<story><title>Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)</title><url>https://github.com/extesy/hoverzoom/discussions/670</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ericd</author><text>The most galling offer we saw on the mobile app side was something that would turn on the user&amp;#x27;s microphone, and listen for ads on tvs around them to track what they&amp;#x27;d been exposed to offline. Adtech is such a thoroughly gross field.</text></item><item><author>mfrisbie</author><text>ChatGPT for Google was #1 on HN earlier this year. Check out the GitHub repo now: that person sold the extension.&lt;p&gt;I had a small side project extension, ~25,000 installs &amp;amp; free to use. I got enough inbound interest trying to &amp;quot;help me monetize&amp;quot; that I thought it would be worth cataloguing all the different unsavory avenues: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mattfrisbie.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;the-ugly-business-of-monetizing-browser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mattfrisbie.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;the-ugly-business-of-mone...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ummonk</author><text>When I worked at Meta, the execs said that many users think they&amp;#x27;re being spied on when they see ads based on a conversation they&amp;#x27;ve had in real life, but the execs categorically denied that this could be happening, and said it&amp;#x27;s all just a coincidence. I thought this was a completely unfounded denial, since Meta had no way of auditing 3rd party apps on the user&amp;#x27;s phone, and it&amp;#x27;s perfectly plausible for another app to spy on their conversations and then use that to provide targeted ads to the Facebook account associated with the individual&amp;#x27;s email.</text></comment>
<story><title>Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)</title><url>https://github.com/extesy/hoverzoom/discussions/670</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ericd</author><text>The most galling offer we saw on the mobile app side was something that would turn on the user&amp;#x27;s microphone, and listen for ads on tvs around them to track what they&amp;#x27;d been exposed to offline. Adtech is such a thoroughly gross field.</text></item><item><author>mfrisbie</author><text>ChatGPT for Google was #1 on HN earlier this year. Check out the GitHub repo now: that person sold the extension.&lt;p&gt;I had a small side project extension, ~25,000 installs &amp;amp; free to use. I got enough inbound interest trying to &amp;quot;help me monetize&amp;quot; that I thought it would be worth cataloguing all the different unsavory avenues: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mattfrisbie.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;the-ugly-business-of-monetizing-browser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mattfrisbie.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;the-ugly-business-of-mone...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BLKNSLVR</author><text>Adtech is psychological manipulation. Radicalisation uses the same techniques: Create the perception of a vacuum and then provide the solution to fill it.&lt;p&gt;One is actively censored and you can go to jail for, the other isn&amp;#x27;t even on the legislative agenda. There are semi-understandable reasons, but it&amp;#x27;s far from entirely non-hypocritical.&lt;p&gt;- Do you trust your constituency to make up their own minds or not?&lt;p&gt;- Who are you trying to protect?&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  - From what?

  - From whom?
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
And this is without even mentioning online advertising as a (seemingly increasing) vector of scams, frauds, malware and viruses.</text></comment>