I think we might need to differ between advertisers choosing the micro targets and automatic context dependent microtargeting . And for the later we probably would need to differentiate between basing the automatic general purpose targeting based on the current context (the site you are on + what subsection of the site you are on + what you have in your shopping car and similar) with the actual context + history + ML based micro categorization.
In general what I am against is advertisements where
- the advertiser can choose targets based on too fine grained categories (micro categories)
- people get classified with too fine grained categories
(Both points are mostly the same.)
So "people who bought this book also bought books X,Y,Z" is IMHO fine, even if it can sometime lead to bad situations as it can be abused much less. (EDIT: But that partially because it shows real products, "people who have seen XY news also see Z news" would be a different thing.)
In general what I am against is advertisements where
- the advertiser can choose targets based on too fine grained categories (micro categories)
- people get classified with too fine grained categories
(Both points are mostly the same.)
So "people who bought this book also bought books X,Y,Z" is IMHO fine, even if it can sometime lead to bad situations as it can be abused much less. (EDIT: But that partially because it shows real products, "people who have seen XY news also see Z news" would be a different thing.)