[HN Gopher] The EU's war on behavioral advertising
___________________________________________________________________
The EU's war on behavioral advertising
Author : curiousbird
Score : 149 points
Date : 2023-08-25 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thisisunpacked.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thisisunpacked.substack.com)
| seydor wrote:
| ... for no reason , to no effect, except the destruction of the
| entire eu online advertising industry
| brap wrote:
| EU is a huge fan of shooting itself in the foot with useless
| regulations, unable to think 1-2 steps ahead.
|
| Waiting for someone to tell you why "the destruction of the
| entire eu online advertising industry" is actually a good thing
| in their view.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Well, it would be a net positive for society if the
| advertising industry disappeared, so at least this move is
| not short-sighted at all.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| It's not "online advertising", it's just behavioral. There's
| nothing preventing corporations from advertising the old-
| fashioned way, like they did on TV, radio, newspapers, etc.
|
| Online != behavioral
| seydor wrote:
| all advertising was (and is) always behavioral
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| Not to the extent where advertisers had this level of
| fine-grained information about their target though, which
| is the whole point of contention.
| seydor wrote:
| they always did, to the extent that was allowed by the
| tech of the time
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >they always did, to the extent that was allowed by the
| tech of the time
|
| As someone who spent five years doing advertising market
| research, and whose parents each spent 30+ years doing
| the same prior to ubiquitous internet use, I call
| bullshit on that statement.
|
| While there certainly were efforts (with millions spent
| collecting data) to identify market segments and
| emotional triggers to better target market
| products/services (cf. BSB GlobalScan as an example), the
| idea that it was the right of ad sellers to monitor
| everyone's activities as their right in order to "target"
| advertising was never an option, nor was there ever any
| push to do so.
|
| Convincing folks to participate in telephone/mall
| intercept/door-to-door surveys was used to identify
| consumer preferences and advertising efficacy.
|
| No one _ever_ asked (or did so without asking) to go
| through a consumer 's mail, personal communications or
| effects as a method to determine how to target ads.
|
| Since all those things are pretty much de rigueur these
| days, I'd say that's not a just difference of degree, but
| a completely different mechanism for gathering
| information about consumers.
|
| And just because it wasn't _possible_ to snoop through
| (without a potential breaking /entering and/or burglary
| charge) the private documents and communications of
| consumers, doesn't mean those folks would have done so if
| they could.
|
| So yes, there's a big difference between the market
| research (surveys, focus groups, etc.) done in the past
| and the blatant spying/snooping on people's private
| documents and communications we see now.
|
| You're making an assertion which doesn't match the facts.
|
| Feel free to disagree, but I was there, and that business
| paid for my housing, food, clothes and everything else
| for more than twenty-five years -- both as the child of
| marketers and as a marketer myself.
|
| I'd also point out that the Advertising Market Research
| industry was a very small group of people (perhaps a
| thousand employed by ad agencies/large corporations and a
| few thousand more employed by market research supply
| houses and interviewing/focus group companies.) and, as
| such, if there was a market for breaking into people's
| houses and rifling through their papers/mail, wiretapping
| their phones, etc., I'd know about it.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| And the tech changed and suddenly there was the privacy
| issue. That's... the whole point.
|
| Quantitative changes enabled by technology can present
| qualitative problems.
| [deleted]
| seydor wrote:
| you didnt have to wait long
| laserdancepony wrote:
| That's what you get for making the world a worse place.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Isn't the destruction of advertising (not just online) a good
| thing? It's skewing markets by creating demands that were not
| there before, but only for the big players who can afford to
| be in peoples faces everywhere. Advertising is often
| misinforming (or not informing) people about the
| products/services. It promotes a throwaway society where
| resources are wasted.
| seydor wrote:
| It s surreal to read this comment in a SV VC supported
| forum
|
| Like anti smoking posters in a phillip morris factory
| piaste wrote:
| That's a brilliant analogy in a way you probably didn't
| intend.
| someplaceguy wrote:
| Exactly... As a general rule, all other things being equal,
| the more informed the participants in a market are, the
| better the efficiency of the market.
|
| Advertising negatively affects markets because it leads
| people to make decisions based on things that are not
| necessarily in their interests, i.e. it leads people to
| make more uninformed (or misinformed) decisions.
|
| In effect, it's basically exploiting a market externality:
| vulnerabilities in human psychology.
|
| I mean, this is not _always_ true. Sometimes, you might
| become aware of a great product or service due to
| advertising. But I am entirely convinced that, in general,
| the negative effects hugely, hugely outweigh the occasional
| benefit, just by observing how people usually make their
| buying decisions in their day-to-day lives (including me, I
| 'm not immune to that!).
| pohuing wrote:
| Sounds great!
| rollcat wrote:
| I wouldn't mind that, especially wherever behavioural profiling
| is involved.
|
| You'd call a person wearing a tinfoil hat a crazy, yet we are
| tolerating what effectively could be considered an effort at
| mass scale, targeted mind control. It's obnoxious on the less
| competent end of the spectrum, and an outright violation on the
| other.
|
| I used to consider advertisements an intellectual equivalent of
| fast-food; I think it's gone far worse than that, and as
| individuals, we are poorly equipped to stand up to it. I do
| understand businesses rely on advertising to stay alive, but
| without regulation, there just seems to be no end to how much
| abuse adtech is ready to inflict upon us.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Yeah but probably an industry we can live without
| someplaceguy wrote:
| > except the destruction of the entire eu online advertising
| industry
|
| Yes, but what are the negative effects?
| seydor wrote:
| i mentioned the destruction of the eu advertising market. as
| a consequence tech in europe remains unfunded and therefore
| nonexistent (because the silicon valley machine literally
| runs on advertising money)
| mdhb wrote:
| Almost like they are trying to find alternative funding
| models for the web here... I fail to see that as anything
| other than a positive.
| seydor wrote:
| hint: there aren't . the web is like all the media before
| it
| tsimionescu wrote:
| All the media that never tracked its users, yes.
| seydor wrote:
| people should remember that advertising was equally
| vilified at all times , whether it was on TV or print or
| radio. But at the time the EU was wise enough not to
| destroy its media economy. This time it's different
| simiones wrote:
| Sure, and rightly so, but still there needs to be some
| limit to how much the advertising industry is permitted
| to do.
| someplaceguy wrote:
| Ok, but can you provide an actual argument explaining why
| advertising (in general) is a good thing for society and
| the economy?
|
| You've mentioned multiple times the "it's good at
| extracting huge sums of money out of people making
| decisions against their own interests, which goes on to
| fund other endeavors" argument, but I don't think that's
| a good thing on the whole.
|
| If you can forgive a huge exaggeration from my part, to
| me it sounds similar to saying that criminal activities
| are great because the money earned from those activities
| can go on to spur economic activity in the region (I'm
| not saying advertising is a criminal activity, but I
| think you get my point).
| ppsreejith wrote:
| I wrote a reply but since it became too long, posted it
| as a comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37266563
| someplaceguy wrote:
| That was an interesting comparison of behavioral vs non-
| behavioral ads, thanks.
|
| But my question was geared towards the value of
| advertising itself, in general (if there is any).
|
| I am aware of the unknown unknown problem you mentioned
| (I think), but in my experience as a layman, very very
| rarely (if ever) was I introduced to a great product or
| service through advertising that I wouldn't be aware of
| in other ways.
|
| Conversely, the amount of ads for substandard products
| and services (i.e. those which I know for sure there are
| better alternatives, at least for me and others around
| me) is infinitely greater.
|
| And I don't think it's just because the ads are not
| targeted enough. I'm pretty sure I am a hugely
| interesting target for many, many companies, but I am
| simply not interested in them (and never will) because
| other companies have much better products/services (many
| of which I already use).
|
| I am assuming, of course, that the only reason they're
| interested in targeting ads to me, is to influence me to
| make a buying decision that I wouldn't do otherwise, and
| not just because I wasn't aware of the product/service.
| Because if it wasn't for influencing me making a buying
| decision, why would they spend the money to show me an
| ad?
|
| That's why I always try to ignore (and block) ads as much
| as possible, even though that's not always possible (e.g.
| street ads). Yet, I am still being bombarded with non-
| stop ads and I have no question that I'm being negatively
| influenced by them, especially in those areas I know very
| little about (e.g. cleaning products) or am susceptible
| to being influenced against my own interests (e.g. fast
| food or other crappy, addictive food products).
|
| In my experience, the success rate of my own research
| (when looking for a product/service) or even word-of-
| mouth recommendations has far, far outweighed the success
| rate of all the ad campaigns I've ever been a target of,
| from my own perspective (not from the companies'
| perspectives, of course).
|
| So it's not that I don't see any value in advertising,
| which I don't (unless you're the advertiser), it's that I
| think it's actively damaging to society (due to leading
| people to make bad buying decisions) and the economy in
| general (due to increased inefficiency).
| esafak wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4HkASndEXo&t=40s [SFW]
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| I immediately thought of Ali G, too. But please don't post
| memes on HN, the community really doesn't want that.
|
| (It is also worth pointing out that Ali G's American drugs
| sketch simply used word-for-word the same jokes as the
| original sketch with a British policeman, and most fans
| regard the original British version as superior.)
| [deleted]
| someplaceguy wrote:
| Huge fan. Thanks for reminding me :)
| jacquesm wrote:
| That sounds like an ok reason to me. But I'll settle for
| 'damage them to the point that they come to their senses'.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| What do you mean "no reason"?
|
| The reason is that the user's data privacy rights come first.
| If interests collide, privacy must come out on top. I'm curious
| on how you could have missed this ideological position that
| powers those regulations after years of headlines after
| headlines about the topic.
| seydor wrote:
| europeans did not go to the streets because they were afraid
| of advertising. politicians ran with it because it sounds
| good
|
| instead they go to the streets because of the awful economy,
| unemployment, inaccessible housing. Still waiting for a pan-
| european affordable housing regulation (not gonna happen
| because EU is run by the boomers)
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| Housing is a local, or at least federal matter. EU is about
| interstate commerce. The advertising/consent regulations
| are about commerce so it makes sense. Pan-EU housing
| regulations wouldn't as those are typically in the domain
| of each country/locality.
| seydor wrote:
| eu already affects the housing market with green
| regulations and housing standards, energy standards,
| policy on residence visas etc.
|
| and communications was not among its mandates either
| everdrive wrote:
| You're really not in a position to speak for all Europeans.
| You're painting a complex issue with a broad brush, and of
| course painting it in such a way that it supports your
| position.
| seydor wrote:
| You don't want to go there. EU is not in position to
| speak about all Europeans either.
| sib wrote:
| If that's all it were, then the trade would be "you can get
| this [free like beer] service if you agree to give up some
| personal data, otherwise you don't get the service."
|
| As it is, the law says "You, company, must give users a
| service for free even if they choose not to give you the
| data."
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| That's akin to taking a law prohibiting the (voluntary)
| sale of organs to mean that everything's free now.
|
| Some things are above the concept of "market". Personal
| data is one of those things. That's the ideology behind
| these laws.
| bckygldstn wrote:
| To make life better for people: the end to which economic
| prosperity is the means.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > the destruction of the entire eu online advertising industry
|
| Sounds like a good start to me.
| rolodato wrote:
| Good riddance. Hope it extends beyond the EU as well.
| seydor wrote:
| it will not, because that is unsustainable. but we can shove
| our head even deeper in the sand and hope so
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's unsustainable to do advertising while maintaing user
| privacy? Someone tell the whole advertising industry from
| 1950 to 2000 or so.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's much less efficient to do mass ads than targeted
| ads. Giving a huge advantage to entrenched firms, and
| cutting off small startups. I guess that's what the EU
| wants though - protecting it's existing elites through
| exorbitant income taxes and regulations like these that
| favours big companies.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| every regulation favours big companies in the trivial
| sense that there's a non zero cost to comply with any
| rule. However this is hardly a reason to not have rules,
| we also don't let startup companies throw waste into the
| river.
|
| Smaller companies aren't somehow inherently virtuous, if
| they can only exist by violating user privacy even more
| so than large companies, I'd rather deal with large
| companies. Small companies aren't an end in itself.
| Banking is another good example of this. Canada has five
| big, heavily regulated banks and has not had one bank
| failure in a century. In the US tax payers bail out SV
| bank
| FredPret wrote:
| I hear you that small companies can suck even harder than
| big ones. But the idea of capitalism is that it's a
| search function, looking for optimal solutions.
|
| So having many firms positioning themselves differently
| is better than having a couple in that you're more likely
| to find a good best solution.
|
| We need some rules, but we need to err on the side of
| fewer not more rules.
|
| My point is that mass ads requires massed capital. There
| will be few, huge, entrenched players. It's much better
| to have a dynamic economy with piles of mom and pops as
| well as a couple of huge companies. This can only happen
| if mom and pop can afford to advertise. This can only
| work with targeted ads.
| danbruc wrote:
| Why is it not sustainable?
| [deleted]
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Because he probably works for a tech company who's main
| revenue is advertising.
| slater wrote:
| Found the online marketing person!
|
| And there are plenty of reasons.
| seydor wrote:
| if you re in tech your salary depends on advertising money
| somewhere along the chain
| someplaceguy wrote:
| > if you re in tech your salary depends on advertising
| money somewhere along the chain
|
| You say that like it's a good thing.
| seydor wrote:
| without online media, computers would be in the sector of
| scientific instruments
| someplaceguy wrote:
| > without online media, computers would be in the sector
| of scientific instruments
|
| Computers were already common household items before
| massive online advertising even existed.
|
| So forgive me if I don't find your arguments convincing
| (and it's not just because of this specific argument).
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I have an enjoyable and well-paying job in the sector of
| scientific instruments.
| JohnFen wrote:
| So your assertion is that there would be no online media
| in the absence of behavioral advertising?
|
| I rather suspect that's incorrect, for two reasons. We
| had plenty of online media before online advertising
| existed at all, and there are many ways of doing
| advertising without it being behavioral.
| seydor wrote:
| Not plenty and nowhere near as popular
| slater wrote:
| Good thing I'm not in tech, then. Pheeee-ew!
|
| edit: but to add some substance:
|
| If you (yes you, OP) are in the online advertising sphere,
| surely you're at the losing end of many battles, not just
| this lil EU thing? I'm thinking the ever-growing prevalence
| of adblockers, tracker-blocking, e-mail trackers being
| blocked etc.?
|
| For you it must be like a game of whack-a-mole, except your
| mallet is increasingly smaller, and the moles' velocity is
| approaching lightspeed
| dale_glass wrote:
| Not mine as far as I know. As a consulting company of
| course we advertise, but not really to normal people. At
| least I don't think I've ever seen online ads for services
| that involve a team of programmers and large sums of money.
| everdrive wrote:
| I'd happily take a hit if it meant removing behavioral
| advertising and tracking from the internet. There's more to
| life than making money, but this isn't really something
| that "people" in advertising usually understand.
| dooglius wrote:
| Unless you have unusually good psychological resistance to
| ads, you're ultimately paying that money back in in one way
| or another, since advertising is a net profitable business.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Sure, but not necessarily the terrible sort of advertising
| being addressed.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Not all tech jobs depend on user targeted advertising. Only
| some big-tech ones.
| seydor wrote:
| that s not how it works though, tech is a big ecosystem.
| At least 3 of the trillion-dollar tech companies depend
| on advertising , which feeds money into the content
| system. The rest of the ecosystem is in the business of
| supporting and distributing this content. Advertising is
| very high in the pecking order of the tech business
| sector. Without it, the internet would be the equivalent
| of USSR era Pravda (and we'd probably have a different
| job)
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Without it, the internet would be the equivalent of
| USSR era Pravda_ Yes, remember USSR Windows XP from the
| era when it came without ads? It was so terrible. /s
|
| Didn't know I was using USSR internet in the '90s-'00s
| before the advent of user targeted advertising.
|
| In fact most websites and products were way better back
| then compared to the mess of today.
|
| _> At least 3 of the trillion-dollar tech companies
| depend on advertising_
|
| Boo-hoo, let me play you and them the world's smallest
| violin.
| MandieD wrote:
| Some of us work for big companies that still basically
| make what they did 50-70 years ago, just faster and
| better now, with the help of computers and data science.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I'm not seeing the benefit from behavioral advertising.
|
| I should be an easy person to target -- I buy techy stuff that
| fits into pretty neat categories.
|
| Yet Amazon seems to be completely unable to figure out some
| very simple patterns, like that if you're not a company, you're
| probably not looking to start a collection of printers, cell
| phones, UPSes or monitors, and that buying one is a sign of
| that you're done with the product category for a while.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively
| improve their products -- chronological feeds, friends and
| follows only, etc is what users have been begging for and being
| ignored, because advertising trash salad is more profitable.
|
| If the long-term effects end up being along the lines of the big
| social corps withdrawing from the EU, I see that as an enormous
| win for that economic zone. The presence of these companies, the
| influence of their products on society and individual mental
| health have been shown to be overall harmful.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| You couldn't be more wrong.
| konschubert wrote:
| I want a feed with recommendations and I want a feed that's not
| just friends and follows.
|
| I don't want my government to tell me what I should like.
| permo-w wrote:
| your government is not telling you what you should like,
| they're making people literally spying on you for profit
| something that you aren't opted into by default. if you want
| people to spy on you for profit, click accept, you still have
| that option
| permo-w wrote:
| I suspect "suggested content" is not going anywhere. the profit
| incentive is now lower, but it's still in these company's
| interests to keep you as engaged as possible for as long as
| possible, and the casino model is the best way they've found to
| do that
| legitster wrote:
| > Interesting how this is forcing these companies to
| objectively improve their products
|
| Is it though? Facebook only used to show me content from
| friends and pages I followed. Now it's a nonstop hose of
| garbage content that only exists to stuff the space between
| poorly targeted ads.
| ta1243 wrote:
| I certainly see that, but I think part of it is how rare it
| is for anyone to actually post on facebook nowadays.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Couldn't that be an effect of algorithmic feeds though?
| What's the point of posting something if the people you
| want to see it probably won't because it's buried under a
| mountain of "content". Or worse, the opposite happens: it
| goes "viral" and people you don't want seeing it see it and
| decide to make you the internet's punching bag for the day.
| avianlyric wrote:
| I'm confused, do you prefer chronological feeds from friends
| and family or not?
|
| GP is saying that feeds driven by friends and family would be
| an improvement to their products, and new EU law will drive
| that behaviour by making it hard for companies like Facebook
| to indiscriminately force black box recommendation algorithms
| on people.
|
| Isn't that exactly what you say you want? And thus you agree
| with this statement
|
| > Interesting how this is forcing these companies to
| objectively improve their products
| legitster wrote:
| > I'm confused, do you prefer chronological feeds from
| friends and family or not?
|
| Yes. I would prefer this.
|
| FB _no longer_ gives me a customized feed. I get a generic
| feed tailored to my demographics - brain achingly dumb
| posts about Disney and Marvel and memes I don 't care for.
| And I am unable to unsubscribe from any of them because
| none of them are based on my preferences.
|
| _This_ has been FB 's response to the EU sanctions (as
| well as dropping user engagement) and is the "Non-
| Personalized feed" that the article is describing.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Yeh but that's a fault of FB not the EU law
| LordShredda wrote:
| This is where a EU based competitor could step in and
| give a decent product, while still complying and
| benefiting the local economy
| [deleted]
| Moldoteck wrote:
| it was just a way to increase profit, because, you know,
| growth growth growth...
| Symbiote wrote:
| I went through the earlier process of objecting to
| personal data processing.
|
| Since then, my feed has been 25% videos of trains and
| model railways, 50% vaguely sexist or sexual jokes
| (blondes, 'little Johnny' etc) or cartoons, 25% posts
| from random Anglophone police forces showing them
| catching speeding cars, or advising to use seatbelts.
|
| As a whole I think it's good evidence that they no longer
| use anything they know about me to show the adverts.
| chongli wrote:
| _I'm confused, do you prefer chronological feeds from
| friends and family or not?_
|
| Yeah I don't get it either. I've unfollowed most of my
| family and friends. I'm not interested in their re-shared
| political pieces. My Facebook feed has morphed into a
| stream of stuff from my hobbies. It's basically replaced
| Reddit for me.
| legitster wrote:
| > My Facebook feed has morphed into a stream of stuff
| from my hobbies. It's basically replaced Reddit for me.
|
| Is there some sort of setting somewhere I am missing? FB
| has ignored my follows and stated preferences and just
| feeds me random trash.
| spunker540 wrote:
| Why do you think complex algos, complex feeds, across large
| search space (all content instead of friends and family) turns
| out to be more profitable? Are ads suddenly more valuable in
| that context? I don't think so. And it's certainly much more
| expensive to operate than a simple chronological feed of
| friends and family.
|
| It comes down to time spent. People spend more time on the apps
| and see more ads. We can argue over whether that's a sign
| people like the app more... but no one is being forced to
| scroll a feed they don't enjoy. Interesting that people "are
| begging for changes" yet using the apps more and more anyways.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Addictiveness is not necessarily an indicator of utility.
| Drug addicts keep going back to heroin even if it's ruining
| their lives.
|
| Just because I feel compelled to scroll and endless,
| algorithmic feed it does not mean that this is how I want to
| use social media or that such usage reflects the role I want
| it to have in my life.
| username135 wrote:
| It's almost a self fulfilling effect at this point.
| itronitron wrote:
| Scrolling a feed doesn't mean a person is watching the feed,
| in fact you could argue the opposite. It seems like the
| content is engineered to be skipped over while still
| registering as a view.
| jancsika wrote:
| > but no one is being forced to scroll a feed they don't
| enjoy
|
| On what do you base this?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling
| andrepd wrote:
| My, thank god people are perfect utility-optimising machines
| and not complex brains with a ton of psychological and
| neurological weaknesses and quirks :-)
|
| If people behaved like you're saying there would be no drug
| addicts or gambling addicts, or even obesity or depression.
| Filligree wrote:
| There's definitely a school of thought that goes "If
| they're gambling, then gambling must be their highest
| value; and they're lying if they say otherwise."
|
| "Revealed preferences", if you want something to search
| for. The most obvious issue is that humans aren't utility-
| maximizers.
| petre wrote:
| I'd really like Meta and TikTok threaten with withdrawal from
| the EU, after subsidizing the EU budget with violation fees.
| The thing is that then it might create a junk information void
| which will be promptly filled by Russian propaganda. They're
| already vehicles for propaganda distribution but more easy to
| regulate and control than lots of other small channels
| spreading misinformation.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Twitter and youtube had chronological feeds for years.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| 5 min on yt shorts and I'm fed a diet of Andrew-Tate, Joe
| Rogan, or if I disagree with this genre and rage-click it
| away, I get left-wing US hate on why aren't you outraged
| about Dave Chapelle - because you should be?
|
| Youtube feed for content discovery of intelligent men has
| died long time ago. It is US propaganda at it's finest but
| for a global audience.
| cmarschner wrote:
| I only get puppies all along
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| YT shorts gives me almost exclusively shuffle dance videos,
| language learning / expat videos and super uplifting stuff
| like this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Yp84ARq7kQ0
|
| I don't want to watch hours of it, but it's definitely a
| positive slice of my day.
| djhn wrote:
| Well out of the people you mention I only recognise Joe
| Rogan By name - never seen anything of his in my
| recommendations. Almost 20 year old YouTube account. I
| watch shorts regularly as well.
| katbyte wrote:
| Are you in the USA? I think it's very country specific
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| good for you if yt knows you and caters to your interest.
| it is well known that if you show up with a new device,
| this isn't the case. and for most newcomers this means
| radicalize in 1 of 2 directions
| pedrosorio wrote:
| here is what I get: track&field, chess, some music
| Tanjreeve wrote:
| And then they enshittified them.
| phailhaus wrote:
| I think the author has the terms "opt-in" and "opt-out" reversed,
| which was a bit confusing. If something is "opt-in", then you
| have to explicitly decide to opt-in, which means that by default
| you won't be included.
|
| A good example of this is organ donation. Some countries have it
| opt-in (i.e., you have to decide to donate), whereas in other
| countries it is opt-out (so you are a donor by default).
| dweekly wrote:
| I think this will evolve advertising in interesting ways.
|
| "Ads 1.0" had a viewpoint of trying to scrape every last little
| bit of data about a user's interests: from their email, messages,
| calendar, search history, friendships, and discussions. There was
| a mental model that you can't really know what's going to
| resonate with a person until you have their life under a
| microscope. This the "surveillance capitalism" take.
|
| There's a view, perhaps not universally shared, that humans may
| not actually be as complicated as all that. That if you have a
| person play a short game, engage in a chat session a few minutes
| long, swipe on people they find interesting, or even just pay
| careful attention to how much of a video someone watches -- that
| discerning their personality and interests is challenging but
| totally viable.
|
| Let's remember: the Cambridge Analytica debacle didn't stem from
| a full dump of someone's private Facebook history - it was mainly
| personality tests that were very quick to complete. It turned out
| that such a quick & casual test is mostly sufficient signal to be
| actionable re: how they were likely to vote and how to influence
| that vote.
|
| In this mode, we'll see the rise of superapps that have rich ways
| of engaging and rich telemetry to discern your interests without
| having to "snoop" on you. They'll just engage you directly.
|
| In this way, privacy is preserved nicely but ads can still be
| well-targeted.
| _nalply wrote:
| I am profoundly anti-advertisement because I believe in the
| pull model: if I want something I ask. So I think about 95% or
| more of advertisement today is annoying if not outright evil.
|
| But your comment got me thinking. Is there a world where
| advertisement is, um, just simply good?
|
| In other words, what makes advertisement bad today and how
| would these superapps make advertisement good?
| dweekly wrote:
| We've definitely seen a rise of "advertising as content"
| where the ad itself is just so good that people will watch it
| for its own right vs having it imposed on them.
|
| The Superbowl is a classic example here - some meaningful
| fraction of those watching are doing so for the ads vs any
| interest in football! But YouTube, TikTok, etc have all seen
| great success in organic/viral campaigns (Old Spice comes to
| mind).
|
| To answer your question - how might a superapp make
| advertisement "good" would probably be not only showing you
| an ad that you're likely to commercially engage (to purchase
| the good/service) based on your observed interests but also
| where the ad itself is something you're likely to find
| interesting/educational/amusing and not annoying, because in
| the latter case you'll like/comment/reshare to percolate it
| "for free" and amplify their campaign. And the
| interestingness can be judged based on your history of
| interactions.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Is there a world where advertisement is, um, just simply
| good?
|
| I think there can be. The fundamental idea of advertising is
| certainly a win-win sort of deal: informing people of
| products and services they may not be aware of.
|
| But most advertising is not that. Most of it is not
| informative or useful for making purchase decisions, most of
| it is manipulative to the extreme, and a lot of it relies on
| surveilling people without their consent. That sort of
| advertising isn't anything I can support.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I can imagine a world where advertising is good in the sense
| that it's always relevant, but such a world places heavier
| weight on ad "fit" than on the advertiser's bid for that ad
| inventory. For example, it's a bad user experience when you
| search for a product/vendor and the first result is their
| competitor instead because they bid more for that ad
| placement.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't see how "good" advertising can exist
| outside of small niches with the economic incentives being
| what they are.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > rich telemetry to discern your interests
|
| and
|
| > privacy is preserved nicely
|
| Seem to be contradictory to me. What am I missing?
| dweekly wrote:
| That the data about you is not flowing from one party to
| another.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Ah, OK. That doesn't really count as "privacy-preserving"
| in my book, but I understand what you're saying.
| Barraketh wrote:
| So one issue that this article glosses over is how contextual
| advertising interacts with attribution.
|
| Essentially, as an advertiser, in order to do effective
| contextual advertisement, you need to have some idea of how ads
| perform in a particular context - on a particular web page or
| app. So what you would really like to say is that "people who saw
| our ad on X were Y% more likely to visit or website, or buy our
| product". However, in order to actually measure that, when a user
| comes to your website you need to know which of your ads they've
| seen. Traditionally, you'd just serve the ad from your domain and
| set a cookie, but now you can't do that.
|
| This is more relevant to brand advertising than "click here and
| buy product X" (direct response), but I think that the people
| saying "oh, just use contextual advertising" are underestimating
| the extent to which GDPR makes contextual advertising difficult.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > However, in order to actually measure that, when a user comes
| to your website you need to know which of your ads they've
| seen.
|
| That may be the case, but so what? If an industry can't
| function without abusing people, I would argue that it
| shouldn't function.
|
| But this doesn't mean the industry can't function. It just
| means that advertising becomes less efficient (i.e., more
| expensive). Which is fine -- if it's more expensive to operate
| in a manner that approaches being ethical, I don't see that as
| a real problem.
| Barraketh wrote:
| You're right, it's just that the word "abuse" is doing a lot
| of work in that statement. I've still never seen any example
| of any person being actually damaged by the "tracking", so
| calling it "abuse" feels pretty harsh.
| mehlmao wrote:
| Off the top of my head: targeted ads towards people who are
| predisposed to gambling addictions or alcoholism
| uxp8u61q wrote:
| Society as a whole is damaged by the tracking. https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think "abuse" is a fair term, but I acknowledge that it's
| emotionally loaded. If a company is spying on me
| (collecting data about me, my machines, or my use of my
| machines without my informed consent), then I think it's
| not out of line to call that abusive.
| hnhg wrote:
| I would rather be the subject of behavioral advertising and keep
| privately encrypted comms than the other way around, but
| apparently the EU has other ideas.
| sealeck wrote:
| Why not both??
| kvdveer wrote:
| That means that we're living in your ideal world then... :)
|
| Right now, behavioral ads are on their last legs, and privately
| encrypted comms are still around. Proposals to limit encryption
| are being thrown around, but they are met with serious
| resistance, and none of them are currently close to
| implementation.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| I have no doubt that Signal is now compromised, since its
| board was overhauled recently and now includes people with a
| US government background. Yes, the encryption model
| theoretically remains secure, but 1) Signal now uploads your
| contact list to their servers and claims it is secured by
| Intel's secure enclave, but multiple vulnerabilities have
| been found in that, and 2) if targeted, most users are
| defenseless against a malicious update. Meanwhile, WhatsApp,
| which is heavily used by EU citizens, claims end-to-end
| encryption, but it leaks metadata and also chat content is
| leaked through the automated backups that most users don't
| disable.
|
| The only question is to what extent Five Eyes members besides
| the US get access to all that. Unfortunately, there doesn't
| seem to be any initiative inside the EU to protect users
| better, while also letting us enjoy an internet without
| behavioral advertising.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| End to end encryption can be implemented in open source
| protocols. More than that - you can be sure it's actually there
| instead trusting marketing.
| riversflow wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| Having thought about this long and hard, lucrative behavioral
| advertising seems like a fair price to pay for an open, free
| (as in beer), internet.
|
| I fear this type of regulation will only serve to make the
| internet become much less equitable.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Without trying to dismiss your opinion: Was the internet
| before Google/ad-tech not "open, free (as in beer)"?
| riversflow wrote:
| Well it certainly wasn't equitable, connected computers
| were the realm of the rich. The problem with free services
| is scaling them to significant portions of the entire
| population.
| phatfish wrote:
| My family wasn't rich and we had a "connected computer"
| in 97/98 before ad-tech really took over. Getting online
| was far less costly than the computer itself.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| EU legislators are experts at coming up with a bunch of good
| regulations but then cancelling it all out with a hefty dash of
| blanket, pro-surveillance legislation.
| johndhi wrote:
| As a lawyer working on these topics, this is a poor phrasing. EU
| regulators don't need to "war" with advertisers - they have
| complete control over them. There's no other side of this war,
| just regulators issuing commands that industry tries to follow.
|
| It's confusing as a war is because the regulators decided not to
| make the law say, 'behavioral advertising is illegal,' and
| instead have spent years slowly awakening to that conclusion, at
| the cost of zillions of dollars in legal fees.
| troupo wrote:
| > There's no other side of this war, just regulators issuing
| commands that industry tries to follow.
|
| We know how well the industry "tries to follow" from how
| industry follows GDPR and how Facebook keeps pretending that
| it's their god-given right to use tracking data in
| advertisment.
|
| > It's confusing as a war is because the regulators decided not
| to make the law say, 'behavioral advertising is illegal,' and
| instead have spent years slowly awakening to that conclusion,
| at the cost of zillions of dollars in legal fees.
|
| It's not confusing. Regulators do what they always do: they let
| companies do whatever companies do. And when the companies keep
| doing shitty things, regulators regulate.
| [deleted]
| sib wrote:
| Unfortunately, it's really the EU regulators at war with
| companies' abilities to make better products.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Advertising is not a product
| goodpoint wrote:
| If anything it's an antiproduct.
| [deleted]
| baq wrote:
| It's as if they actually don't want to introduce unnecessary
| regulation!
|
| Or they weren't paid enough in legal and illegal bribes before,
| if you prefer the cynical take.
| dcsommer wrote:
| I don't really understand singling out the specific combination
| of (advertising, behavioral targeting). The problems with
| behaviorally tailored content delivery products exist even if
| advertisers cannot _directly_ monetize it. I think the focus on
| advertising is a real red-herring.
| suyash wrote:
| Better title suggestion : EU's effort to defend user privacy from
| social media network manipulators
| thih9 wrote:
| > Prior to ATT, every app by default had access to your
| advertising ID, i.e. it was opt-in by default.
|
| Nitpicking, it was not opt in, as the user did not opt in. It
| would be more accurate to say: "consent was implicit", or even
| "the app could access the user's advertising ID without the
| user's consent".
|
| I feel that it's important to distinguish "opt in" as something
| that requires explicit user action.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| I think that's not just a nitpick - it's a misuse of the word.
| "Opt-in by default" should just say "opt-out". You can see the
| same misunderstanding, I think, in the strapline of the
| article.
| [deleted]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Just wanted to say I thought this was an excellent description of
| the Internet ad market and the recent changes that have occurred.
| I don't work in the ad space (though I've worked on consumer
| sites so I have a fairly decent understanding), so I thought this
| article did a great job thoroughly and clearly explaining the
| details.
| legitster wrote:
| Uh... hmmm. I work in the industry and this article is very even
| handed but still a bit off.
|
| We don't really have have a term for "behavioral" advertising. So
| a lot of things are being lumped together that don't necessarily
| fit.
|
| For example, Facebook USED to be highly valued because of the
| amount of "targeting" (again, we don't use the term "behavioral")
| data they had. When you went to tell FB what you liked and didn't
| like they used that. They also kept that valuable data under lock
| and key - they have no interest in sharing it.
|
| Things are a bit different now. Since they and everyone else
| switched to an endless "doomscrolling" experience, all that data
| is worthless. No one keeps their likes up to date, no one engages
| with content. So there's really not that much targeting
| ("behavioral") data out of FB anymore. So native ads are less
| effective, but people look at _much more_.
|
| "Data brokerages" are pretty niche. They don't exist to the
| extent that people think they do. And the data they provide is
| often absolute garbage. Users switch phones, emails, numbers way
| too often to actually get anything resembling a permanent "lock".
| Marketing data ages FAST. Do you go to a store and find they have
| an address that is like 4 moves old? That's kind of the quality
| of brokerage data - it's good for filling in gaps, but is not
| nearly as valuable as first-party data.
|
| So part of what you are seeing is not necessarily advertisers
| responding to upcoming EU regulations, but organic changes in
| what sort of advertising is even effective anymore. Third party
| cookies are not as useful as they used to be, and they cut into
| the big advertisers' monopolies on user data. So they are being
| phased out anyway.
|
| > Attribution / measurement of advertising campaigns became more
| and more precise
|
| This is the exact _opposite_ of what is happening in the
| industry. There are so many different data sources that all
| conflict that data quality is often very dire in most large
| organizations. So there is a ton of fraud and snake oil used to
| justify advertising budgets.
|
| However, where the author hits the nail on the head I think are
| future outcomes: EU markets _are_ being deprioritized (it doesn
| 't hurt that economically, consumer wealth in Europe is falling
| like a rock). Users _are_ opting in to more advertisements
| (Instagram is quickly becoming the QVC of the internet). One
| thing he misses is the rising importance of sponsorships and
| physical marketing..
| JohnFen wrote:
| If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news.
| But how does that square with the fact that the online ad
| industry continues to be at war with people who don't want to
| be tracked?
| jaclaz wrote:
| The two things do not seem to me as contrasting, there is an
| industry gathering the data and selling them (with promises
| and snake-oil) and other people buying those data.
|
| Whether what is sold is accurate or not is another thing, as
| long as it is perceived as "good enough" by the buyers it
| will be bought anyway.
|
| I don't think that many companies (buyers) have the guts to
| stop for - say - 6 months all advertising on a given channel
| and see what happens.
| legitster wrote:
| Again, take the data buying and selling and set it aside.
| That's kind of like a whole separate thing.
|
| Even without data brokers, there is tons of fraud and
| snake-oil. When you are comparing advertising success,
| website traffic, email delivery, product usage, etc -
| actually getting consistent user data between them is a
| nightmare. Everyone has incentive to pump up their own
| numbers. And oftentimes the reporting you are engaging in
| is so complicated that a lot of companies rely on
| consultants to do all of the work.
|
| > I don't think that many companies (buyers) have the guts
| to stop for - say - 6 months all advertising on a given
| channel and see what happens.
|
| Our company had a _broken_ ad run on LinkedIn for 6 months.
| It cost us over $100k. The manager 's response was "Can we
| turn them on again until we fix them? I need to spend the
| budget or I will lose it."
| legitster wrote:
| > If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good
| news.
|
| Ummm. Except for the part where basically a few players will
| have a monopoly on online advertising. It's really a slow
| return to how TV advertising and etc worked.
|
| > continues to be at war with people who don't want to be
| tracked
|
| How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and
| safeguards than there were a decade ago. Let alone the amount
| of tools like AdBlocker or Ghostery or Brave or etc.
|
| Keep in mind that the _awareness_ of your online presence is
| probably growing faster than your actual online presence.
|
| In fact, just like standard of living, it's easy to lose
| perspective of just how fast our entire idea of privacy has
| changed. 100 years ago, hotel beds used to be shared amongst
| strangers. _Within our lifetimes_ , books with every person
| in town's name, number, and address _used to be delivered to
| everyone 's home_.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Except for the part where basically a few players will
| have a monopoly on online advertising.
|
| Not being in the ad industry, this seems a lateral change
| to me. I can see how it would be problematic to others in
| the industry, though.
|
| > How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and
| safeguards than there were a decade ago.
|
| The online ad industry has poured enormous amounts of time,
| money, effort, and even lobbying to bypass efforts from end
| users to prevent being tracked. And that effort continues.
|
| There are more privacy rules and tools than before, but
| that's just because of the back-and-forth nature of the
| battle. Sometimes privacy edges ahead, then the ad
| companies push the gains back or route around them, then
| privacy edges ahead, etc.
|
| > Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's
| name, number, and address used to be delivered to
| everyone's home.
|
| I'm old enough to remember phone books. And I remember that
| people who didn't want to be listed, or only wanted limited
| information in them, had that option. Those books never had
| every person's information. They were, in modern parlance,
| opt-out (although you did have to pay a fee to be omitted,
| which was considered outrageous in the day, but there
| wasn't a way around that.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's
| name, number, and address used to be delivered to
| everyone's home.
|
| This example is only half-hearted at best I feel. Anyone
| touting this as an example also leaves out it was very
| possible to be omitted from this book or have a name other
| than your legal name listed. It is absolutely not possible
| with online tracking. Anyone throwing out this as an
| example of how "not bad" their industry is can take a long
| walk off a short pier.
| cm2012 wrote:
| As someone who works in advertising, this comment is wrong in
| many many ways.
| veave wrote:
| He provided his rationale, you didn't provide shit.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I agree, but it would be better to spell out the many many
| ways than to leave it dangling.
| legitster wrote:
| I don't work in advertising - I just use it as a customer.
|
| To the extent that it is wrong it is because we, as an
| average customer, have a pretty bad customer experience using
| the products. Educate me.
| ppsreejith wrote:
| Seeing many folks ITT questing the value of advertising
| (behavioural/contextual) so some points:
|
| 1. Advertising ideally works as match making by connecting buyers
| to sellers where the seller is unaware of the buyer. (i.e. the
| unknown unknown problem). Companies usually collect
| advertisements and place them on limited ad slots.
|
| 2. In earlier, physical, forms of advertising such as newspapers,
| TV, Retail Stores etc, the same ad used to be shown to everyone
| so ad slots were fewer, much more expensive, and typically only
| big businesses could afford them.
|
| 3. In Digital ads where ads can be personalised to users, there
| are now a lot more ad slots and small businesses could
| effectively reach out to niche buyers who otherwise wouldn't be
| aware of them. The ads are thus cheaper as their budget is better
| focused on the right users.
|
| 4. Digital ads are broadly of 2 types: Intent ads, where the user
| submits their intent (Eg: Google search, Amazon, Maps etc) or
| Discovery ads, where the user is typically not present for any
| single intent (Eg: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc)
|
| 5. Discovery based ads in particular can help open up completely
| new behaviours (in an ideal world) where the seller wasn't aware
| of the buyer's product but found it very useful (i.e. The unknown
| unknown problem)
|
| 6. Both Intent and discovery ads can be harmful to the user.
| Intent ads basically charge a tax to prioritise their results
| (i.e. rent seeking: pay more to jump the queue). Discover ads
| degrade the user experience (i.e They could've shown you
| something more interesting but decided to show you something less
| interesting to you and received money for it from a 3rd party).
|
| Some opinions below:
|
| 1. Making digital ads more like physical ads (Eg: By removing
| personalisation) will probably benefit big businesses by
| increasing ad prices and making it harder to match sellers to
| buyers. It's often small businesses who have a niche which
| increase competition in a market (The Innovators Dilemma)
|
| 2. In the EU's case, the ads can be personalised, just not based
| on behaviour but on context. So this will probably still
| increases prices but still not change digital ads fundamentally
| (i.e. they can still be personalised somewhat to the user) at
| least for now.
| spookie wrote:
| > In earlier, physical, forms of advertising such as
| newspapers, TV, Retail Stores etc, the same ad used to be shown
| to everyone so ad slots were fewer, much more expensive, and
| typically only big businesses could afford them.
|
| Well, my local newspaper shows ads for family businesses, and
| they don't pay that much for it. I've found my local newspaper
| quite interesting as well, diverse in political articles, with
| good cultural recommendations, and generally of higher
| (content) quality than the ones sold nation wide.
|
| I think your point applies to those with most eyes on them,
| but... The same is true in the digital age. We often give too
| much credit to the content we partake in. I don't think much
| has changed on that regard, I just think it's much more
| obtrusive now.
| di4na wrote:
| Note that you have an unshown assumption here.
|
| That none of the participants lie and that you can infer niche
| effectively from the data. And that the ad can deliver the
| behaviour change
|
| The ads are only cheaper if they actually find the niche people
| and change the behaviour. Otherwise you spent money for
| nothing.
|
| The problem is that we have pretty good hunch from a bundle of
| clues that the data and org that validate these assumptions are
| lying.
|
| We also have pretty good bundle of clues from the consumers
| that the ads are not hitting their niche pretty well.
|
| So... We have an industry that breach privacy and lie, for a
| purported benefit based on seemingly false assumptions.
|
| Maybe the results are not achieved.
| ppsreejith wrote:
| 1. Modern digital ads can be very well measured. At least the
| ones focused on direct conversion and not branding.
| Advertisers can measure the impact of their spending
| independently and the results can be seen fairly quickly.
| (Again, not brand advertising).
|
| 2. Advertisement match-making isn't perfect (which is why I
| wrote "in an ideal world"). There is some time and signal
| buffer till we get enough signal to show the right ad to the
| user (if ever). The intentions of the ad platform also have
| to be taken into consideration (Often not the case for Big
| Tech but even here).
|
| 3. Advertisements do have negative consequences. We can also
| target drugs, cults, gambling etc more effectively as well.
| Often the law has to play catch-up with the more
| controversial categories. Advertisers can also dupe/defraud
| buyers with false/misleading advertisements.
| Krasnol wrote:
| You've missed the main negative part: the attack on our
| attention and mindfulness.
|
| I really hope that the results of neurologic research won't
| take much longer to put an end to this disgusting behavior,
| which attacks central parts of the consciousness of every
| victim.
|
| (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Metzinger)
| summerlight wrote:
| Contextual targeting hasn't been a thing because it's not very
| easy to accurately extract structured targeting signals from
| unstructured documents. At best for now, we may extract a set of
| word embedding per page which likely misses precise contexts as
| well as subtle nuances. Now we have LLM which has objectively
| better capabilities to do that job and everyone is now forced to
| invest more into contextual targeting, I guess there will be
| significant developments on targeting systems. The question would
| be how to make super cheap models which can handle both pre-
| processed offline web page context as well as online usage
| contexts.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Meta recently conceded that in-app behavioral advertising in the
| EU can no longer be opt-in by default, marking the end of an era.
| The regulators won, at least for now."
|
| "Opt-in by default". In other words, "opt-out". Is this some
| wordplay designed to "comply" with regulations against opt-out.
|
| Yes, it's opt-in, with the opt-in box already checked to save
| people the trouble.
|
| Sounds like a so-called "dark pattern".
| duringmath wrote:
| The EU's war is on US companies. They wouldn't be playing fast
| and loose with these regulations if their home born companies
| were the ones getting disadvantaged.
|
| They push draconian surveillance laws then claim sainthood when
| they go after Facebook.
|
| I guess you can hate Facebook et al and welcome this stuff but
| it's hard to deny how these laws are basically trade barriers
| aimed at the US tech industry.
| pksebben wrote:
| Funny, then, how as a US citizen I'm all about this.
|
| I don't want to undermine Facebook's business model because I
| hate them. I hate them because they run on a business model I
| want undermined.
|
| There are real, present dangers to having your data hucked
| around like it's going out of style.
|
| <Tinfoil hat section>
|
| Let's also think for a second about the unprecedented level of
| propaganda and general bullshittery this stuff enables.
|
| The whole reason we're so desperately divided right now is
| because the marketing managers in politics have been able to
| see with fine-grit granularity what makes people tick, so they
| know precisely which buttons to push to start the next
| distraction/flamewar every time people start talking about
| dangerous topics like election reform, lobbying, and antitrust
| - all stuff that people on both sides of the aisle have no
| trouble getting behind. Quick, get em talking about guns and
| gays!
|
| </Tinfoil>
| JCWasmx86 wrote:
| No, you just have to follow the regulations. It's no "war on US
| companies" or anything like that. They wrote some good law
| (Albeit it has a few weaknesses), and enforce it now. And if
| you want to do business in the EU, you have to follow them.
|
| I would say it's more a problem of the US companies, if they
| can't do business without violating EU regulations.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| Have you read how vague the laws are. It's all designed to
| extract fines from US companies.
| troupo wrote:
| No. Its all designed against the predators that modern
| companies have become.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| The TL:DR of GDPR is "just don't drack your users without
| their consent". Why is that difficult for US corporations
| to follow? Even '90s web was by default GDPR complaint.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| Yes, the huge and profitable 90s web.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _" Won't someone please think of the big-tech ad
| profits?"_ - You
|
| Why should the web's profitability or lack thereof, be my
| problem as a user? That the SV elite can't buy platinum
| plating on their yachts? Are they sharing that wealth
| with me? Then, good riddance! My privacy is more
| important than your wealth.
|
| There's been profitable SW companies and careers before
| user tracking became the norm. Remember when Windows came
| without any ads and blogs and forums had generic non-
| targeted ads?
|
| Same how the big tobacco industry got kneecapped for our
| own health and the greater good, a similar tech industry
| correction is long overdue. Is this the world you want
| for your kids?
| JohnFen wrote:
| This is a wonderful start. Here's hoping it catches on outside of
| the EU as well!
| jklinger410 wrote:
| What about this free market that everyone talks about?
|
| I don't think there are any protections around the reasonable
| expectation of privacy from a private industry perspective in
| the US.
|
| If you use the internet, or an app, you must protect yourself.
|
| I assume everyone is a capitalist, so wouldn't adding laws here
| somehow subsidize and therefore tarnish the market?
| omginternets wrote:
| Most people balance the ideal of a free market with other
| ideals, such as freedom from corporate predation.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Not to mention that Adam Smith himself made the point that
| there can be no free market in the absence of regulation.
| asu_thomas wrote:
| Small businesses use this kind of advertising as much or
| more, proportionally speaking, as corporations. And with a
| virtual guarantee of worse data security/privacy practices
| when applicable.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If you use the internet, or an app, you must protect
| yourself.
|
| That's easier said than done when it comes to the tracking
| that enables this sort of advertising. What method do you
| suggest?
|
| > I assume everyone is a capitalist
|
| I don't think that's a valid assumption. Also, there are many
| different kinds of capitalists. I'm a capitalist in the most
| basic sense, being an entrepreneur, but I see a lot of things
| asserted under the banner of "capitalism" that I disagree
| with.
|
| > so wouldn't adding laws here somehow subsidize and
| therefore tarnish the market?
|
| I honestly don't understand what you're getting at here.
| asu_thomas wrote:
| > _If you use the internet, or an app, you must protect
| yourself._
|
| As in "choose a strong password"?
|
| As in "never accept a terms of service agreement you disagree
| with"?
|
| As in "read all code before running it"?
|
| What thoughts were going through your head when you typed
| that?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > I assume everyone is a capitalist,
|
| I assure you that I am not.
| Lammy wrote:
| > What about this free market that everyone talks about?
|
| Never existed https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/
| article-1/#ar...
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Does it impinge on your personal freedom, if the government
| decides to put up special privacy protections for groups it
| deems too vulnerable?
| adasdasdas wrote:
| They're not special if they affect everyone
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Liberals lied when they told you about it. There is no free
| market and the whole concept would only work if actors had
| equal powers which is not the case. Why do you think adding
| laws that forbid advertisements in certain configurations are
| a subsidy?
| asu_thomas wrote:
| Why would it? The EU is just protecting its own member states'
| IT industries and its own interest in undermining encrypted
| communications.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| > The EU is just protecting its own partner states' IT
| industries
|
| Doesn't the GDPR go back to a largely grassroots effort,
| including from members of the Pirate Party phenomenon that
| people initially scoffed at? I have no doubt that there has
| been local IT lobbying, but one cannot deny some level of
| true popular will.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes it does. The whole idea that grassroots organizations
| and - gasp - actual voters are behind the DPD and later the
| GDPR is something that some people have problems with, they
| would prefer it if the EU government was playing some shady
| protectionist game rather than to work on behalf of EU
| citizens, who very much appreciate them standing up to big
| telcos and big tech.
|
| Google is so afraid of the EU legislators that they have
| literally plastered the whole of Brussels Airport
| ('Zaventem' for the locals) with wall to wall ads on how
| fantastically pro-end-user privacy they are. It's comical.
| seydor wrote:
| The green party was a small german party with lots of
| access to powerful eu people
|
| I very much doubt this was anywhere near "grassroots" to
| the italians
|
| That is not even how eu politics work
| orwin wrote:
| The pirate party, not the green party, had a bit of
| support in Scandinavia, a lot less in Germany, and in
| France, in 2011, they could barely present 200 candidates
| in 50k areas, and i'm pretty sure their only access to
| 'powerful' people was the condescending sympathy of a
| single billionaire and maybe some secret service.
|
| And a single member in the French parliament (900+) ever
| listened to pro-liberty lobbies like lqdn, and fought for
| it. So yes, it's pretty grassroots.
| seydor wrote:
| the gdpr was initiated by german greens
| asu_thomas wrote:
| > _one cannot deny some level of true popular will_
|
| I have never even heard anyone suggest such a thing.
| Whether a fringe grassroots privacy politics effort existed
| in Sweden at the time is not up for debate. It absolutely
| did, but it was not "popular" by any stretch of the
| imagination. Average voters simply don't care about
| privacy, no matter which country you're in.
|
| The EU was explicitly formed to compete with the US
| economically. Nobody should be surprised if their most
| flagship legislation to date is motivated by the same
| intent.
|
| Furthermore, it is being generous to say the EU is a
| pseudo-democratic institution. If an actually popular
| privacy movement did exist in Sweden at some point, the
| chances of it penetrating the EU are slim to none, and the
| chances of it having any political influence in the EU are
| even lower.
| troupo wrote:
| > It absolutely did, but it was not "popular" by any
| stretch of the imagination. Average voters simply don't
| care about privacy, no matter which country you're in.
|
| Go tell Germans that with their very recent memories of
| Stasi. You can even tell Swedes that with their very
| explicit laws against mixing and accessing various
| government databases.
|
| > Nobody should be surprised if their most flagship
| legislation to date is motivated by the same intent.
|
| Instead of parroting whatever the latest internet
| conspiracy is, you could actually go and read the
| legislation, and have an opinion of your own.
| troupo wrote:
| Ah yes. It should just ... checks notes ... let corporations
| do whatever they want to do
| btbuildem wrote:
| I really wish Canada would grow a pair, and stand up to the big
| social media platforms -- especially in the light of the latest
| shenanigans with the availability of / paying for news.
| Whichever side of that debate you fall on, you have to admit
| that meta et al are in a position to strong-arm a country and
| have an impact on its laws. That's a terrible precedent,
| already having played out in Australia.
|
| Anything that chokes off the flow of money via advertising to
| these companies is a two-tier win in my book.
| legitster wrote:
| Canada is saying FB has to pay if they want news on their
| platform. FB doesn't make any money off of promoting news
| articles for free, so they take news off their platform.
| What's the controversy? Was FB just supposed to pay for news
| out of their own goodwill?
|
| I'm no Meta defender but I'm also very confused about what
| the legislators thought the law was supposed to do.
| troad wrote:
| > I'm no Meta defender but I'm also very confused about
| what the legislators thought the law was supposed to do.
|
| _Cui bono?_
|
| The law was supposed to siphon funding from foreign
| companies to Canadian media, who the Canadian government
| are in bed with. That's why it doesn't appear to make
| sense: it's not public-benefit lawmaking, it's plain ol'
| corruption. Same as the earlier Australian law (there, it
| was Rupert Murdoch leaning on the Coalition government
| which he largely kept in power with his local media
| empire).
|
| It's why the Canadian government is so apoplectic about it;
| Meta's unexpected pushback exposes the law to scrutiny it
| simply cannot withstand, and highlights a rather unsavoury
| side of the government in having ever passed it.
| M95D wrote:
| > what the legislators thought the law was supposed to do.
|
| I suppose it was to protect the (online) newspapers? In a
| more general way, not let the internet become facebooknet?
| nceqs3 wrote:
| >Anything that chokes off the flow of money via advertising
| to these companies is a two-tier win in my book.
|
| So you want paywalls for every service?
| hightrix wrote:
| I want to consume content that was made by people who
| simply want to make that content for the sake of sharing
| information.
|
| I don't care if content that is made by people that only
| make content to make money is pay walled. They can have
| their 10:01 long YouTube videos and recipes with a preamble
| of their life story behind a paywall. Sounds good to me.
| celnardur wrote:
| You don't need to track people to pay for things with ads.
| You can advertise based on the surrounding content pretty
| effectively. It's what TV channels have done for years.
|
| Behavior ads or paywall is a false dichotomy.
| tomComb wrote:
| I'm no fan of the power of big tech, well, except when it
| involves standing fast against the blatant political
| corruption of a government devising a bizarre and nonsensical
| law to funnel money to their corporate buddies (according to
| PBO analysis the most money goes to bell, rogers and Shaw).
|
| Yes, Canada should develop strong privacy and competition
| laws, but I've lost hope that they wouldn't just be whatever
| serves the interests of our local oligopolies.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Big companies are not standing against corruption. They are
| the ones pushing the biggest envelopes.
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