At least theoretically, you could have the whole logic deciding which ad to show you running locally on your device, without the need to send any private data to Facebook?
Because the issue isn't where the data is stored, the issue is what the data is used for. In this case, it would be used in a way that still reveals personal information about me -- for instance, in a FLoC-type setup, it's still being revealed which cohorts I'm a part of.
Having the data stored locally is certainly better than having it stored in someone else's database. No argument there, that's an improvement. But that's just making the problem slightly less bad, not solving it.
These sort of schemes just strike me as being sneaky ways of continuing to engage in the abuse that the adtech world loves so much. The major difference being mostly what machines are doing the tracking.
Also, of course, your browser history isn't exactly private even though it's stored on your machine.
So is the argument that personalized ads are inherently bad?
Arguments against tracking/personalization I have heard in the past, which make sense to me, are that having all the data stored remotely gives a lot of power to an evil engineer or government to exploit your data. With a 100% local approach, based on data that is stored anyway, that aspect would go away.
I don't see how in that world personalized ads are worse than unpersonalized ads. Ads in general can be argued to have negative externalities (though I am not 100% convinced of that), but if we take their existence as a given, and the choice is between personalized and unpersonalized, I think I would prefer personalized.
>So is the argument that personalized ads are inherently bad?
No, the argument is that collecting data about me or my machines without my informed consent is bad. The purpose to which that data is put doesn't even come into play.
> With a 100% local approach, based on data that is stored anyway, that aspect would go away.
No, it doesn't. The exposure is certainly reduced, but companies can still determine quite a lot about you by combining the "cohorts" you're a part of with other data.
>I think I would prefer personalized.
I understand that. Personally, whether an ad is "personalized" or not doesn't increase or decrease the ad's utility to me, so I don't care about that directly (with one exception -- personalized ads deprive me of useful information about the site/app/whatever that I'm using: I no longer have clues as to what the target demographic of the site/app/whatever is.)
What I care about is stopping the incessant assault by the marketing companies in terms of spying.
