines are then shared and reshared by nontechnical users, prompting outrage when there isn&amp;#x27;t a good reason for it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>martingoodson</author><text>... and then cross-referencing your purchase with everything else you ever purchased. And also every article you ever read. And then selling that information to others.</text></comment>