Hypothetically, what could the modern web look like if instead of inferring user attributes we let users specify those?
E.g.; I tend to want recipes by French authors. I have a profile set up in my browser to search in French, prefer French results, and when localization is applicable to retrieve results written in France. Switching to this profile is a button-click and automagically affects what all websites I visit believe out my personna.
E.g.; In that same example, even ad-tech presumably benefits from believing my ruse. If I'm in a mood to read French recipes in French, an ad for a US Football game is probably not going to land very well. Perhaps some company could do better by targeting based on both who I am and who I'm purporting to be (especially with respect to important life characteristics like log10(salary) and count(children)), but the temporary personna is by itself likely already better than any inferred characteristics at guiding targeted ads.
E.g.; I throw on a DIY personna. Instead of being inundated with (mostly fake) repair services when I ask for bike or device repair information, I find links to solid content like Sheldon Brown's blog and commercial links to informational content, DIY-focused parts and tools for sale, .... The web can still be a for-profit, sanitized entity while providing a vastly better experience for me the searcher and also the poor sucker paying for "bike repair shop" ads on my searches which could never possibly convert for that concept.
E.g.; I tend to want recipes by French authors. I have a profile set up in my browser to search in French, prefer French results, and when localization is applicable to retrieve results written in France. Switching to this profile is a button-click and automagically affects what all websites I visit believe out my personna.
E.g.; In that same example, even ad-tech presumably benefits from believing my ruse. If I'm in a mood to read French recipes in French, an ad for a US Football game is probably not going to land very well. Perhaps some company could do better by targeting based on both who I am and who I'm purporting to be (especially with respect to important life characteristics like log10(salary) and count(children)), but the temporary personna is by itself likely already better than any inferred characteristics at guiding targeted ads.
E.g.; I throw on a DIY personna. Instead of being inundated with (mostly fake) repair services when I ask for bike or device repair information, I find links to solid content like Sheldon Brown's blog and commercial links to informational content, DIY-focused parts and tools for sale, .... The web can still be a for-profit, sanitized entity while providing a vastly better experience for me the searcher and also the poor sucker paying for "bike repair shop" ads on my searches which could never possibly convert for that concept.