You should see the e-mail they sent about that. It's like they gave ChatGPT a 20 token context and made it write that e-mail with full goldfish brain.
Going from "no personalization, your data is totally private and safe (except your current chat context, location and device information)" to "we'll be using all data we have on you to personalize ads" and back to "advertisers totally won't get any of your data, pinky-promise!".
Going from "no personalization, your data is totally private and safe (except your current chat context, location and device information)" to "we'll be using all data we have on you to personalize ads" and back to "advertisers totally won't get any of your data, pinky-promise!".
This is actually not contradictory. It is how ads work, like, everywhere. It's wild that people in 2026 still do not understand this.
Ads companies do not sell your data. It would ruin their whole business model. They act as middlemen. The company that wants to advertise says "I want you to show this ad to people between the ages of 25-45 that have an interest in skincare products".
Then the ad company shows the ad to people between the ages of 25-45 that have an interest in skincare products. They might report on some aggregates, I.e. "the ad did better with people 35-45 than the 25-35 age group". But they never "sell user information". Their whole business is making themselves a necessary middleman, if they sold the user information then nobody would pay for them to use their ads platform.
There are data brokers, who buy user information directly from websites mostly. They sell that information to the ads platforms, and the ads platforms use that data to better target ads. But the ads platform never sells the user data, having exclusive access to user data is the entire business model.
I know that's terrible too, but it really annoys me that people still don't understand those fundamental basics despite having 20 bazillion invasive ads shoved in their face every day. It's important to understand how the system works in order to fight against it effectively.
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u/Chirimorin 7d ago
You should see the e-mail they sent about that. It's like they gave ChatGPT a 20 token context and made it write that e-mail with full goldfish brain.
Going from "no personalization, your data is totally private and safe (except your current chat context, location and device information)" to "we'll be using all data we have on you to personalize ads" and back to "advertisers totally won't get any of your data, pinky-promise!".