This! I don't mind tech companies knowing things about me. If I don't want them to know, I browse in Safari's anonymous mode.
But I hate it when they suggest things that I don't want.. show me stuff I have already bought.... show me things I already decided against... show me stuff that is not in my price range. That's annoying. I don't mind a good, paid recommendation. I just don't like all the bad recommendations.
The issue of you already buying something is interesting to me. It’s so obvious that they’d fix it if it cause revenue loss. My guess is that conversion for any ad is so low that you’re indeed more likely to buy a lot of products twice rather than buying something totally different.
You want them to advertise things you won’t buy; that’s far less bad than them advertising things you shouldn’t buy but might if pushed, which is the ultimate goal of the corporate mind control machine.
At least they aren't showing you something you would be tempted to buy?
It seems they don't know you already bought it, which... maybe they don't and do you want them to?
Maybe it's just me, but I don't want my computer suggesting anything to me unless I ask it for suggestions. A computer should be essentially a REPL. It waits for a command. The user inputs its command. The computer processes it. Then the computer loops back to wait. Now we have all sorts of nice GUIs and modes of interaction, but essentially the computer should behave that way: The user should tell it what to do, and it should only do what the user wants.
Any kind of "proactive" behavior on the part of the computer is unwelcome. If I don't command it, I don't expect my computer to do it. This includes ads but it also includes recommendations, and notifications, and "you should do this!" and "try that app!" and everything else modern computers are now throwing at us.
We need to get back to the user being in the driver's seat.