> How is this "feature" not a privacy/security issue?
Like every third party script this feature has been a privacy issue from day-1. Same as the "like / share on whatever social networks" buttons. Same as the google analytics scripts you use, the Google Tag Manager scripts.
"Webmasters" decided that selling their users data for free service was worth it. For more than 2 decades it's been business as usual. A whole generation and now even less people will bat an eye about doing it, they'll even defend it because "there is no other way to keep the lights on".
Maybe the lights should be off on most of the websites depending on this kind of practices.
Well, guess what, there is a simple fix to this that we could've implemented when Eternal September began.
Don't use any free web services. Don't access anything for free on the Internet. Especially don't patronize an ad-supported company. Don't sign up for free email accounts. Don't visit websites that display ads. I mean, don't try to block the ads, just never go there in the first place! For God's sake, stop stealing audio and video streams, scholarly papers, and other objects of piracy. You're a net drain on the economy... literally.
Stop using free (as in beer) software, or at least make donations for it. Stop complaining that you only get a license and not ownership. Rent your software and give the developers their due.
All of you, especially those who cheat and block ads, you're all freeloaders who are responsible for the growth of ad-supported services on the Internet, and long before the Internet was a thing, you watched TV, you listened to the radio, you read newspapers and magazines, you've built expectations to get something for nothing, and ultimately you were influenced and manipulated by those ads enough to make them profitable.
We've nobody to blame but ourselves for this proliferation of Google, Facebook and the rest. We are the ones who could've stopped it, but we built this Internet the way it is.
Like every third party script this feature has been a privacy issue from day-1. Same as the "like / share on whatever social networks" buttons. Same as the google analytics scripts you use, the Google Tag Manager scripts.
"Webmasters" decided that selling their users data for free service was worth it. For more than 2 decades it's been business as usual. A whole generation and now even less people will bat an eye about doing it, they'll even defend it because "there is no other way to keep the lights on".
Maybe the lights should be off on most of the websites depending on this kind of practices.