I'm not paying to read beyond the click bait but if this article but if this is about using hashed identifiers, this is like.... Something that has been used by every major and minor ads platform and advertiser for years. It is nothing new.

What matters is the signals that are joined against the hashes and if what privacy controls they have in place for preventing reidenitfication.

But for those unaware, hashed identifiers are why every publisher has moved to 1p data and logins. Cookies are dead and unreliable so 1p identifiers are the only real way for an advertiser to target a given user with any reliability.

If anyone has access to the full post and wants to share what is novel about this situation, please do. From the bit I could read I would be more surprised if they were not doing this as it is a critical component of every major publisher platform's audience and measurement stack.

Earlier on article link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50103427

Ad targeting was always creepy and we haven't learned much yet as a society from 2+ decades of that being predominant business model for most of digital tech - search, social media... If it is 'free', that just means you are paying in different currency, often more valuable.