[HN Gopher] Privacy Badger is a free browser extension made by E...
___________________________________________________________________
Privacy Badger is a free browser extension made by EFF to stop
spying
Author : doener
Score : 508 points
Date : 2025-09-28 12:59 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (privacybadger.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (privacybadger.org)
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _Privacy Badger doesn't block ads unless they happen to be
| tracking you; in fact, one of our goals is to incentivize
| advertisers to adopt better privacy practices._
|
| There is an easy solution to this --- it is called "context
| sensitive" advertising. And the idea is simple --- ads are
| prioritized based on what you're currently viewing, not your
| viewing history (aka "personalized ads").
|
| What's wrong with "personalized ads"? They are fundamentally
| rooted in the past --- and the past is often no longer relevant.
| Just because I searched for a car last week doesn't mean I
| haven't bought one already --- so why am I seeing auto ads when I
| search for pet supplies?. But if I'm currently looking at an auto
| dealers web site, the odds are pretty good that I'm still
| interested in buying one.
|
| What's wrong with advertisers? Without any real proof, they have
| bought into this vision of advertising that is illogical,
| ineffective and simply not true in many cases --- the idea that
| personal browsing history is a good indicator of the future.
|
| In the process, they have surrendered their ad budgets to a
| "black box" process that they have no insight into or control
| over and can be easily manipulated against them.
|
| So why do I care? Because we *all* pay a price for this.
| apercu wrote:
| I visit HN often for exactly this sort of thinking.
| bartread wrote:
| Paging YouTube devs. ^^^ This is how YouTube ads should work.
|
| I do not want to see an unskippable 60 second ad for a skincare
| product I do not care about whatsoever in the middle of a video
| about replacing the cambelt on a 90s French hot hatch. I
| especially don't want that ad to bisect a word or sentence.
|
| At least try to show me something that might have some passing
| relevance to what I'm watching, will you, please?
| npteljes wrote:
| Subscribe to Premium! All the Google ads go away in an
| instant. Very cheap for the mental peace you get. Combine
| with SponsorBlock for a greater effect.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Yt premium has a built-in sponsor block now. They just
| recently added it.
| npteljes wrote:
| It kinda does, but it's not as neat as SponsorBlock is.
| SB fully automatically skips the sponsor segment, as soon
| as other SB users define where the it is, of course. With
| YTP's solution, you need to seek, and then click the
| white Skip button.
|
| I do appreciate it, but I listen to YT a lot while doing
| something else, and it's often inconvenient or impossible
| to touch the screen, because my hands are dirty for
| example.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Ah I see. I guess the upside is at least the yt premium
| solution works on all platforms. I mostly watch on my TV
| nowadays.
| npteljes wrote:
| Yes, and that's a definite upside. Supposedly the
| ReVanced app on the phone has SponsorBlock integrated (or
| the functionality, at least), but I don't want to risk my
| account with a third party app. So, I take what I can get
| in the official one.
| alex1138 wrote:
| I'll consider it once they stop their torrent of censorship
| and many other problems
| npteljes wrote:
| Why expect the other party to be perfect, or even good?
| It's a clear business proposal, I give $5, they let go of
| the ads. I can be critical whether or not I'm a
| subscriber, in fact, maybe even more so.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The big problem with contextual ads is that there's not
| always a useful context. What kinds of context-driven ads
| would you insert into a video by a guy who fixes old TVs in
| his garage? Or one who is building an automatic squirrel
| feeder run by a Commodore 64?
| antiframe wrote:
| Electronic components, tools, marker spaces, 3d printers
| and supplies, etc. And that's just thinking of the top of
| my head. With data you could build an effective portfolio
| of ads. More effective than personalized? Probably not
| given that with personalization you can target which price
| band of gear would maximize your return.
| vunderba wrote:
| It's not an either/or problem. If context = sufficient then
| show contextual ads, else fallback to generic garbage.
|
| And fixing old TVs / C64? Could literally show ads for any
| retro game company, or digikey, or pcbway, etc etc.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| (satirical commment but this comes from real frustation of
| auto dubbing videos Automatically :sob: which pissed me off
| so much) (I have become a Hackernews shitposter and I like
| shitposting nowadays)
|
| Youtube Devs: Boss our customers are asking for better ads /
| less focus on AI related stuffs
|
| Youtube Execs: What do you mean? Do you mean we need to make
| videos auto dub and have it on every video available by
| default which can't be closed or being very hard to do so
|
| Youtube Devs: :-/
|
| Youtube Execs: Oh yeah , btw Our share price just rose 15%
| after mentioning AI.
|
| We don't care about sustainability. I want to have a yacht
| larger than my neighbour and this AI crap is doing that shit.
|
| What do you mean we should listen to the consumers, how would
| that increase the stock prices.
|
| Meanwhile the stock market being the most evil hungry
| pretentious group of people a semi quote said by robert
| downey jr): As long as you can make a short term profit, I
| don't care. I want profits, sure it maybe a bubble but its
| profitable and Its not my money anyways, I am selling trading
| courses to young people who are feeling desperate for jobs in
| an economy which has abandoned them.
|
| And guess where the people are going when feeling
| abandoned/frustated... that's right youtube... and guess what
| sort of ads they are getting.
|
| Is this exploitatatitive, Yes, but is it legal, well maybe,
| we got bribery to make it legal.
|
| Oh yeah, also make the person believe in small issues to be
| really big issues and don't really give them an option on the
| one thing fucking them in their asses which is economy and
| the extreme gap between billionaires.
|
| This post is pure copium from my side but I want to let you
| know dear viewer, that when I was a child, I used to wonder
| how we used to have monarchy when I was studying first about
| democracy.
|
| Like, surely, we all know that this is superior form, we
| could reason about it and so on so why did we just adopt
| democracy so recently in terms of human
| history/civilization.. Like there are millions of people and
| some people in between, they could've changed the system... I
| felt as if I was questioning the people of that time, and I
| feel a lot of people feel that way in woman empowerment and
| what not too..
|
| Are we not gonna be questioned by our future generations?
| Think about it, Grandpa where were you when this whole shit
| happened. I hope the answer is better than idk man just
| surviving, since that's what I am doing right now. People
| have become involuntary celibates the way the dating scene is
| so fucked and the dating standards so they might not even
| have grandkids.
|
| We can act tho. We can somewhat share this message or the
| spirit and be emboldened by it. By having less regrets while
| existence, fighting a bit. People have things hard but we
| need to get shit together if we want things better I suppose.
|
| lets just make noise tho and be happy. "The pigs are fools
| because they know too much"
|
| Dear reader, I want to end it in a positive note. I want to
| say that it isn't the system that is fucked. It is all of us
| which are fucked.
|
| Either for staying silent if someone does something wrong.
|
| Or silently doing the wrong thing for ulterior motives.
|
| Yes we are human but dear reader, I feel like corruption only
| goes to top if it reeks from bottom too as well. Its messed
| up but maybe we can all try to acknowledge it and try to just
| know that we are all gonna die anyway and well, giving a
| other unique human smile and happiness might be the most
| precious thing.
|
| Not even sure if I am on the right platform with this one
| given how I see so much AI AI AI bonanza here & well this is
| a YC funded orange website and what I did was another form of
| just some self pleasure of sorts, just a way to distress
| myself from the thing which frightens me while knowing I am
| doing my part.
|
| My point being that, I thought that we have this carefully
| crafted society yet its just a mask of elegance and the
| machine is barely working behind the cogs. Yet, we try to
| hide from this uncomfortable truth when in reality so much of
| it dictates all of us down to the ads which are pushed down
| our throats when we want to watch a video about replacing the
| cambelt on a 90's french hot hatch.
|
| Try to help somebody today please. Donate please. Volunteer
| please. Stop infighting between all of us, we have more
| common than differences, stop bullying, be there for someone.
| Just say thank you to your loved ones, I am going to do it
| just now. Idk man, we take shit for granted. even this mask
| of elegance of society is breaking which we were taking for
| granted.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Personalized ads are more effective than non-personalized ads,
| to try to argue that personalized ads are ineffective is
| incorrect and the "without any proof" claim is absurd seeing
| the amount of specific data they collect on effectiveness
| measures. I used to work for ad tech companies and while that
| led me to hate them more than most people I'm not gonna say the
| data isn't their supporting their effectiveness.
|
| Edit: I'm not familiar with data on context based ads but I'm
| very skeptical they are significantly better in the general
| case. They are already used in things where it makes sense like
| when you're searching for something.
| dartharva wrote:
| The "without any proof" part can be debunked even without the
| deep data, just looking at sales figures and conversion rates
| of personalized ads vs traditional "scatter-shot" approaches.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _traditional "scatter-shot" approaches._
|
| Who are these folks doing this "scatter-shot" approach? How
| do we get some insight into their practices?
|
| The major company doing context sensitive advertising
| nowadays is Amazon. When you search on Amazon, they display
| relevant "sponsored" products that are clearly labeled as
| such.
|
| So how is Amazon's "context sensitive" advertising business
| doing? By most accounts, pretty good actually.
|
| https://www.campaignlive.com/article/amazons-ad-business-
| soa...
|
| The real problem in my opinion is the lack of competition
| to the "personalized" approach. Everyone (except Amazon)
| just accepts "personalized" as the default --- mainly
| because there is no credible, large scale, organized,
| generally available alternative to compare it to.
| hedora wrote:
| There are smaller examples too. The Register was one such
| example the last time I checked. They sell space on
| articles and also run Sponsored Content features.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Amazon is not a good example of contextual ads, though.
| It doesn't generalize:
|
| 1. You can easily argue that these "context sensitive"
| ads are actually personalized ads: They're personalized
| based on the search query you just made! Amazon context
| ads are the same as Google/Apple App Store "context ads".
| Suppliers are paying for higher ranking.
|
| 2. It's a shopping website! Of course those context ads
| are going to have high ROI because they're showing an ad
| relevant to the thing you're shopping for!
|
| When people talk about context ads, they mean "Why
| doesn't Facebook or the local newspaper use context ads?"
| They don't mean "Why doesn't Target put up a coupon for
| beans in the beans aisle?"
| glenstein wrote:
| I don't think I want to argue againsr these ads on the
| basis that there's some alternative form of advertising
| that's more effective.
|
| The problem is with data mining and tracking and nudging
| behavior. I want the things driving my behavior to be
| originating from my own intentions or from my preferred
| sources of inspiration (e.g. friends, family, media I'm
| most interested in consuming.)
|
| You'll never be able to fully control the range of things
| that influence you, but you can still be intentional to a
| meaningful degree. For me that means supporting free and
| open source culture, and using subscription-based model
| rather than an ad-supported model for content. I'm not
| perfectly consistent but I am _somewhat_ , and I think
| I'm operating from a coherent vision of what I believe my
| interests are, which is no small thing.
| dartharva wrote:
| Not an apples to apples comparison really. Amazon owns
| the entire user journey on its platform, which the "ads"
| are an integral part of. They are not analogous to Google
| showing you ads in banners and searches for target pages
| it doesn't own, on platforms it doesn't own. If you want
| to compare Google to those who actually advertise with
| the scatter-shot approach, you compare them with
| traditional advertising providers - ad spaces on TV &
| radio channels, billboard companies etc. That'd be a fair
| comparison because Google is also essentially a seller of
| ad spaces it "rents" from other websites - just in this
| case those ad spaces can simultaneously show different
| advertisements for different clients to each user, based
| on that user's best-match profile. It's a no-brainer that
| Google's approach will yield more leads.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Was the issue trying to monetize your blog, or the way you
| did it? I assume the former.
| unsungNovelty wrote:
| The entire podcast and youtube channel industry relies on
| contextual ads right?
|
| Havent almost everyone including MKBHD said youtube ads
| doesnt give them enough to be used as the only revenue.
|
| Contextual ads are more effective. You type shoes, you get
| shoes ads. It doesnt first need the shoe data and then later
| show shoe ads after you started searching for socks. And with
| no middlemen,more profitable. Duckduckgo employs this IIRC.
|
| Behavioural ads are easy cos you are setting up an api.
| Contextual ads would mean you need a worthy product and
| having to handle your ad folks yourself. You cannot buy a
| domain and immediately start showing ads.
|
| Behavioural ads breakeven because they sell your data. Not
| ads.
|
| The whole reason why new media outlets moved to subscription
| model is bizarre to me. They could've just started doing it
| old school and it would have made news open and more privacy
| friendly.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Of course e.g. MKBHD wants more ad revenue. To do so his
| only option is to put additional contextual ads as part of
| the video itself, so he does. MKBHD has no way to make a
| section of the video target individual viewers based on
| their history. YouTube does, so they do - because they know
| it makes them more money to do it that way.
| unsungNovelty wrote:
| Yes. It makes more money for the middle-man. Neither the
| advertisers nor user gets enough value.
|
| There are so many articles on _why your FB or Google ads
| are not doing well_. They show ads the way THEY can make
| money. Not value for you. This is theh same going when
| you use adwords.
| extra88 wrote:
| In-video sponsors are a form of contextual ad but ads
| inserted by YouTube are personalized (that doesn't mean
| context is not also a factor).
|
| Channels like MKBHD (and LTT) need more revenue than what
| they get from YouTube ads because their expenses have
| greatly increased, particularly staff.
|
| You can't automate contextual ads in news media, otherwise
| you get airline ads next to stories about airplane crashes.
| Or travel ads for places experiencing natural disasters or
| political upheaval. People pairing ads with stories
| increases the labor costs and there's already not enough
| money being paid for actual journalism to increase the cost
| of having ads.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| When 30-40% of your audience uses ad-blockers, it's hard to
| make it on just that.
|
| They won't say this, the children in their audience will
| throw a fit, but tech audiences are _stacked_ with content
| freeloaders.
| hedora wrote:
| Behavioral ads transfer revenue away from publishers and to
| spam sites and the ad platform (google).
|
| Targeted ads are definitely better for the publisher, but
| hard to automate (the matchmaking between publishers and
| advertisers is less automated), but the percentage of ad
| spend that goes to the publisher is much higher, and the
| quality of each ad impression is higher.
|
| There's some win for targeting on the margins, where there's
| no good place to buy ads.
|
| Also, there's an infinite inventory of targeted ad slots
| (like invisible windows displayed by malware or redirect
| spam), which could be better than display ads, where you
| might not be able to spend your marketing budget, at least in
| theory.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't have compelling evidence either way. But, I'd be a
| little skeptical of the data collected by the ad company.
| They are specifically and organization who's entire skill-set
| includes convincing people to pay more, and that they might
| need some new service. I mean it isn't some dirty secret, it
| is exactly what their value proposition is.
|
| The internal data you were viewing and the metrics they track
| are, in part, to show people and convince them to buy the ad
| service. That's like pure uncut ad-guy ad-material.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| There is no grand conspiracy, the ad industry is massive,
| and advertising works. Companies would find out pretty
| quickly that advertising is a waste of money, yet here we
| are decades later and they still ad spend like crazy.
|
| It definitely works, and the more tailored the ads, the
| better they work.
|
| The key is remembering we are talking about average people,
| not nerdy techno anarchists with router level ad blocking
| and a pavolonian vomit reflex to seeing the word
| "sponsored".
| bee_rider wrote:
| It doesn't require a grand conspiracy, just nobody
| deciding to rock the boat. It seems that when academics
| try to measure how effective the ads are, the effect
| sizes are much smaller than expected or it turns out the
| companies haven't run any actual experiments.
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-
| actually-w...
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-
| actually-w...
|
| > The key is remembering we are talking about average
| people, not nerdy techno anarchists with router level ad
| blocking and a pavolonian vomit reflex to seeing the word
| "sponsored".
|
| Sure, dump everyone who is skeptical of ads into this
| niche weird person case, and it makes it easier to ignore
| them. Have you _actually_ talked to these "average
| people," though? My experience has been that most people
| just find ads annoying.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Having worked for these companies some of the data is murky
| (e.g. did these ads they saw earlier lead to them buying
| the product later, perfect attribution is obviously
| impossible) but a lot of it is unambiguous where they
| tracked people straight from clicking on the ad directly to
| a purchase. People have their conspiracies but I've seen it
| in black and white, it's very very clear. The only way I
| could see the data not being clear is in the case of
| outright fraud, which I'm fairly certain wasn't happening
| within our own metrics (as it would not only lead to legal
| liability but even more importantly fuck up the machine
| learning models).
|
| Edit: to be clear I would believe the effect of ads is
| overstated, it's just the idea they are ineffective is
| wrong and people claiming that you can get more effective
| ads without tracking people at all doesn't seem plausible
| based on what I know of the industry. I could see
| contextual ads working in niche use cases (which again we
| already see when searching for products. YouTubers have
| relevant sponsors all the time. We even have affiliate
| marketing, where it's not only contextual but part of the
| content).
| bee_rider wrote:
| Tracking somebody from clicking on the ad, through to the
| purchase doesn't prove that the ad added any value,
| though. The ad only added value if the person wouldn't
| have otherwise found the product.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Yeah I feel you on this. Anecdotal, but I've had plenty
| of Google searches that ended in what technically counts
| as ad conversions, but the exact same link is only three
| items below. The only difference for them is that I
| clicked on the ad version because it is near the top
| typically.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Personalized ads are more effective than non-personalized
| ads, to try to argue that personalized ads are ineffective is
| incorrect
|
| I basically agree with this. I think because people don't
| like personalized ads, there's a temptation to argue they
| don't work.
|
| But I think it's motivated reasoning in this case. And I
| actually think the argument against them is stronger when you
| acknowledge that they are more effective. The privacy issue
| goes hand in hand with the effect that ads collectively have
| to socialize people into consumer behaviors.
| sanex wrote:
| I don't think people understand the price we pay for these ads.
| Companies _generally_ are going to operate so they don't lose
| money. In an industry I am familiar with, I booked someone to
| clean my home. The total cost was somewhere around $350, about
| 125 of that went to the actual person cleaning the house. The
| rest went to a combination of google for the ad and the company
| I booked through. This industry generally has a 35% marketing
| expense (sometimes way more) so somewhere around $75 of what I
| paid to get my house cleaned went to Google. How much better of
| a job could have been done if the cleaner got a 60% raise? How
| much better would the local economy be if all of that money
| stayed local?
| vachina wrote:
| True, also considering the hosting costs of that app
| (probably also on GCP or AWS), and the payment processing
| fee.
| harvey9 wrote:
| I ask friends and neighbours for recommendations for this
| kind of thing. Given you know the industry, what made you
| search online in this case?
| fijiaarone wrote:
| I don't know what an example is.
| ranit wrote:
| The person you are asking doesn't say that they looked and
| found the service through ads. They say that the cleaning
| companies spent 35% on marketing. And therefore everyone
| that uses these services pays 35% more as a result. Not
| only customers that find the service through ads.
| harvey9 wrote:
| It really does read like they booked through a booking
| intermediary although the advert part is less clear. In
| either case, I prefer a personal recommendation if I can
| get one and we both gain by avoiding the intermediary
| fee.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Sorry, this triggers me a little.
|
| Whenever we hire someone, a restaurant to cook our meal, a
| lawyer to help settle our house purchase, a plumber to fix
| the leaky pipe, we almost never know what we are buying
| into.
|
| So e ask people that have previously had someone do those
| jobs for them.
|
| And here's the rub, they have no idea whatsoever on the
| quality of the person being hired, only that they've not
| NOTICED any poor results.
|
| I've highlighted noticed, because, unless the person you
| ask is qualified to assess the work, they have no idea on
| is quality.
|
| And this affects us all, because we use references to guide
| us on people to hire for jobs, and we have no idea on the
| quality of the person providing the reference.
|
| Do we ask for a reference on the person giving the
| reference? Even if we do, do e get a reference on the
| person giving the reference for the person giving the
| reference?
| hebocon wrote:
| > they've not NOTICED any poor results
|
| This is a good enough bar for me to take a chance on
| someone. If I'm satisfied with the result... I proceed.
| My "car guy" has a track record of saving me from over-
| spending on things that don't matter. I don't have a good
| enough reason to try someone else.
|
| There's a infinite regression in your logic that can only
| be broken by either:
|
| 1. trust in the person, or somewhere along the chain of
| referrals or;
|
| 2. simply possessing the skill and knowledge to assess
| the work yourself (but lacking the time, energy, or other
| resources to do it yourself)
| awesome_dude wrote:
| > There's a infinite regression in your logic that can
| only be broken by either:
|
| > 2. simply possessing the skill and knowledge to assess
| the work yourself (but lacking the time, energy, or other
| resources to do it yourself)
|
| Yes, that was the point.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| I noticed this with booking.com. When we asked people for
| recommendations we got way worse sleeping arrangements
| than when using booking.com. I believe that the first
| reason, as you outlined, is that we followed many
| persons' recommendations instead on a single person's,
| but there is also fear of bad online review that keeps
| the service providers on their toes. It's a pity though
| that the 3rd party is needed for this.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| The eBay type feedback (A++++++ would gladly trade again)
| or the yelp problem, where malicious feedback was being
| placed to attack another business.
|
| Heck, businesses will sue you if you put bad feedback on
| glassdoor.
|
| I've even been offered 2 months salary by a business to
| NOT disparage their (toxic) culture on social media.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If we could just get normal people to use the darkweb,
| the latter two issues would disappear.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _And here 's the rub, they have no idea whatsoever on the
| quality of the person being hired, only that they've not
| NOTICED any poor results._
|
| I trust people I know more than I trust machines that can
| be manipulated by people I don't know.
|
| If someone gives you a bad recommendation, you make a
| mental note not to take recommendations from that person
| in the future.
|
| It's how things have been done for the last 5,000 years.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| > It's how things have been done for the last 5,000
| years.
|
| Never move from your home community.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| Honestly, a huge amount of things would be much better
| with the world unironically if we were less rootless and
| didn't feel the need to move around as much as many do
| today.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| I dunno, there's positives and negatives there.
|
| Some cultures have been very destructive when they've
| moved into new places, others have learnt to live in
| harmony with the natural environment.
|
| And, it's new environments that provide us with new
| problems to try to sollve, and that's probably the most
| interesting thing in the universe.
|
| Without moving to places where I have no pre-existing
| social support structures I would never know that the
| problem exists, nor how brittle the current solution
| (asking people for their experiences) is.
| brewdad wrote:
| OTOH, if I had never moved away from the place I grew up
| I would be a much worse person today than the one I
| became. Many people's roots are in places that are highly
| immoral, wrapped in a flag or a bible or whatever
| symbolism suits, but they don't know any better unless
| they are exposed to outside ideas.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm not sure what the other person meant by "less
| rootless," and there's definitely a lot of value to
| moving around and seeing new places. But, is it possible
| that you just put down roots somewhere better?
|
| Like, in the US at least, most licensed professionals are
| not catastrophically bad at their jobs and you can
| probably get by with slightly worse contractors and
| lawyers for most day-to-day issues, for a couple years,
| while you get integrated into the local community.
| Especially in areas that you actually want to move to,
| which tend to have large populations of problem who've
| moved there recently and so are well organized to
| integrate them.
| move-on-by wrote:
| It goes both ways. I asked my neighbors for an HVAC
| reference. They gave me a name, but also a recommendation
| to NOT use a particular company that advertises heavily
| in the area. Although they do not have HVAC
| certifications, their recommendation to avoid a
| particular company was very helpful.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| This is pretty hyperbolic. Not noticing poor results
| _does_ give some idea of the quality of the work done. Of
| course it 's not a perfect system, of course more
| references would be better, of course the work being
| judged by a known expert would be better.
|
| If I know someone who I think is sensible, and they hired
| someone to do some work on something that they know
| nothing about, and the thing was fixed and has kept
| working for a good amount of time, that is useful
| information.
|
| What is your proposed solution to deal with this
| perceived problem? Hire another expert to judge the work
| (how do you know to trust _that_ expert)? Be an expert in
| everything yourself?
| Barbing wrote:
| Reminds me of the potential low value of say a 5-star
| review for a restaurant from an out-of-towner. Was that
| pho soup really that good or just the one they happened
| to have, and it's trounced by any other Vietnamese spot?
|
| Lead to ideas of (certain-to-fail) locals-only review
| websites (that might even enlist folks to do potentially-
| compensated exit interviews with diners leaving
| restaurants).
| m0rde wrote:
| Many people would not have found this cleaner without
| Googling, reading reviews, etc. While that may not be an ad
| directly, it's part of the marketing budget. So what needs to
| change?
| t_mann wrote:
| We've had markets for all sorts of domestic help for
| centuries before we had computers. Perhaps more relatable,
| think about how your parents might have found such help.
| accrual wrote:
| Yep. And sometimes a nearby independant contractor who
| advertises once or twice a week on Facebook or in the
| local newspaper is going to provide a better service
| experience than the one blasting TV commercials on the
| local channels.
| Swizec wrote:
| The nearby contractor who gets all their work through
| referrals is by definition better than the one who needs
| to blast TV ads. The best people are basically never on
| the market.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Not really by definition necessarily. But yes, it does
| seem very likely that referrals are the stronger signal.
|
| In some sparser places there might also only be a couple
| contractors working anyway. Might be able to get
| suggestions just by asking around wherever you get
| permits.
| hedora wrote:
| Craigslist briefly filled this role.
|
| Before that, there were classified ads in papers. Those
| were lightly vetted by the local newspaper. Also, with a
| warrant, the police could generally track down the person
| that placed the ad, which broke a lot of bullshit scams.
| (Like house sitters that don't exist, but are instead
| getting lists of people that will be out of town.)
| Dlanv wrote:
| Why does that matter? You can still do that. Nothing is
| stopping you from finding a local cleaner and negotiating
| the price, like our parents did.
|
| People just don't want to do that
| califool wrote:
| You get it. A couple phrases I live by (taught to me by
| the haggling parents generation); "you never know unless
| you ask" and "the worst they can say is, NO" These don't
| need to just apply to goods and services either. They
| have lead to very interesting and life altering
| experiences that wouldn't have happened if I didn't ask a
| one sentence question.
| wat10000 wrote:
| That tells me that modern advertising isn't making things
| more expensive, otherwise companies that spend money on
| it would be crushed by companies that stick with the old
| ways and can undercut them.
| washmyelbows wrote:
| I mean, the person is looking for a cleaner in their area.
| If all of the cleaning businesses in the area slash their
| marketing budget to 0, the author is not going to fail to
| find a cleaner. All the marketing budget is doing is
| funneling people who want cleaning to one cleaning company
| over another.
| gruez wrote:
| >If all of the cleaning businesses in the area slash
| their marketing budget to 0, the author is not going to
| fail to find a cleaner.
|
| You're right, they'll find whatever incumbent cleaner
| instead. A marketing ban is something that all incumbents
| would love, because they don't need to attract more
| customers whereas marketing is basically the only way
| that upstarts can get a foothold.
| owisd wrote:
| When Google has the monopoly on marketing of cleaning
| companies in your area, from a consumer standpoint it's
| effectively the same as if one cleaning company has the
| local monopoly. The way to win is to pay Google a bigger
| cut than your competitors, so Google just takes the
| incumbency premium as its marketing fee instead of the
| cleaning company.
| accrual wrote:
| > All the marketing budget is doing is funneling people
| who want cleaning to one cleaning company over another.
|
| Yes, and anecdotally I've heard of better experiences
| using services that do not appear on the top search
| results. The reason being that the top results have
| already captured the local market and so are less
| incentivized to respond quickly, accept the job or task,
| or offer a better rate. They already have their business
| and may not need yours.
| hedora wrote:
| You'd be surprised how hard it is to find reliable help
| in our area.
|
| Reputation based platforms are pretty much the only way
| to go around here. (Yelp barely counts at this point.)
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The problem is that Google operates both the buy side and
| the sell side of the monopoly-scale ad platform. They're
| the only party in the transaction who sees what both
| parties are willing to pay (imagine on eBay knowing what
| everyone's max bid was), and sets the algorithm to maximize
| their take from all parties.
|
| They've already lost the case with this, and are currently
| trying to prevent what needs to change: Google must be
| forced to divest large portions of its ad business to
| reintroduce competition in the marketing space.
| gruez wrote:
| >They're the only party in the transaction who sees what
| both parties are willing to pay (imagine on eBay knowing
| what everyone's max bid was), and sets the algorithm to
| maximize their take from all parties.
|
| Is there any evidence of them abusing that knowledge? Or
| was the lawsuit over them having a monopoly and/or
| anticompetitive practices?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I mean, the fact they abused that was illegal and
| anticompetive, yes. This is not a "they are big" problem,
| it's a "they're big and doing illegal price fixing with
| it".
|
| Also, note that Google was caught intentionally deleting
| evidence they were ordered by the court to retain.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| If a buyer has access to the stored knowledge of trusted
| peers--peers who have knowledge of trustworthy sellers--
| supply can meet demand without involving an arms race
| between predatory middlemen.
|
| The modern web was designed by predatory middlemen who want
| a cut of transactions they otherwise have no business being
| involved in. It's a textbook case of rentier capitalism.
|
| So what needs to change is that we need to identify the
| design decisions made by those middlemen, rip them out root
| and branch, and fix the gaps with something that takes as
| an input the trust graph of the users so that the only way
| the middlemen can stay relevant is to personally gain the
| trust of each user whose transaction they've gotten in the
| middle of, and we need to publish the result as a protocol,
| not a platform, so it can be used without us (the authors
| of the protocol) being at risk of becoming the problem
| we're trying to solve.
| gruez wrote:
| >It's a textbook case of rentier capitalism.
|
| I don't get it, is google blocking people from making or
| requesting word of mouth referrals? Or are people
| switching to google ads because it's more convenient? It
| just sounds like you're using "rentier capitalism" to
| describe companies you don't like.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Well yes, that is my main reason for disliking companies.
| And yes, google weighs in on browser standards in myriad
| ways which gives themseves and companies like them the
| ability to elevate the preferences of their customers
| above the preferences of their users.
|
| It would be nice to block them from doing so, but the
| real fix is to give those users something better to use.
| Not much has gone into using technology to amplify the
| innate peer-to-peer trust/distrust mechanisms that we've
| spent millenia evolving such that they scale to the
| demands of our times, and quite a lot (thanks to google
| and friends) has gone into suppressing them.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is one of those 100% insane things. We all pay a massive
| Google tax on every purchase. Marketing has always been a
| part of business, but since Google has engaged in illegal
| anticompetitive behavior, the price has also skyrocketed, and
| we _all pay for it_.
| ruined wrote:
| you can solve this by direct action. when your cleaner
| arrives, explain you'd like to make a direct arrangement next
| time, and ask for their phone number.
|
| no app can patch this 'analog hole' of the gig industry.
| alyandon wrote:
| 100% spot on. I do this with subcontractors quite
| frequently for house related stuff and most of them are
| quite happy to work with me directly.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Wanna really make their day? Pay with cash.
| kenmacd wrote:
| That's really more of a "Want to pay more than your fair
| share of taxes? Help them commit tax fraud".
|
| Cutting Google out of the mix can be seen as a net
| positive for the community. The same can't really be said
| for taxes that go to your local services.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Bulk of income taxes go to the feds. Plumber will still
| pay plenty of sales tax. I'd say the value of having a
| plumber that likes you outweighs what benefits one
| receives from government programs, making it rational to
| stiff the man.
| behringer wrote:
| It's your moral duty to avoid paying tax, if you're an
| American.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Uh? What? Care to explain?
|
| I know it's considered a sport but a moral duty?
| margalabargala wrote:
| Given that America is a democracy, it would appear that a
| majority of Americans do not share your morals, so on the
| contrary it is your moral duty to pay your taxes.
| behringer wrote:
| It's debatable that we're a democracy.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I would bet that in aggregate, more than half the taxes
| you pay go to your state, or some local polity smaller
| than state. Local political entities (county, city, town)
| are absolutely democracies and also have the maximum
| amount of actual impact on your life. The federal
| government is mostly irrelevant.
|
| By avoiding paying taxes, you first and foremost damage
| the community you live in.
| sneak wrote:
| Fun fact: precisely nobody who voted to elect the
| congresspeople who voted for the income tax amendment are
| alive today.
|
| It's a big stretch to assume that the current tax regime
| is related in any way to the will of the group of people
| who are currently subjected to it.
| AngryData wrote:
| I don't know if I would agree with that take taken by
| itself without qualifiers. "if you're American" is doing
| some lifting but could mean anything. But otherwise I
| kind of agree, the average American is getting fleeced
| while the ultra wealthy are avoiding massive tax costs
| while benefiting the most from state infrastructure and
| economic policy.
| sneak wrote:
| Paying in cash in no way helps anyone commit tax fraud.
|
| It is very plainly morally and ethically unambiguous to
| pay in cash.
| gruez wrote:
| That might work for cleaners, but not for rideshare, food
| delivery and vacation rentals, which probably account for
| the vast majority of the "gig economy".
| mrandish wrote:
| Good point. I think lack of competition inflates the
| 'share of revenue' online marketing services can extract.
| And competitive alternatives are nerfed due to the app
| store hegemony and the anti-competitive behavior and dark
| patterns of giants like Google & FB. They needed to nerf
| the open web to maximize their profits, so they did.
| theteapot wrote:
| Owning and renting a vacation accommodation is gig
| economy? Those poor renting seeking plebs.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Ever heard of airbnb?
|
| I think mainly it helps property owners skirt the whole
| "I'm a landlord" thing and all the legal obligations it
| entails.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| You can do the same as the cleaner example. For example
| get the rideshare numer, food delivery etc
| palata wrote:
| I'm not convinced. What makes an app like Uber efficient
| is that it connects you to the closest driver when you
| need it. If you have the number of a driver, they may not
| be working at that time, or they may be far away.
|
| Same for food delivery.
|
| Very different for a cleaner: you never need a cleaner
| "right now", you can schedule it.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Well, sometimes.
|
| Sometimes you want a ride right here right now, other
| times you want "a ride to the airport at 6am tomorrow".
|
| Uber let's you "schedule rides" but that doesn't actually
| do anything to guarantee a ride. You could wind up
| without a driver if you're unlucky.
|
| Directly contacting the person driving you, 12 hours in
| advance, is a much better way to guarantee a ride.
| worik wrote:
| It will not work for discovery, but if you develop an
| ongoing relationship it can work for that.
|
| Apps seem to be very good at bringing people together
| initially, it is up to us to develop relationships after
| that, and apps are not as good for that.
|
| Well. Communication apps are! Signal et el.
| bee_rider wrote:
| For vacation rentals, I have had the owner give me their
| card afterwards.
|
| For food delivery (at least takeout) and ride share, the
| app actually provides a real value; it handles matching
| drivers and customers who want to make a deal _now_ , for
| a service that is not really super differentiated. It
| makes sense to stay in their ecosystem and it seems fair
| that they would be continuing to make a profit.
| jorvi wrote:
| > For food delivery (at least takeout) and ride share,
| the app actually provides a real value
|
| The problem with a food delivery network is that it
| should be a dumb _network_ , not a big profit center. It
| should be like an ISP, with the food being the high value
| packets being delivered to you.
|
| If you look at pre-UberEats times, each restaurant
| employed a couple of delivery drivers on scooters. Some
| might have shared those if the restaurants were on the
| same street, but that's about it.
|
| During low times these drivers would laze around doing
| nothing, effectively wasting productivity, whereas during
| peak times, the restaurant didn't have enough drivers.
|
| Having one delivery driver network for an entire city
| should have made things more efficient and cheaper. But
| because for example in Europe, JustEat-TakeAway and
| UberEats have inserted themselves as the middleman and
| crushed out all competition. Delivery has gotten more
| expensive and inconvenient because of it.
|
| These days delivery costs EUR3-5 and there is a EUR15
| delivery minimum. Before, no delivery charge and there
| was no official minimum. One time one of my friends order
| a 6-pack of cola, although I doubt they would have
| delivered that to the edge of the city.
|
| Worst of it is, restaurants are not allowed to charge
| lower prices themselves than they offer on the app. On
| top of that, JustEat-TakeAway will make a branded store
| site on restaurantname.localdeliverycompany.com, of which
| they get a cut versus if you used the restaurant's own
| site.
|
| If delivery is more expensive, more inconvenient and
| often slower now than before 2015, what 'real value' was
| added?
| davidcbc wrote:
| > If you look at pre-UberEats times, each restaurant
| employed a couple of delivery drivers on scooters.
|
| This was not my experience. Hardly any restaurants had
| delivery other than pizza.
|
| > If delivery is more expensive, more inconvenient and
| often slower now than before 2015, what 'real value' was
| added?
|
| More expensive maybe, but I strongly disagree that it's
| more inconvenient or slower.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The problem with a food delivery network is that it
| should be a dumb network, not a big profit center.
|
| Which food delivery network has big profit margins?
| johnisgood wrote:
| Because rideshare drivers and food deliveries are not
| done by a single individual only, they are in contract
| and they are doing it as an employee of a company.
|
| When you call up your local plumber, you are doing
| everything under the counter.
| n4r9 wrote:
| You used to be able to ring up certain restaurants and
| order a delivery. And it was often free.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| Even for cleaners it might not work.
|
| I know several people who tried this and the cleaner said
| no. I think (not sure) the cleaner signed some kind of
| contract/agreement with the website not to do that and
| worries that if they are discovered they will be banned
| from the site and thus lose the other 90% of their
| income. Dunno how rational that fear is.
| Kranar wrote:
| Every service I know of explicitly bans this practice, so
| unless you can employ the cleaner full time then if they
| accept your arrangement they risk getting fired.
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| I don't know the service company in question, but if it's
| a gig-style matchup, how would the company know what
| their contractors are doing? Also, wouldn't this
| incentivize the contractors to develop as many personal
| relationships as possible, as a hedge against getting
| arbitrarily kicked by the contracting company?
| Barbing wrote:
| Semi-related:
|
| If I'm not mistaken, services like Upwork and Fiverr will
| look at certain metrics for outliers, like repeat
| business in a particular industry. And for eBay, I think
| they'd look into cancelled bids on high-value items and
| check messaging history.
|
| Disclaimer, based on old memories
| Lu2025 wrote:
| I see how Google has a vested interest in hollowing out
| communities to the point you have nobody to text to refer you
| to a cleaner.
|
| I frequently see such requests in a local Facebook group
| aptly named "Exit 10 and 11" (of a highway)
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| > How much better of a job could have been done if the
| cleaner got a 60% raise
|
| Would you have hired or even found the cleaner without the
| company's referral?
| lblume wrote:
| It appears that the cost of referral is much higher than it
| used to be. Fifty years ago, you might have looked in a
| phone book for companies that offer the service you are
| looking for, or gotten a recommendation from a friend.
| Everything was local, basically. I am not stating that this
| was necessarily better or game-theoretically optimal, but
| when the alternative is paying a large share to a big
| corporation for suggesting an option not based on merit,
| but the highest bid in a micro-auction, something tells me
| things have been going in the wrong direction in this case.
| gtowey wrote:
| The capitalist lords demand their tithe. Those superyachts
| aren't cheap, you know.
|
| We are pioneering the new feaudalism.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| Do I recall correctly that this is how early google ads worked?
| I had a blog back then that I decided to monetize (a mistake in
| hindsight, but I needed to learn somehow). I was never on the
| buying side, but my understanding of the process is that there
| were bids for ads to appear on my blog posts based on their
| content.
| DamonHD wrote:
| For the Google AdSense slots I run I have attempted* to turn
| off ALL ad personalisation for ethical reasons, hoping that G
| reverts to purely contextual clues like in the
| GoodOldDays(TM) when my revenue from Google ads was >1000x
| higher also!
|
| *I am not convinced that AdSense is really doing this
| everywhere, in spite of the need to do so for (UK/EU) GDPR
| reasons etc once I have told it to.
| dartharva wrote:
| All advertisers wouldn't be together converging on the
| tracking-based ad model if that were the case. It's being used
| because it's driving more CTR than the traditional way.
|
| Your browsing history gives a more reliable base to segment you
| based on buyer profiles (incl age groups, location, interests),
| figure out your "intent" and target ads based on it. If you
| were to, say, read a random "Top 10 cars with highest resale
| value" article, on its own without historical data it won't be
| of any use for targeting because they don't know if you're
| actually a potential buyer in the market or just some teenager
| passing their time. Showing you those ads will waste their $$
| if it were the latter.
|
| This isn't in any way an endorsement of their intrusive
| advertising practices, by the way - I personally have been
| using ad blockers and aggressively taking every step possible
| to avoid all online advertisements for more than a decade. It's
| just to provide a perspective on why it's not so simple.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Do you have data to back up this claim?
|
| The marketing side of the business is very data driven with
| lots of very intelligent statisticians and scientific testing
| for ad placement and ad content, etc. I cant accept that the
| same people that are manipulating my thoughts and desires with
| algorithmically optimized content never once thought to run
| hypothesis test on performance of targeted ads based on
| browsing history.
|
| I feel like you are making a bold claim, am I misunderstanding?
| fao_ wrote:
| It's very easy to forget to challenge your assumptions, and
| one of those assumptions is "more data = always good"
| awalsh128 wrote:
| I don't think they are necessarily saying that. The data
| driven aspect is to connect users actually wanting or
| interested in something. The measure of this is the
| conversion rate, which is where the user actually clicks on
| the ad. You can also connect these with purchases from the
| ad buyer. The data driven piece is all the variables
| involved in developing functions that maximize this. At
| that point it is basically data science.
| logifail wrote:
| > The marketing side of the business is very data driven with
| lots of very intelligent statisticians and scientific testing
| for ad placement and ad content, etc [...]
|
| We'll see that and raise you: "It is difficult to get a man
| to understand something, when his salary depends on his not
| understanding it." (Upton Sinclair)
| labcomputer wrote:
| Ok, I'll call and raise you the same quote!
|
| If I can cut my company's ad spend by _an order of
| magnitude_ and still get the same sales... you really
| expect me to believe I won 't get a fat bonus next year?
| Really?
| fijiaarone wrote:
| The advertising industry _relies_ on ads being ineffective.
| That way you have spend more on them.
| hedora wrote:
| There's an argument that firms will compete to get better
| performance per dollar spent.
|
| Having said that, look at all the evidence of platform
| fraud, auction fraud and click fraud that came out during
| the Google trial.
|
| They control most of the signals that come back to the
| groups paying for ads, and every level of the system that
| generates that signal (inside and outside of Google) is
| designed to defraud the advertiser (and advertising firms).
| spacebeast wrote:
| Hey, which trial are you talking about? Do you have a
| link to it?
|
| Can you elaborate what you mean about the "system that
| generates that signal (inside and outside of Google) is
| designed to defraud the advertiser (and advertising
| firms)"?
|
| Thanks
| bee_rider wrote:
| Here are some stories from academics that had trouble getting
| companies to actually run rigorous experiments about ad
| effectiveness:
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-
| actually-w...
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-
| actually-w...
|
| I don't think ad companies are really trying to disprove the
| idea that their business model works. The intelligent
| statisticians work for the ad companies or in the ad
| departments of the product-selling companies.
| rogerallen wrote:
| They could at least fall back to "context sensitive" ads like
| you suggest.
|
| Also, don't try to make me feel guilty for having an "ad
| blocker". I don't specifically block ads, instead I have a
| "tracking me without my consent blocker".
| elnerd wrote:
| You are actually more likely to buy a car just after you have
| bought a car than the 10 years you did not need to buy a car.
| Maybe not cars, but I've heard this argument for kitchen
| appliances. If you for some reason return the item you just
| bought, you may buy what you get ads for. Maybe you regret you
| did not get the premium one, especially when they shove it in
| your face afterwards...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Appliances, sure, because having bought a new blender I might
| be tempted to look at replacing that old toaster as well. I'm
| clearly in an appliance-buying mood, and if I'm not, maybe I
| can be persuaded in that direction.
|
| Cars? People who just bought a car are generally upside-down,
| and will not be looking to trade or buy another anytime soon.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Ah yes. The classic internet "tens of thousands of experts and
| hundreds of billion in spend are all wrong and I know better"
| argument.
| hedora wrote:
| Traditionally, these are called display ads.
|
| They require more effort on the part of the site that produced
| the content, but are much more lucrative for that site.
|
| Since most of the internet has been low-effort algorithmic slop
| for the last twenty years, tracking ads are more popular. They
| let low quality sites "steal" audience impressions from higher
| quality sites by displaying ads to people that happened to
| visit both sites.
|
| I think personalized ads / algorithmic targeting (and even
| collecting the datasets that enable it) should be banned.
| andy81 wrote:
| There's no reason that contextual ads couldn't be automated
| at scale.
|
| It might even be easier than automating targeted ads, given
| the incredible level of research and compute that gets wasted
| on targeting.
| oytis wrote:
| It's literally how ads were done before the era of social
| media. Then someone came up with idea that people are annoyed
| with ads because they are not personalised enough
| labcomputer wrote:
| > Then someone came up with idea that people are annoyed with
| ads because they are not personalised enough
|
| No, that was just the public justification so the public
| wouldn't think they're so creepy. The actual reason is that
| they work better.
|
| There's an old saying in the ad biz: "I know I'm wasting half
| my advertising budget. I just don't know which half."
|
| The point of personalized ads is to cut the wasted half.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| Old but possibly relevant:
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dangerous-does-internet-adver...
|
| at any rate - not only context aware ads would be better
| privacy-wise but also probably would be way more lightweight...
| ashu1461 wrote:
| Retargeting ads also add value, it helps in reinforcement in a
| targeted way.
|
| It can be thought of a good way of branding on a cohort of
| customers who would be interested in your product.
|
| Just the definition of interest is something which is skewed.
| npteljes wrote:
| Not much is "wrong" with targeted ads from an advertiser
| perspective - the ROI is more than 2x times higher, compared to
| non-targeted ads: https://thenai.org/press/study-finds-
| behaviorally-targeted-a...
|
| And this number is produced even with the edge case you brought
| up! Targeting is just that good.
|
| Advertising is also not just product advertising, as in, "we
| would like to purchase this exact product". Advertising spaces
| are also contested, so, if one brand doesn't buy it, maybe a
| competitor will. Advertising also increases mindshare - you
| might not buy another new car of course, but people are still
| influenced by what they see. Brands are also bolstering their
| image with ads, regardless if you particularly buy or not. They
| are associating situations, lifestyles, emotions with their
| brand.
|
| What I'm trying to get at is incentive. The incentive is huge,
| and measurable, from the advertiser standpoint. And so, we will
| never get rid of targeted ads, unless we legislate, and
| enforce.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > What's wrong with "personalized ads"? They are fundamentally
| rooted in the past --- and the past is often no longer
| relevant. Just because I searched for a car last week doesn't
| mean I haven't bought one already --- so why am I seeing auto
| ads when I search for pet supplies?. But if I'm currently
| looking at an auto dealers web site, the odds are pretty good
| that I'm still interested in buying one.
|
| So... this intuition is wrong.
|
| Across... well, basically every category of product... the
| product which you are most likely to purchase next is the same
| (or a substitute for or a complement to) the last product you
| purchased. Anyone who has ever worked in retail analytics will
| tell you this.
|
| Advertisers want to minimize their ad spend, so they always try
| to sell you first on the product which you have the highest
| propensity to buy. That's why they want personalized ads. The
| ROI is _astronomically_ higher than for contextual ads.
|
| (That's why the DMA's prohibition on Facebook's pay-or-consent
| model, and HN's general cheerleading of it, is such a joke...
| and that's before you even get into the adverse selection
| problem of people willing to pay to avoid ads)
|
| There are plenty of greedy people in business. Rest assured: If
| cost of personalized grew to the point that ROI dropped below
| contextual ads, advertisers would switch to contextual ads in a
| heartbeat. They're A/B testing _all the time_ , and it wouldn't
| take long at all for them to figure that out.
| eichin wrote:
| So... what's the flaw in the data gathering that leads
| analytics people to believe this? I got a ludicrous amount of
| real estate advertising over the first year after I _bought
| my house_ which was when my "whew, glad I never have to do
| that again" feelings were strongest. Is it just that they
| extrapolate from consumables?
|
| (About the only time I'm in the market for "another one of
| those" is if the first one was so low quality that I returned
| instead of putting up with it - or if I sampled a few things
| to see which one was good and then need enough more to finish
| the project.)
|
| Not claiming that the ads don't have _some_ influence, but
| they pretty much can 't result in another sale...
| wtallis wrote:
| I think the advertising industry has a very long tradition
| of relying on and trusting _bad data_ if it 's the _only_
| data they have. As long as everyone plays along and
| believes that Nielsen ratings or circulation numbers or
| click counts are accurate, you can have a more or less
| functional market for advertising spots. And there 's
| obviously demand for more detailed data, as long as
| advertisers can believe that it is accurate and can make
| their ads more effective.
|
| When the analytics produce an obviously wrong conclusion
| (such as saying you should be shown _more_ car ads
| immediately after completing the purchase of a car),
| everyone involved has a vested interest in believing that
| the analytics must be right in some fashion. Doing
| otherwise would mean taking on a big risk, straying from
| the herd with a different advertising strategy that 's
| guaranteed to take the blame for any drop in sales in the
| near future.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Does that apply across all product categories?
|
| I can totally believe it for something like bananas or
| shirts. If I just bought some there's a good chance I'll soon
| buy more.
|
| But vacuum cleaners? Cars? Who's out there buying those more
| than once every couple of years at most?
| motbus3 wrote:
| I guess all you said is correct but there is one important
| point. Data has being systematically being gathered and
| analysed to have an individual profile of your behaviour and
| needs without people understanding. It is not about knowing how
| much people needs to buy dog biscuits from people searching for
| dogs, but knowing that John Doe is 33 years, has 2 dogs, votes
| to democratic party, has chronic gastritis and commented on the
| internet that he does not agree with current presidential
| policies.
|
| The level of identification and tracking possible today is
| scary even across devices.
| Animats wrote:
| > Privacy Badger doesn't block ads unless they happen to be
| tracking you
|
| In practice, that's most of them. Privacy Badger by itself is
| an OK ad blocker.
|
| Also, you can easily tell Privacy Badger to block sites.
|
| Privacy Badger warns you that blocking certain domains, such as
| Google Tag Manager (otherwise known as Google Backdoor Hostile
| Javascript Injector) will break some sites. In practice, this
| seems not to be a problem. I've had Google Tag Manager blocked
| for years.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Privacy Badger doesn't block ads unless they happen to be
| tracking you;
|
| That's what Unlock Origin is for. I don't know if they intended
| it this way, but seems like they complement each other quite
| well.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| > What's wrong with "personalized ads"? They are fundamentally
| rooted in the past --- and the past is often no longer
| relevant.
|
| This is incorrect. It is often relevant, and it is reflected in
| financial performance of personalized ads. Companies aren't
| doing it for fun. They're doing it because it is wildly
| profitable and that's because people respond more to ads that
| are aware of that "past". You may not have access to the
| "proof" but they absolutely do.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Yea bit of a selection bias. When I buy a vacuum cleaner and
| see a bunch of vacuum cleaner ads after the fact, you think,
| how can they be this dumb
|
| But you don't notice all the ad spend that goes into making
| you want more stuff in general, or all the ads that make you
| feel a little uglier on a subconscious level
| jcul wrote:
| I read something before about how if you've bought a vacuum
| cleaner, maybe there is an issue and you return it, so you
| are still more likely than a random person in purchasing
| one again soon. Not sure if there's ant truth in that.
| Maybe all that matters is that you might click the ad out
| of curiosity as you were recently looking into them...
| lblume wrote:
| Indeed. It might also be the case that the advertisements
| are tailored to the weaknesses of the product you bought,
| such that in case of a defect you might consciously or
| subconsciously remember the advertised vacuum cleaners
| with different properties.
| wtallis wrote:
| > maybe there is an issue and you return it, so you are
| still more likely than a random person in purchasing one
| again soon
|
| I find it hard to believe that return rates are high
| enough for this to be worth the trouble. It's much easier
| to believe that the advertisers are simply reacting to
| _any_ signal for personalization, even if they received
| that signal too late.
|
| > Maybe all that matters is that you might click the ad
| out of curiosity as you were recently looking into them
|
| That serves the interests of Google or any other ad
| network; they don't really care about whether you
| eventually complete the purchase, as long as they get
| paid for your click. But the company actually selling
| vacuum cleaners _should_ care.
| johndhi wrote:
| I understand your argument, but why should we believe you,
| rather than advertisers spending millions of dollars, that this
| other form of ads is more effective than what they do
| currently? Your solution seems easier so it's hard to believe
| they're not doing it for some good reason.
| Xelbair wrote:
| it's not about belief.
|
| It's about rights - my personal right to privacy trumps any
| business reason they think they have to track me.
|
| but to not be an ass - the issue is in accountability - how
| much of traffic to website is genuine? and no side wants to
| take on that risk so we end up with elaborate inefficient
| panopticon for advertisers profit.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| I don't know how you think the ad market works.
|
| Advertisers have an idea who they want to sell to but they
| don't know their browsing habits.
|
| The ad industry collects data about you to see whether you are
| like the person particular advertisers want to sell to and what
| sites you visit. With this information it can display ads
| relevant to you on the sites you visit.
|
| You propose that ads shown should be conditioned just on the
| content of a website, but you are missing out on the fact that
| the content on any one website alone is a poor proxy for the
| type of customer that the advertiser is targeting.
| whatshisface wrote:
| There seems like there would be a pretty simple fix for this:
| first, collect statistics relating demographics to websites.
| This can be done in an anonymized way. Next, publish this
| research and use Bayes' theorem to invert the relationship
| for serving ads.
| ceroxylon wrote:
| It has always annoyed me that a huge online mega-mart (that
| starts with the letter A) will advertise things in the same
| category as ones that have been recently bought, even though
| they are definitely not frequent purchases.
|
| It feels like the algorithm is saying "oh, they bought a
| mattress... they must really love mattresses and want more!",
| when much better ads could be suggested with the wealth of data
| they have on shopping habits.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Yea I don't mind ads for things I'm already looking for.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| If contextual ads are more effective than personalized ads,
| then there is an enormous market waiting to have its lunch
| eaten by a contextual ad provider, which should be able to
| operate at a far lower cost than a personalized ad provider.
|
| That we don't see that happening _at all_ is pretty strong
| evidence that personalized ads are more effective than
| contextual ads. I find it highly unsurprising that ads which
| are based on the history of a person are more effective than
| ones based only on their present. If someone was looking for a
| car last week, odds are that they are still looking for a car.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| > _Just because I searched for a car last week doesn 't mean I
| haven't bought one already --- so why am I seeing auto ads when
| I search for pet supplies?_
|
| This generates a lot of false positives too - if I have bought
| something and I see an ad about it, I may still click at it out
| of curiosity but without any intention to purchase it. (And
| rarely has an online ad or copy induced me to purchase
| something again that I just bought). So Ad networks do have an
| incentive to keep showing me ads that I have clicked, whether
| it would convert into sales or not, because they make money
| from these clicks. I think that's why "personalisation" matter
| to the online ad industry - not because it increases conversion
| and makes more money for the advertisers, but because it does
| increase revenue for the advertisement platform.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > What's wrong with "personalized ads"? They are fundamentally
| rooted in the past --- and the past is often no longer
| relevant. Just because I searched for a car last week doesn't
| mean I haven't bought one already
|
| It's something you do only once every 3-8 years. Targeting you,
| who just bought, wrongly, is better spend than targeting me,
| who isn't interested at all...
|
| A good marketing team has a pretty sophisticated reporting
| pipeline. A bad one is doing a lot of misattribution.
|
| > the idea that personal browsing history is a good indicator
| of the future
|
| Its a good way to build a profile of a customer, and even
| mundane things can be connected together into interesting data
| conclusions... This was almost 15 years ago:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
|
| The reality is this, your consumer behaviors can be VERY
| predictable. No one wants to know that their ghost in the
| machine baahhh's like a sheep following the herd.
| claaams wrote:
| It's really (not) cool when I get personalized ads that imply
| my sexuality or medical conditions when I am sharing a twitch
| stream with colleagues or friends.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > In the process, they have surrendered their ad budgets to a
| "black box" process that they have no insight into or control
| over and can be easily manipulated against them.
|
| No we were slowly forced by Google to surrender to their
| algorithm that use tons of data on users.
|
| I wish it was still easy to just put an ad for car when people
| search << cheap car >>, but the reality is that they keep
| removing features, making things convoluted and on the other
| hand push hard for their automated algorithm.
| midtake wrote:
| Your first mistake is assuming the average person is as
| reasonable as you are.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Redundant (with uBlock Origin) on Firefox:
|
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-don...
| npteljes wrote:
| Thanks for linking this page. I am using multiple of these
| addons, but some years passed since I figured this setup, so it
| was time for reconsider the choices.
| ls612 wrote:
| I've been using both uBO and privacybadger together since time
| immemorial does uBO truly have 100% coverage of all
| privacybadger filter rules?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Each offer something slightly different in various contexts.
| uBlock covers most use-cases, but not every site is
| completely clean.
|
| In general, setting up NoScript per-site filters (like
| blocking XSS, webgl or LAN resources) is more practical in
| some ways, and offers deeper control of resources needed for
| core page functionality.
|
| Often, websites only really require their host, a JavaScript
| CDN, and some media CDN/cloud URI. Modern sites often insert
| telemetry or malware/ad services, and will load much faster
| without that nonsense. =3
| lblume wrote:
| In that case, NoScript seems to really be a misnomer. It
| should be called SomeScript or OnlyScript instead.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Indeed, the per-site rule sets are a relatively recent
| addition, but offer a better application layer filtering
| solution.
|
| Anecdotally, we have seen a correlation between minimal
| resource domain/redirect counts, and site content
| quality. =3
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Believe PB rewrites search engine links, which I don't think
| UBO does, at least by default:
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/new-privacy-badger-pre...
| reaperducer wrote:
| Irony: When I click that EFF link, my firewall goes all
| Browser wants to connect to assets-usa.mkt.dynamics.com on
| TCP port 443
| nvr219 wrote:
| Awkward
| Barbing wrote:
| Wonder when all analytics and ads will be first party
| (presumably years away since it'd ostensibly be so tough
| for the average small site). Enjoying it while it lasts I
| suppose.
| slumberlust wrote:
| Shortsighted. Especially given what happened to adblock.
| kmacdough wrote:
| I use both to good effect. Similar goal, but not the same in
| practice.
|
| UBO is a request-level filtering system. It blocks certain
| requests based on a set of patterns. It's incredibly simple,
| incredibly fast, and surprisingly effective, since most adds
| and trackers are served by 3rd party sources that can be
| recognized. This doesn't catch everything, though, and trackers
| can be sent alongside the core website content. PB provides
| content-level filtering that can catch some things that slip by
| UBO.
| zamadatix wrote:
| PB does things uBO doesn't bother with, but not because uBO
| only has request level filtering. E.g. uBO also employs
| content level filtering and methods such as scriptlet
| injection to neuter/stub specific tracker functionality.
| worldsavior wrote:
| Any extension you add so you can have more privacy is misleading.
| Blocking requests/modifying HTML actually makes you more unique.
| The only real solution for privacy is TOR browser.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| There's a difference between privacy and security
| worldsavior wrote:
| It says _Privacy_ Badger.
| mindslight wrote:
| They are different concepts, but they are reliant on each
| other. Framing them as separate qualities is a false
| dichotomy pushed by webapps that want to market themselves as
| "secure" as they're set up to attack you.
| bogwog wrote:
| This isn't true. If you're the _only_ person in a population
| with the extension, then it could be assumed that the
| connections without any successful fingerprinting are coming
| from you. But if even one other person has the extension, there
| 's no way to tell you apart.
| mosselman wrote:
| When you open a random content website, such as someone's blog
| or The New York Times, it could theoretically have code to
| detect the non-loading of several trackers. However, most
| likely, nobody has gone through the trouble of doing this.
|
| Those trackers, such as Facebook and Google, aren't loaded at
| all, so they are unaware of the request that was not tracked.
|
| What you are advocating is loading those libraries, etc.,
| anyway and allowing them to have their way with your browser
| session. This will always be less private than not doing it.
| Even Tor Browser has all sorts of protections from these types
| of things in place, which you would need far less of if you
| just blocked these tracking libraries to begin with.
|
| Yes, theoretically, my blog or The New York Times could start
| profiling the missing requests and send them over to Facebook
| through the back-end, which is what is referred to as 'server-
| side tracking' in the industry, as far as I know. However, the
| chances of most websites doing this are slim, as it requires at
| least some effort on the server side. The way these websites
| usually do this is by passing along the account information
| they have on you, such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers, etc.
| Even if you signed in on some site with Tor, they'd still send
| those things along if they had gone through this trouble.
|
| Ironically, even Tor relies on clearing cookies, disabling
| JavaScript, and blocking specific requests to protect your
| identity, not just the origin obfuscation. So, the thing you
| are claiming makes it easier to track you, and suggesting that
| Tor is the solution is somewhat at odds.
| npteljes wrote:
| It's two different kinds of privacy in this case. What the
| Badger offers is privacy from the domains run by advertisers.
| What you're talking about is privacy from the first party that
| you visit.
| ytrt54e wrote:
| Privacy Badger and uBlock = a good lightweight combination.
| sedawkgrep wrote:
| Near as I can tell, PB is redundant / unnecessary if you have
| uBlock.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| It's either a page on the github wiki or a tweet by gorhill,
| but they say that ublock origin shouldn't be used with other
| blockers as they can interfere with anti-detection scripts.
| slumberlust wrote:
| Chevy is redundant if you have a Ford, but I'd like to see
| both stay around and be options.
| dicknuckle wrote:
| completely untrue.
| PranaFlux wrote:
| Privacy Badger has been around for YEARS and doesn't cover a lot
| of cases. Use uBlock Origin instead.
| n3storm wrote:
| Happy desktop and mobile user since first release.
| jraedisch wrote:
| Me too!
| commandersaki wrote:
| Do you know what impact it has had? privacytools.io removed it
| from their list as it is superseded by uBlock Origin:
| https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/pull/1864
| AfterHIA wrote:
| Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger
|
| Mushroom, mushroom.
| hmokiguess wrote:
| A snake, a snake, snake.
|
| A snake, Oh it's a snake.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Caveats:
|
| _We are working towards Safari on macOS support. Safari on iOS
| seems to lack certain extension capabilities required by Privacy
| Badger to function properly.
|
| Chrome on Android does not support extensions. To use Privacy
| Badger on Android, install Firefox for Android.
|
| Privacy Badger does not work with Microsoft Edge Legacy. Please
| switch to the new Microsoft Edge browser._
| drnick1 wrote:
| How is this better than blocking all third party content with
| uBlock Origin? Doing so does break a lot of websites, but you can
| always manually enable necessary CDNs if you care.
|
| I doubt Privacy Badger blocks fonts.googleapis.com for example,
| which is a dependency A LOT of websites have and that allows
| Google to track people across the Internet.
| nnf wrote:
| Privacy Badger has three modes for each host (other than the
| origin) from which content is loaded on a page: Allow, Block
| Cookies, and Block Entirely. This lets you load things like
| Google fonts without allowing tracking cookies to be set. Yes,
| Google still sees your IP and user agent and can do some
| tracking that way, but they can't add a tracking cookie (at
| least once Privacy Badger sees them trying to), and you have
| the option to block Google Fonts (and whatever else) entirely
| if you want.
| Minor49er wrote:
| uBlock Origin also has this functionality
| Barbing wrote:
| Is there a solution that'd 1:1 replace Google Fonts with a
| local version?
|
| ...OK, looks like LocalCDN could do this (e.g. with a Firefox
| extension), anyone tried it?
|
| LocalCDN - https://localcdn.org
| lsuresh wrote:
| I currently run Firefox nightly with cross-site cookies disabled
| and all the trackers/scripts blocked. I also run uBlock Origin.
| Any idea if privacy badger is redundant with this set up?
| hn-ifs wrote:
| If you're using ublock origin in advanced mode (really miss
| umatrix) with JavaScript blocked by default, where you whitelist
| things. What does PB offer over and above this?
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