I like targeted ads. I just wish they were better. For example I am open about being in recovery for alcoholism on FB but they still show me ads for hard liquor.
I'm afraid you might not be seeing beyond the first-order effects: "ads are annoying, relevant ads are less annoying, therefore I like surveillance!" Consider all the implications that ubiquitous surveillance by unaccountable private entities carries.
Plus, the fact that you can advertise extremely harmful drugs such as alcohol (or gambling) at all, not to mention do so precisely to those you figure are more susceptible to this manipulation is pretty disgusting in itself.
Calling it surveillance is like Steve Ballmer saying about Google "we don't read your email." No human at Google is reading my email. They are scanning it and associating keywords to my account. Do this make me a marked man? Some might feel that way, but this technique is not very accurate and is only used to show me ads when they are going to show me ads anyway. Ads are part of the current reality whether we like them or not. Why not prefer relevant ads?
I guess a simpler fix here would be to explicitly opt out of certain classes of ads eg gambling / alcohol. It feels like we should have rights not to see ads for damaging products.
“Targeted” ads have -never- shown me anything I actually wanted to buy.
On the other hand, whenever I really wanted to spend spare money, say on new games or movies or music, every fucking company tries to put as many hindrances in my way as possible: The search systems of almost all stores is terrible and their filtering options are crippled.
With the exception of Steam, every store I’ve tried makes it really hard to find items matching some specific criteria.
Way to go ya Silicon Valley nincompoops. /clappingemoji
How about instead of pillaging my privacy to try to inaccurately infer what I like, why the fuck not just let me TELL you what I like?
