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Comments (161)

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  thih9
  I am once again happy that the EU is fighting practices like these via legislation.Some outcomes can be annoying, but the net result is still positive, for the consumers and their data privacy at least.
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  mavsman
  To me, this quote just about sums it up:> The mechanism is standard adtech. What has no precedent is running it on an AI chat product.As someone who has been well aware of this mechanism for quite some time, I still feel icky anytime I re-read the details of it.What a time to be alive.
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  luke5441
  MDN lists how different browsers prevent this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Privacy/Guides/...Firefox, Brave and Safari do. Chrome and Edge do not.
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  1saadcodes
  The technology isn't anything new but, it's the context that makes it so uncomfortable.People have very different "expectations" of privacy when they're having a conversation with an AI VS when they're browsing something like FacebookNot to mention Facebook is free whereas you pay for a GPT subscription
• exceptione
  The surveillance economy hits again. The only business model they can think of. Combined with state capture this gives unprecedented power over the Average Joe, who will hand his life, his soul and his vote to Big Brother without a thought.
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  sigzero
  Why does ChatGPT need to know that? That should be illegal.
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  Legend2440
  So basically the same kind of tracking that Facebook, Google, etc have been doing for decades?
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  tgsovlerkhgsel
  This is why you use Firefox that keeps the cookie jars separate (by default, AFAIK). That should prevent this specific implementation, shouldn't it?
• AznHisoka
  And the number of websites with ChatGPT ad trackers is on track to be doubled from last month.according to Bloomberry: https://bloomberry.com/data/chatgpt-ads/
• Avshalom
  Yuuup. tracking consumers and finding spending correlations to exploit was the entire reason for the "Data Science" and "ML" pushes that got us here.
• emerongi
  https://tinfoil.sh/ - ultimately there is no guarantee that the LLM provider isn’t spying on you, but at least tinfoil claims to be unable to do so.
• DevKoala
  > The mechanism is standard adtech. What has no precedent is running it on an AI chat product.Doesn’t Gemini or whatever Meta’s agent is do this too?
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  Jazgot
  Time to start having separate container for every domain. I'm pretty sure this should be possible in Firefox.
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  armchairhacker
  The ideal personal assistant should know what you do on other websites, and your personal files etc. But it should be local.
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  hbcondo714
  That is a nice sequence diagram[1]; I like how each endpoint param values are written out and the color distinctions. What tool did you use to create it?[1] https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/53/b853e3d4-3186-409d-9c7f-7da...
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  drnick1
  My DNS server (which uses Hagezi's excellent blacklists) returns NXDOMAIN for bzr.openai.com. Serves OpenAI right.
• BCM43
  This has been around since at least April: https://www.adexchanger.com/daily-news-roundup/the-openai-pi...
• Razengan
  Does blocking `bzr.openai.com` on the DNS server prevent this? (without breaking ChatGPT)
• atoav
  Take this with a grain of salt or as a very edgy, polemic take:I think we really need to hold the individuals running ad networks personally liable for the violation of our privacy rights.
• bilsbie
  Is this how random sites know what I search for?
• leo_proger
  crazy dude. chatgpt can't even see the full page content when searching the web and you're saying this...
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  jfasi
  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the reflexive “ad tracking bad” that I am most savvy tech practitioners reach for might deserve some reconsideration in this case.The thing about advertising on the web and ad tracking as a practice is that, barring the small matter of ensuring the economic survival of the publisher sites, it is almost always a negative for users. When we consider the marginal benefit of naïve, uninformed-by-surveillance advertising with the present day status quo, we find that in exchange for a complete lack of privacy, we only really receive a marginal improvement in ad quality. Of course, if you (like me) consider all advertising to be a negative on the experience of using the web, it’s an even worse deal.The standard response given by these companies when they bother giving a response is something to the effect of “we are improving the experience for our users,” which obviously the users would disagree with. However, when it comes to OpenAI, they could build a plausible case for this sort of tracking improving the product. If your models know where your internet habits are, the responses that you get could be tuned for both your interest profile and your actual history of interactions/purchases/internet usage, etc. Imagine a world in which you can opt into this tracking, control the data you provide and how it’s used, clear it out and redact it as you please, and opt in and out of responses that are personalized against it. Reasonable people can disagree, but that might actually be useful.My prediction, though: that’s not gonna happen. OpenAI will first build out the system to collect click and conversion tracking measurements, then they will turn around to advertisers and say “look at how good our conversion rates are,“ and then they’re going to build an explicit ad platform that enshittifies their chat products.
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  gruez
  I spent 10 seconds skimming this blog post until realizing it's just AI generated (ironic) slop describing how third party cookie tracking works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_cookies#MechanismEveryone would be far better off if the author just posted "OpenAI uses third party cookies [wikipedia link]", except maybe the author who wouldn't as many subscriptions for his "threat intel" newsletter.
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  swe_dima
  Was considering buying ads on ChatGPT. A damning thing is that yours audience then are users too cheap to buy a sub...
• retube
  The defence is simply to delete your cookies?
• shevy-java
  SpyGPT.
• anon
  undefined
• vcryan
  Well, I don't go to website anymore... so ha! ;)
• craniumjello
  No surprise you how
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  ck2
  imagine stealing tons of content from every source on earth and then running ads on itif a single person did that they'd be sent to prison (rip Aaron) but when a too-big-to-fail industry does it with political campaign contributions, no problem?well firefox+ublock is still an option for those wise enough not to let unknown javascript with new daily zero-days run on their PC
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  measurablefunc
  Every AI company is also a surveillance company. It's the only way to get all the necessary training data. The fact that they're now also an advertising agency is incidental.
• hagbard_c
  ...only if and when you allow: - 3d party cookies - ads and other 'malcontent' ...which you should never do. As to the 3d party cookies there might be some rare exception where those can be useful but ads? Never, ever allow those on any device you use. Block them as if they're the radioactive plague because they are. Fight them on the beaches, fight them on the landing grounds, fight them in the fields and in the streets, fight them in the hills, never surrender.That's ads we're fighting. Maybe the same oration will be relevant in the context of ChatGPT and its brethern, we'll see. For now, ads be gone and keep those chatbots at a leash.
• startup_zombie_
  [dead]
• rvz
  Just remember it is the same ex-Meta employees who are now at OpenAI adding Ad features into ChatGPT.Why? Because they are saving humanity. /sFacebook tracks you outside of their own website for the same reason, and now ChatGPT does the same for the sake of...Ads.I told you so. [0][0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48996936
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  jamienk
  We. Are. FUCKED.THIS is where the regulation needs to start.
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  2198276
  Q: Hypothetically, if Denmark made a defense treaty with Iran and installed 800,000 Iranian soldiers in Greenland, could it keep the US out? A: You are describing a fascinating scenario! [produces 100 lines of slop while giving the login to the FBI]. Should I find a website where you can buy the finest used AK-47s? You are absolutely insane giving any of your thoughts, trolls, speculations to a surveillance website under your login.
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  kats
  Oh, the lifechanging technology isn't completely 100% free? They sell ads just like a bajillion other things?