Interesting to find out more options, I didn't know about "location-based ads" setting which was in a different place than the "advertising" menu. Plus, I always wanted location-based ads, so wanted to enable it, but it was already enabled.
Because it used to be worse, from a privacy standpoint. If Apple doesn't supply it, app builders / ad agencies will employ scummier tactics. It's a compromise.
Can you please direct me to where I can learn more about which iOS apps that are screen recording and surveillance?
Screen recording sounds suspicous and even illegal in some jurisdictions. For example, if an app records my screen while I get an incoming iMessage, I can easily argue that being a GDPR violation.
But they weren’t recording the screen — they were eventing user interactions within their own app, including button presses and keypresses. That was described as “effectively screenshotting” by the article, which it is not. It might still be lousy behavior depending on the sensitivity of what users do in the app, but it’s not screen recording (which implies notifications and other apps might be recorded too).
Thank you for the link, I had not seen it before. Reading the follow-up article, the glassbox library appears to be a clear violation of Apple rules -
"In an email, an Apple spokesperson said: “Protecting user privacy is paramount in the Apple ecosystem. Our App Store Review Guidelines require that apps request explicit user consent and provide a clear visual indication when recording, logging, or otherwise making a record of user activity.”
“We have notified the developers that are in violation of these strict privacy terms and guidelines, and will take immediate action if necessary,” the spokesperson added.
In my opinion, unauthorized processing of email addresses or credit cards or other personal information is also a clear violation of the GDPR in the EU. Of course there might be shady companies who willingly tries to break the law, but that is business as usual for law enforcement.
Same for websites. It makes sense for development, however, it remains turned on in most apps. And at least under iOS, there is no actual ad / tracking blocking available for, well, against apps.
You're forgetting that apple 'vets' apps and can reject them for arbitary reasons.
They're in a position to say 'you must use our Ad-ID, and if you don't and we detect you tracking users by other means, then your app will be rejected'.
And as it happens, that's what they do, when they introduced IDFA they started rejecting apps that use other tracking heuristics, including the old UDID system.
>If the ad agencies have better methods for tracking than Apple's Ad-ID then they would be still using those, surely?
Remember that Apple does in fact wield a level of coercive control here. They can ban any app or entire developer they wish at any time. But they do want a solid amount of development going on overall, despite individual exceptions. So just like a real world legal system, there's a dynamic set of cost/tradeoff equations, and practicality/reasonableness really matters. If Apple provides nothing and insists on nothing, the economic incentive to either cheat or simply leave entirely may move to near-requirement for too many developers. If Apple left it as "do whatever" and then slowly added requirements, it's still much harder to police and drive solutions that compromise best.
Offering something official that is less effective then the previous ones but still of enough use to be valuable and also has the advantage of official support and sanction, then blacklisting anything else raising the economic risk, is a fairly tried and true strategy that can be reasonably effective overall. Cheating is disincentivized for those who are legitimate and the search space is reduced, making it turn easier to further enforce. Apple's exact compromise could use more tweaks from the sound of it and evolve better, but the basic concept of "better to have someone troublesome inside the tent pissing out then outside the tent pissing in" seems to apply here too doesn't it?
Furthermore if many users are also more alright with it that too by itself can be a positive, preventing an arms war. Sometimes situations like these can fall into a vicious spiral left on their own: there could be many devs or even advertisers who would prefer to go with less obnoxious and creepy practices, in turn provoking absolute counter attacks, but can't disengage unilaterally when their competitors don't think as long term. Having a higher entity step in and force uniformity won't even make them all unhappy.
> If you are in one group stop pretending the other doesn’t exist. (Also more generally applicable life advice)
I'd argue your friend would be better off not being tracked and just Googling bass guitars whenever he feels the need.
Let's not pretend ads provide any benefit to humans, they manipulate us psychologically with the intent to part us from our hard earned money. In addition, they often drain our batteries at extreme rates and can contain malware and or lead to outright scams.
Your counterpoint to this is you know a guy who likes to see new bass guitars?
Because relevant ads are actually good for users and developers.
If you're served an ad for something you genuinely like and will use it benefits you.
If you're able to bring a user to your service/product that will engage/purchase it benefits you.
I think the point of the ID is (partially) to reduce the chance that ad agencies will use scummy workarounds. If the ID isn't guaranteed to be there, I can see them using the scummy ways instead.
Because Windows is complete garbage from a privacy standpoint. Even disabling every metric visible to the user Microsoft still allows their own ad network to track you. I do not believe they are honest in the user privacy sphere.
Microsoft is an ad network. They went on a buying spree 10 years ago snapping up various ad networks. Windows 10 is riddled with ad tracking software and even when you disable every checkbox during OOBE there are still more that are enabled you cannot disable. If it was such a good idea they wouldn't use it.
I don't trust any of their ideas on protecting your privacy just as I don't trust a fox to guard a hen house.
Ugh, if you're an advocate for privacy, please don't perpetuate the delusion that users actually want "relevant" ads, or that these ids are solely used for that purpose.
I'm suggesting everyone on the planet automatically tunes out ads, what is shown is irrelevant no matter how relevant it is. There is no ad industry on the internet, there is only a tracking industry, the ads are just an excuse. There's no good reason Apple should even provide the id.
This is unequivocally false. Ad spend is so high specifically because advertisements work. Advertisers especially love digital because its so easy to attribute revenue back to their ad spend. Google didn't take in $118B for showing ads because "everyone on the planet automatically tunes [them] out."
Not if you do some mental gymnastics and actively ignore the content. I've gone completely ad-free (sounds like some sugar-free diet, only for the mind), and its a luxury and quality of e-life that is very easy to get used to.
And then you by accident open web in browser without necessary ad-blockers and want to run away from the horrible pathetic mess a lot of internet became.
Its easy - have you ever bought anything via ad? If yes, you support this industry and current state of affairs.
Ads work for whom? This is unequivocal false for whom? I mean we're talking about consumers, right? Do you really have the intuition that the population of ad-block users are generally worse off for it, as ill-performing shoppers? Because if you're not getting an edge on your shopping performance, then who are the ads working for? Coca-Cola?
That's ridiculous. If everyone tuned them out, it wouldn't be a multi billion dollar industry. People pay attention to ads, and they click ads and companies get very rich pushing their products through ads.
What exactly do you think all these companies want with all this tracking data if not to sell you products with ads?
Rational companies wouldn't be paying for ads and minting multi-billionaires in the process if the results did not surpass the costs. The dominance of online advertising over print/television/physical is largely due to metrics and ROI visibility provided by tracking.
They aren't paying for ads, they're paying for access to the tracking data. There's like 20 primary companies that show up in "targeted" ads, that's not by mistake. They're hip to the what the system actually provides (tracking) and are all in.
This is clearly not true. Advertisers are not pouring cash into big piles and setting those piles on fire. If everyone on the planet tuned out ads and what is shown was irrelevant no matter how relevant it is then they would stop advertising in that way.
>I'm suggesting everyone on the planet automatically tunes out ads, what is shown is irrelevant no matter how relevant it is
Makes you wonder what all the people around here who dreamed of and/or do work for Google/Facebook are doing with their lives. Saving the world, I guess.
I use ad blockers for anyone I setup a computer for. Are we all becoming less performant shoppers for it? When one views ads, I ask if you're really getting an information edge.
Not entirely. A lot of lifestyle magazine articles are essentially targeted ads for vetted products (see wedding or parenting magazines)—something that’s understood on both sides of the communication. It lends to serve the purpose of saving time for the reader in finding what they’re looking for to serve a specific need.
The unwanted side effect of that is probably the little greedy voice inside people that causes them to buy even more things they don’t need because all of the dressing up made it sound appealing.
Why? It's basically soliciting vendors but with a broader scope. If you're redoing your kitchen you might actually want to buy a home magazine full of ads. It's Pinterest, which is hugely popular and I use all the time, but for print. Once I find roughly what I want I still have go through the vetting process to make sure it's not trash but it kinda solves the unknown unknown problem.
However, ads when I'm not looking for them can just fuck right off.
Back when I was a kid I used to spend at least as long reading the ads in the computer magazines as I did the articles.
The same went for the gaming magazines (White Dwarf particularly). Even the ads that were just price lists were fascinating, just to see what was available to go and check out on the next trip to a games store.
Back then ads had often a lot of information because they were often the only way to learn something about the product. Today’s ads have almost no information but are designed to arouse emotions.
Computer Shopper magazine in the early 1990's was a huge magazine about 3cm thick printed on cheap paper (like a phone book if people still know what that is...)
It was probably about 95% ads and just a few articles. Before comparison price sites it was a good way to find cheap prices for computer parts
A few weeks ago I noticed someone on the same train reading what seemed like a fashion magazine. As far as I could tell every single page was just a high fashion ad for some luxury good. Just photography, a brand trademark and maybe some captions indicating the edition or product range. It wasn't a catalogue. There were no serial numbers or prices. Just glossy ads as "content" interrupted by regular ads.
Trust me, there's a market for people who want ads.
Sure, but would even the most avid reader of fashion mags want to see fashion ads while looking over their mother's photos on Facebook? Or while browsing a programming sub-reddit?
Because that's what 'relevant ads' usually means in contexts talking about ad blockers.
It's kinda shocking, but if you talk to non techncial people, they just accept adverts as a fact of life and actually quite like it when they show them things they like.
Hell, those "You looked at this item on our website last week, do you still want it?" adverts are incredibly successful. My company does them and they have (for adverts) a fantastic conversion rate.
I like relevant ads, click them, and usually get really happy when I find cool stuff with them. I've bought at least a handful of things off of instagram ads that were relevant to my interests. I also discovered a dog carrier backpack I now use to cycle with my dog to the beach every weekend from a Facebook ad that I got while browsing a dog owner Facebook group.
I'm just leaving enough data to support my assertion because I'm tired of this meme that "nobody looks at ads" or "all ads are bad".
I also deliberately do not use any ad blocking even though I know they exist and would save me bandwidth because I do get value from personalized ads.
You are an exception to the rule, if you are actually honest here (and I have some doubts). Nobody I know, IT or not, likes ads anywhere - TV, radio, side road, internet, whatever.
They actively decrease the experience of everything one does (block the view around the road, forces loud delays into movies, takes space and are absolute nuisance almost anywhere on the web).
I don't hate them, just actively ignore them even if there would be a genuine new porsche being offered for $1. If you want to reach me anyhow, ads are the worst possible way. And I am not alone.
The paper is about predicting ROI, and that is a well known problem in advertising. Now, the same author of the paper you linked, Randall A. Lewis, has a paper about whether advertising actually works [1] and it does, "we find statistically and economically significant impacts of the advertising on sales. "
You are wrong. The second paper is attempting to measure sales lift (with randomization, which many ad campaigns disallow because the marketer doesn’t want to pay for holdout inventory, so it’s not really the same situation that most companies are in when calculating lift), but sales lift does not mean there was positive ROI. You can increase sales all day, but if you’re spending more than you’re making to do so, it’s not effective and usually indicates some unsustainable effect that is more about short term attention than about a meaningful effect of information transfer about a product (and indeed in [1] the authors found a very similar effect - that there is usually positive lift on a customer activity like visits or site shopping cart checkouts, but that among users driven to the site by digital ads, their purchases were far less in total value, enough to more than offset the cost of advertising to drive them).
I think you’re confused. I’m not disputing whether ads create positive lift in intermediate metrics like visits, clicks or sales.
I’m saying the research pretty conclusively shows that despite that created positive lift in intermediate metrics, it does not translate to positive ROI, or a weaker version is that it may create positive ROI but on average marketing campaigns even from the country’s biggest marketers would need to be 10x-1000x larger than they are to even be able to distinguish such wildly incompatible outcomes as +100% ROI vs -50% ROI, to the point that for most companies buying digital ads, they literally have no idea if they are making money or losing money by doing so.
I bought a pair of shoes off of a Facebook ad that I absolutely love. I was expecting them to suck because they came through an ad but was pleasantly surprised.
Vessi shoes. Fully waterproof shoe (I've literally walked into a pool with them) but breathable with a nano-fabric that has holes too small for water molecules but big enough for air/steam. (Supposedly, though H2O sounds like a pretty small molecule so I'm not sure if there's more to it than just size, perhaps viscousness.)
When I go to a popular website right now, with ad blocking disabled, I see, above the fold:
* One huge video ad for a home decoration magazine (I could not care less)
* One animating ad for car loans (no interesting in that)
* One animating flash ad for payday loans (actively hate these)
* One static banner ad for a gas grill (no interest, just got a new one last summer)
These do not seem to be particularly tailored to me, and definitely are not tailored to the content I've chosen to view. They're on the main page of the site. This is why I use ad blockers. Browsing the web without one is agonizing. Also the reason I don't really watch TV anymore, the ads put me off. Maybe I'm in the minority, but it sure seems to me like this minority is growing.
Fair point, I haven't browsed the web without an ad blocker for years. Hopefully, ad networks don't have much of a profile on me. I'd like to keep it that way. I feel that keeping a permanent profile on my interests without my consent is wrong, and I take measures against anyone easily building such a profile on me.
Wouldn't a good compromise be to deliver ads that are relevant to the content I'm viewing, instead of ads tailored to my profile? Search ads, for example, are quite fine in my book, as long as they match my immediate search history instead of a personal profile secretly built over a long time.
has a tool that shows you what data BlueKai/Oracle have on you (or any of their third-party branded and unbranded data suppliers).
> I'd like to keep it that way. I feel that keeping a permanent profile on my interests without my consent is wrong, and I take measures against anyone easily building such a profile on me.
That's why we have (and should have) the GDPR.
These cookie countermeasures are annoying for application developers...
> Wouldn't a good compromise be to deliver ads that are relevant to the content I'm viewing
Yes. These are context-sensitive ads and they're by-far the most common.
Ads that are "irrelevant" are still leaving an impression in people's minds. They will be a subconscious push toward the particular service when time comes for you to need it.
Re: payday loans, I'd guess no one who uses those expected to use them until they did. Not that you ever will. But the point is, your reaction doesn't mean their targeting formula is wrong.
Much of advertising is about building subtle positive associations in people's minds and/or leaving a seed for them to remember when the time comes. Other advertising is like the dog carrier mentioned above -- a specific product and not a brand.
It gets confusing when all advertising is lumped in together in discussions about whether it's "relevant" or not.
Finally a lot of advertising is about keeping brand loyalty for current customers -- make them feel good about their choice so they keep making it.
I make the assumption that advertisers are both smarter than me and understand the human mind better than me.
Some people like to get urinated on and even pay a lot of money for it. It’s abnormal and a bit disturbing to others but I wouldn’t want to make it illegal if that’s what you want to seek out. But I don’t want pee on my face or the faces of those I love.
Well I would actually prefer if ads were relevant. Relevant to whatever it is they're next to though, not necessarily relevant to me (because frankly that's no-ones business).
Same with youtube's recommendations. At this point over half the recommendations are almost entirely irrelevant to what I'm watching, and usually only have a vague connection to something I once watched, except for the ones I'd actually already watched.
I don't want do be influenced by advertisements and as such I opt out of any tracking ("relevant ads"). I do want relevant videos. The two are totally separate topics.
This is an interesting idea. Does anyone know if it has already been A/B tested and shown to generate less profit than say building a recommendation profile for the user? I suspect that in the long term, optimizing ads for user profile would be more profitable, considering that the marketing cycle usually takes time from the initial consideration up to the conversion.
It would be nigh-infeasible to run a test like this. Some researchers at Yahoo! did a study about a decade back [1], and it makes for very interesting reading if you're into that sort of thing. Long story short, it's hard enough to detect when an ad campaign doubles the advertiser's investment. I'd expect that it's even harder to tell whether different kinds of ad campaign work better, since there you would expect a smaller effect size.
That said, if you believe in the wisdom of the crowds, it's at least highly suggestive that the per-impression price of personalized ads tends to be a fair bit lower than that of non-personalized ads. That would seem to imply that the market has come to believe that personalization is less effective than other forms of targeting. Or perhaps that it's most effective for campaigns that, for whatever reason, are expected to be low-payoff.
There's a risk we miss the point point in this discussion (as every time the topic comes up). Even here on HN there are those who don't mind or even actively want "personalised" ads. We'd assume the community here is aware of the wider risks of surveillance or "social manipulation platforms".
The real issue is choice. I personally choose privacy over personalisation. I also understand that businesses need revenue - so I pay for e.g. email rather than using an ad-supported service.
My issue is that I can't choose privacy. I've taken reasonable steps to make it difficult for Google, Facebook at al (ad blockers, pihole, etc.). But I'm realistic to know it's an up hill struggle. I've never had a Facebook account (nor instagram/whatsapp) but I know I'll exist as a shadow profile.
Whether ads are good or bad; whether they're personalised or not, and if so how, isn't the fundamental issue. I've no issue with those that do want personalisation (assuming they understand the consequences obviously). The issue is that I can't choose. And everything G/FB/etc are doing is focused on building ever more walled gardens, so it becomes ever more difficult to exist outside them.
You can't choose because your choice is expensive for the business. The famous saying by Wanamaker is exactly about that: you can waste less money by targeting people potentially interesting in the ads. This is the strength of Google, FB and the rest: they can funnel the money where they're more likely to generate more money and easily convince the accounts they're more efficient than indiscriminate advertising via TV and other channels where you can't profile the customer. You, a disobedient citizen, are just an obstacle in this scheme. This is one big reason any revolution in this area is extremely unlikely to happen.
> easily convince the accounts they're more efficient than indiscriminate advertising via TV and other channels where you can't profile the customer
Does anyone know of any studies here? That is: is there demonstrably better return on "personalised" ads vs. contextualised?
I don't expect Google/Facebook would publish anything other than support for the former. I'd love to think there was some evidence to suggest they're selling snake oil. That may be wishful thinking, but worth asking anyway.
> Same with youtube's recommendations. At this point over half the recommendations are almost entirely irrelevant to what I'm watching
Exactly. I had to disable YouTube Watch History and YouTube Search History [1] for it to stop "recommending" utterly irrelevant videos to the one I'm watching. It still manages to put "related" videos into the middle of search results that have nothing to do with the actual search.
Honestly, the "Not Interested" button does wonders for youtube's recommendations.
I have to prune out a shitty clickbait video from them every couple of weeks, but it almost always gives me videos I'm either interested in or are close enough to what I'm interested in that it's not irritating.
I'd rather pay a few dollars a month for the services I need than be targeted by ads that manipulate my emotions to purchase expensive things I don't want. I'm really happy the market has options for people like me.
Personalization of everything (ads, products, content of any kind) is at an all time high and driven completely by demand. Relevance is the most requested feature by every user and the #2 complaint about ads.
The number 1 complaint is that there are too many ads, a complex combination of lack of other payment models, tragedy of the commons in adtech, and, in a small part, irrelevant targeting.
>> All ads are irrelevant. If they weren't, they would be part of the content itself.
Relevancy has multiple factors, including contextually relevant to the content you are viewing.
I can't help but think that initiatives like ad-id and DoNotTrack are a diversion at best than actually addressing the real problem of user-tracking and malvertising. This is simply Shirky's Principle at work [0].
Some people argue for tougher regulation and laws-- sometimes regulations have resulted in solidifying hegemony of established players (telecom industry, for instance), and laws have worsened the situation when government has its skin in the game (key disclosure laws, for instance).
Can't leave it up to the free markets either, but, they seem to get things right. Privacy oriented alternatives to existing tech today are facing a hard battle given the growth opportunities they leave on the table. I guess, we are poised for a tech breakthrough that'd settle it in favour of the users [1]: I hope when WASM goes non-web and cross platform, all kinds of apps are compiled to WASM and something like uBlockOrigin would simply shut all the trackers down on all platforms at the application layer. Of course, there are problems at other layers, for instance baseband on mobile phones that are known to track location, and ISPs that keep tabs on traffic flowing through their pipes...
The posturing is quite strong with the Mozilla Foundation. It is quite laughable that the Mozilla Foundation would take this "holier than thou" position, considering that they (Foundation + Corporation) are pushing : tracking (telemetry), ADs (Pocket), malware (studies), MITI[1] (Ministry of Truth) and DRM (EME) in Firefox. The sad part here is the fact that the Mozilla community does not seem to care one bit about these issues[2].
At this point, I trust Apple more than I trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Mozilla Project (the bar is quite low for Apple). The Free Software / "Open Source" community has a critical problem with project supporting organizations pushing for things that undermine privacy, security and freedom to make a little bit of cash. If we don't address these issues now, it might not be possible to fix them in the near future.
[2] For those who say : "you can turn these things off", this is not an excuse! Telling a new user that they have to fiddle with `about:config` settings out of the box is not acceptable.
> For those who say : "you can turn these things off", this is not an excuse!
The telemetry is opt-in, the setting pops up once on first run. Ads are not tracking, you may disagree with their very existence, but they're not a privacy concern. Calling studies "malware" is just disingenuous. I don't see what MITI has anything to do with the rest. DRM does suck, but _not_ having it would be literal popular suicide, and in the current browser landscape, would literally mean letting Chromium take over even more than it already does.
consider that many options in firefox are not easily selected in dialog boxes it leaves a lot to be desired.
now what eventually will have be settled is that many sites have adopted the policy of blocking items in turn prohibits use of the site at all. this is the battle I am curious how it will pan out. currently most can be avoided by turning javascript off but someone will find other means to test
It is not "opt-in". The popup tells you to change those settings and if you don't do anything, it is on. Just by unchecking the box in settings
does not turn off all telemetry.
>
Calling studies "malware" is just disingenuous.
I guess you don't remember the "Mr.Robot" incident[1] that we were not suppose to know about and many
did not consent? Pushing an update with "Studies" enabled by default and then pushing this malicious software is not consent!
>
I don't see what MITI has anything to do with the rest.
Mozilla* is not in a position to be calling out other companies when they themselves are guilty of doing the exact same
things.
> I guess you don't remember the "Mr.Robot" incident[1] that we were not suppose to know about and many did not consent?
That was not malware. I will explain this a thousand times if I have to. If you didn't manually configure its secret setting, it did literally nothing.
So, we can install software on people's computers and take up space on their hard drives without their permission now and it's not considered malicious? OK!
> Malicious computer software that interferes with normal computer functions or sends personal data about the user to unauthorized parties over the Internet.
Taking up a couple KBs of space to do nothing is not even comparable. From a moral standpoint, was it okay from them to install that extension on people's computers? No. Was it malware? No.
"Coral is a Mozilla project that builds open-source tools to make digital journalism more inclusive and more engaging."
"Mozilla will develop a web literacy curriculum that addresses misinformation, and will continue investing in existing projects like the Mission: Information teaching kit."
"Later this year, Mozilla will be releasing original research on how misinformation impacts users’ experiences online."
"Imagine: an augmented reality web app that uses data visualization to investigate misinformation’s impact on Internet health. Or, a virtual reality experience that takes users through the history of misinformation online."
Terrifying, really. They want to make an ~educational pamphlet~.
> DRM (EME)
Very reluctantly joining other browsers is 'pushing'?
>
Terrifying, really. They want to make an ~educational pamphlet~.
Cherrypick much?
>
Mozilla’s Open Innovation team will work with like-minded technologists and artists to develop technology that combats misinformation.
Goes hand in hand with:
>
...cognitive bias, belief echos, and algorithmic filter bubbles.
>
Mozilla will partner with global media organizations to do this, and also double down on our existing product work in the space, like Pocket...
I would have less of an issue with this if traditional media organizations where less bias and publicly retracted stories or incorrect information. It seems that, in modern times, the bar for what counts as real journalism is quite low and breaks down when journalists and media organizations won't admit when they are wrong. Mozilla is also a bias organization since Brendan Eich was forced to resign[1] just because he donated his own money to an unfavorable organization. As a gay man, I don't want to live in a world where people are not allowed to express how or why they feel a certain way about a given topic. Mozilla* is not the right organization/company/project to combat the problem of "fake news" or assert that they are.
With the long laundry list of issues with Mozilla, they are not* in any position to take the moral high ground when it comes to the issue at hand (tracking/telemetry) or in the case of being the gatekeeper of the truth.
..
>
Very reluctantly joining other browsers is 'pushing'?
They were in a position to say no but they always seem to take the "everyone else should stop doing this thing except for us" route. The choice they made sure did not help their market share in any way (since that is what many argue).
I think you need to rethink most of your definitions.
> telemetry
is not tracking. please think about this rather than outrightly dismissing it.
> ADs
Ads are a legitimate way of making money on the Internet. I don't like them, but many services we use online are available because of them. Google is what it is because of Ad revenue. Firefox needs ads, there is no other way of surviving. It is laudable however that they are leading the movement in making ads transparent and building a framework of not having intrusive ads.
> malware
This is laughably innacurate. Mr. Robot was a terrible mistake, but it was not malware. Neither does Moz peddle actual malware.
> MITI
what does that have to with any of the above? Also the EU and many other orgs are thinking about the same thing. The Internet is new and we need to think about controlling the spread of misinformation. I'm going to make the best assumptions about you, so I'm hoping you can see why experiments in that realm can be advantageous.
> DRM
Again, a necessity. You cannot watch most news online without DRM. Supporting DRM is not the same as campaigning for DRM, which brings me to the biggest surprise I found in your comment of all the others...
> I trust Apple more than I trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Mozilla Project
...seriously? Apple? Apple is your privacy company? And you were just complaining about telemetry and pushing updates and DRM. Ugh.
"we need to think about controlling the spread of misinformation"
When low information people use subjective words like NEW and NEED it's clear that they are spreading misinformation. So, your comment IS misinformation as the internet doesn't "NEED" to be controlled. If it does, I propose we start by censoring you.
>
...seriously? Apple? Apple is your privacy company? And you were just complaining about telemetry and pushing updates and DRM. Ugh.
My Original comment:
>
At this point, I trust Apple more than I trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Mozilla Project (the bar is quite low for Apple).
Way to take things out of context ;)
>
what does that have to with any of the above? Also the EU and many other orgs are thinking about the same thing. The Internet is new and we need to think about controlling the spread of misinformation. I'm going to make the best assumptions about you, so I'm hoping you can see why experiments in that realm can be advantageous.
I guess maybe you should look into the black mirror before you think about censoring others (I guess you are in favor of speech for me and not for thee). You already spread misinformation with the redaction of my original comment.
> DRM
>>
Again, a necessity. You cannot watch most news online without DRM. Supporting DRM is not the same as campaigning for DRM, which brings me to the biggest surprise I found in your comment of all the others...
More false information being spewed. I have never been prompted to install the DRM plugin on any (mainstream) news site that I've visited. Point me to just one.
If we're going as far as to advocate cycling tracking IDs each month, that means that at each switch, we've lost our "relevant" ads until we rebuild them up. So why not go full on no tracking IDs?
With Apple pushing privacy as being the factor that separates them from their peers, I don't see why they wouldn't have privacy on by default in this area. Apple Ads are gone now, right? So no skin in the game?
This is a foolish idea. Rotating IDs on a slow basis like a month would mean that big players can still easily create statistical cross-device graphs based on traffic and activity patterns and link your rotated IDs (or link them probabilistically). Small players who can’t afford this effort would lose or shift business to Android-only.
Are you talking about the idea you just proposed or the petition at hand? I definitely agree on the former; what you are describing makes absolutely no sense.
>You’ll end up getting a lot of ads for apps and services you potentially already own, which is the “downside”.
Thanks for the clarification.
I don't mind that. I usually get product recs from things like Wirecutter. I much prefer the model where a site I trust recommends a product, then get a referral bonus when I buy it on Amazon than tracking my web history to "nudge" me.
Since iOS can't let me use extensions, many of the tools I use to protect my privacy (adblocker, JS whitelisting, etc) aren't doable on iOS. So even small hacks like this are interesting to me.
140 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] threadInstead of rotating they should just do away with it; it's not like this functionality is to their users benefit.
Screen recording sounds suspicous and even illegal in some jurisdictions. For example, if an app records my screen while I get an incoming iMessage, I can easily argue that being a GDPR violation.
"In an email, an Apple spokesperson said: “Protecting user privacy is paramount in the Apple ecosystem. Our App Store Review Guidelines require that apps request explicit user consent and provide a clear visual indication when recording, logging, or otherwise making a record of user activity.”
“We have notified the developers that are in violation of these strict privacy terms and guidelines, and will take immediate action if necessary,” the spokesperson added.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/07/apple-glassbox-apps/
In my opinion, unauthorized processing of email addresses or credit cards or other personal information is also a clear violation of the GDPR in the EU. Of course there might be shady companies who willingly tries to break the law, but that is business as usual for law enforcement.
Same for websites. It makes sense for development, however, it remains turned on in most apps. And at least under iOS, there is no actual ad / tracking blocking available for, well, against apps.
Which makes Apple's Ad-ID redundant in addition to useless.
They're in a position to say 'you must use our Ad-ID, and if you don't and we detect you tracking users by other means, then your app will be rejected'.
And as it happens, that's what they do, when they introduced IDFA they started rejecting apps that use other tracking heuristics, including the old UDID system.
Remember that Apple does in fact wield a level of coercive control here. They can ban any app or entire developer they wish at any time. But they do want a solid amount of development going on overall, despite individual exceptions. So just like a real world legal system, there's a dynamic set of cost/tradeoff equations, and practicality/reasonableness really matters. If Apple provides nothing and insists on nothing, the economic incentive to either cheat or simply leave entirely may move to near-requirement for too many developers. If Apple left it as "do whatever" and then slowly added requirements, it's still much harder to police and drive solutions that compromise best.
Offering something official that is less effective then the previous ones but still of enough use to be valuable and also has the advantage of official support and sanction, then blacklisting anything else raising the economic risk, is a fairly tried and true strategy that can be reasonably effective overall. Cheating is disincentivized for those who are legitimate and the search space is reduced, making it turn easier to further enforce. Apple's exact compromise could use more tweaks from the sound of it and evolve better, but the basic concept of "better to have someone troublesome inside the tent pissing out then outside the tent pissing in" seems to apply here too doesn't it?
Furthermore if many users are also more alright with it that too by itself can be a positive, preventing an arms war. Sometimes situations like these can fall into a vicious spiral left on their own: there could be many devs or even advertisers who would prefer to go with less obnoxious and creepy practices, in turn provoking absolute counter attacks, but can't disengage unilaterally when their competitors don't think as long term. Having a higher entity step in and force uniformity won't even make them all unhappy.
They also provide the ability to turn it off (set the ID to all 0s) for people like me who spend a little bit of effort to avoid ads.
If you are in one group stop pretending the other doesn’t exist. (Also more generally applicable life advice)
I'd argue your friend would be better off not being tracked and just Googling bass guitars whenever he feels the need.
Let's not pretend ads provide any benefit to humans, they manipulate us psychologically with the intent to part us from our hard earned money. In addition, they often drain our batteries at extreme rates and can contain malware and or lead to outright scams.
Your counterpoint to this is you know a guy who likes to see new bass guitars?
If you're served an ad for something you genuinely like and will use it benefits you. If you're able to bring a user to your service/product that will engage/purchase it benefits you.
I don't trust any of their ideas on protecting your privacy just as I don't trust a fox to guard a hen house.
Ugh, if you're an advocate for privacy, please don't perpetuate the delusion that users actually want "relevant" ads, or that these ids are solely used for that purpose.
Everyone always wants to believe they're above this. You're not, ads work.
Then instagram started showing me ads for small live music events featuring artists I regularly listen to.
I thought I was somehow above it all, but they just hadn't targeted me well enough yet.
And then you by accident open web in browser without necessary ad-blockers and want to run away from the horrible pathetic mess a lot of internet became.
Its easy - have you ever bought anything via ad? If yes, you support this industry and current state of affairs.
You are definitely influenced by ads.
Is it that ads are working -- against you?
What exactly do you think all these companies want with all this tracking data if not to sell you products with ads?
Sayings it's not rational is not an argument against whether it works.
edit: should have just read a few of the replies
Makes you wonder what all the people around here who dreamed of and/or do work for Google/Facebook are doing with their lives. Saving the world, I guess.
Fashion magazines are basically vehicles for ads. Even if you exclude sponsored content, a major draw of such magazines are the full page ads.
Secondly, Mozilla are not blind to the idea that tracking won't go away completely.
The unwanted side effect of that is probably the little greedy voice inside people that causes them to buy even more things they don’t need because all of the dressing up made it sound appealing.
However, ads when I'm not looking for them can just fuck right off.
The same went for the gaming magazines (White Dwarf particularly). Even the ads that were just price lists were fascinating, just to see what was available to go and check out on the next trip to a games store.
It was probably about 95% ads and just a few articles. Before comparison price sites it was a good way to find cheap prices for computer parts
Trust me, there's a market for people who want ads.
Because that's what 'relevant ads' usually means in contexts talking about ad blockers.
It's kinda shocking, but if you talk to non techncial people, they just accept adverts as a fact of life and actually quite like it when they show them things they like.
Hell, those "You looked at this item on our website last week, do you still want it?" adverts are incredibly successful. My company does them and they have (for adverts) a fantastic conversion rate.
I'm just leaving enough data to support my assertion because I'm tired of this meme that "nobody looks at ads" or "all ads are bad".
I also deliberately do not use any ad blocking even though I know they exist and would save me bandwidth because I do get value from personalized ads.
> a dog carrier backpack ... from a Facebook ad that I got while browsing a dog owner Facebook group
That’s not a personalised ad. That’s just an ad. (I.e. it doesn’t need tracking)
But the rest of your (masochistic ;P ) point stands.
They actively decrease the experience of everything one does (block the view around the road, forces loud delays into movies, takes space and are absolute nuisance almost anywhere on the web).
I don't hate them, just actively ignore them even if there would be a genuine new porsche being offered for $1. If you want to reach me anyhow, ads are the worst possible way. And I am not alone.
For example, this was a pretty damning research paper on the topic,
- https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=0180870830661140...
[1] http://www.davidreiley.com/papers/DoesRetailAdvertisingWork....
[1]: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/...
I think you’re confused. I’m not disputing whether ads create positive lift in intermediate metrics like visits, clicks or sales.
I’m saying the research pretty conclusively shows that despite that created positive lift in intermediate metrics, it does not translate to positive ROI, or a weaker version is that it may create positive ROI but on average marketing campaigns even from the country’s biggest marketers would need to be 10x-1000x larger than they are to even be able to distinguish such wildly incompatible outcomes as +100% ROI vs -50% ROI, to the point that for most companies buying digital ads, they literally have no idea if they are making money or losing money by doing so.
How is this not positive ROI?
Vessi shoes. Fully waterproof shoe (I've literally walked into a pool with them) but breathable with a nano-fabric that has holes too small for water molecules but big enough for air/steam. (Supposedly, though H2O sounds like a pretty small molecule so I'm not sure if there's more to it than just size, perhaps viscousness.)
* One huge video ad for a home decoration magazine (I could not care less)
* One animating ad for car loans (no interesting in that)
* One animating flash ad for payday loans (actively hate these)
* One static banner ad for a gas grill (no interest, just got a new one last summer)
These do not seem to be particularly tailored to me, and definitely are not tailored to the content I've chosen to view. They're on the main page of the site. This is why I use ad blockers. Browsing the web without one is agonizing. Also the reason I don't really watch TV anymore, the ads put me off. Maybe I'm in the minority, but it sure seems to me like this minority is growing.
Wouldn't a good compromise be to deliver ads that are relevant to the content I'm viewing, instead of ads tailored to my profile? Search ads, for example, are quite fine in my book, as long as they match my immediate search history instead of a personal profile secretly built over a long time.
You can find out:
http://bluekai.com/registry
has a tool that shows you what data BlueKai/Oracle have on you (or any of their third-party branded and unbranded data suppliers).
> I'd like to keep it that way. I feel that keeping a permanent profile on my interests without my consent is wrong, and I take measures against anyone easily building such a profile on me.
That's why we have (and should have) the GDPR.
These cookie countermeasures are annoying for application developers...
> Wouldn't a good compromise be to deliver ads that are relevant to the content I'm viewing
Yes. These are context-sensitive ads and they're by-far the most common.
Re: payday loans, I'd guess no one who uses those expected to use them until they did. Not that you ever will. But the point is, your reaction doesn't mean their targeting formula is wrong.
Much of advertising is about building subtle positive associations in people's minds and/or leaving a seed for them to remember when the time comes. Other advertising is like the dog carrier mentioned above -- a specific product and not a brand.
It gets confusing when all advertising is lumped in together in discussions about whether it's "relevant" or not.
Finally a lot of advertising is about keeping brand loyalty for current customers -- make them feel good about their choice so they keep making it.
I make the assumption that advertisers are both smarter than me and understand the human mind better than me.
Same with youtube's recommendations. At this point over half the recommendations are almost entirely irrelevant to what I'm watching, and usually only have a vague connection to something I once watched, except for the ones I'd actually already watched.
That said, if you believe in the wisdom of the crowds, it's at least highly suggestive that the per-impression price of personalized ads tends to be a fair bit lower than that of non-personalized ads. That would seem to imply that the market has come to believe that personalization is less effective than other forms of targeting. Or perhaps that it's most effective for campaigns that, for whatever reason, are expected to be low-payoff.
[1]: http://www.davidreiley.com/papers/DoesRetailAdvertisingWork....
The real issue is choice. I personally choose privacy over personalisation. I also understand that businesses need revenue - so I pay for e.g. email rather than using an ad-supported service.
My issue is that I can't choose privacy. I've taken reasonable steps to make it difficult for Google, Facebook at al (ad blockers, pihole, etc.). But I'm realistic to know it's an up hill struggle. I've never had a Facebook account (nor instagram/whatsapp) but I know I'll exist as a shadow profile.
Whether ads are good or bad; whether they're personalised or not, and if so how, isn't the fundamental issue. I've no issue with those that do want personalisation (assuming they understand the consequences obviously). The issue is that I can't choose. And everything G/FB/etc are doing is focused on building ever more walled gardens, so it becomes ever more difficult to exist outside them.
2) Apps are reviewed, there are no workarounds and there is no need to when there is a sanctioned API that does exactly what is necessary.
> easily convince the accounts they're more efficient than indiscriminate advertising via TV and other channels where you can't profile the customer
Does anyone know of any studies here? That is: is there demonstrably better return on "personalised" ads vs. contextualised?
I don't expect Google/Facebook would publish anything other than support for the former. I'd love to think there was some evidence to suggest they're selling snake oil. That may be wishful thinking, but worth asking anyway.
Exactly. I had to disable YouTube Watch History and YouTube Search History [1] for it to stop "recommending" utterly irrelevant videos to the one I'm watching. It still manages to put "related" videos into the middle of search results that have nothing to do with the actual search.
[1] https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols
I have to prune out a shitty clickbait video from them every couple of weeks, but it almost always gives me videos I'm either interested in or are close enough to what I'm interested in that it's not irritating.
"Do I really need that dog backpack? How many times will I ever use it? Would I actually have needed it if I didn't know it existed in first place?"
This seems really short sighted. Why wouldn't folks prefer relevant ads? I certainly do.
More relevant ads = more money = better free services for you.
Would you rather you be forced to watch C.O.P.D medication pre roll ads and ads for meselthelioma ?
There is no gain or advantage in irrelevance.
All ads are irrelevant. If they weren't, they would be part of the content itself. Or the entire content is an ad, and it can be ignored.
>> All ads are irrelevant. If they weren't, they would be part of the content itself.
Relevancy has multiple factors, including contextually relevant to the content you are viewing.
Some people argue for tougher regulation and laws-- sometimes regulations have resulted in solidifying hegemony of established players (telecom industry, for instance), and laws have worsened the situation when government has its skin in the game (key disclosure laws, for instance).
Can't leave it up to the free markets either, but, they seem to get things right. Privacy oriented alternatives to existing tech today are facing a hard battle given the growth opportunities they leave on the table. I guess, we are poised for a tech breakthrough that'd settle it in favour of the users [1]: I hope when WASM goes non-web and cross platform, all kinds of apps are compiled to WASM and something like uBlockOrigin would simply shut all the trackers down on all platforms at the application layer. Of course, there are problems at other layers, for instance baseband on mobile phones that are known to track location, and ISPs that keep tabs on traffic flowing through their pipes...
[0] https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullrun_(decryption_program)
At this point, I trust Apple more than I trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Mozilla Project (the bar is quite low for Apple). The Free Software / "Open Source" community has a critical problem with project supporting organizations pushing for things that undermine privacy, security and freedom to make a little bit of cash. If we don't address these issues now, it might not be possible to fix them in the near future.
[1] Mozilla Information Trust Initiative : http://archive.is/jcJWg
[2] For those who say : "you can turn these things off", this is not an excuse! Telling a new user that they have to fiddle with `about:config` settings out of the box is not acceptable.
The telemetry is opt-in, the setting pops up once on first run. Ads are not tracking, you may disagree with their very existence, but they're not a privacy concern. Calling studies "malware" is just disingenuous. I don't see what MITI has anything to do with the rest. DRM does suck, but _not_ having it would be literal popular suicide, and in the current browser landscape, would literally mean letting Chromium take over even more than it already does.
now what eventually will have be settled is that many sites have adopted the policy of blocking items in turn prohibits use of the site at all. this is the battle I am curious how it will pan out. currently most can be avoided by turning javascript off but someone will find other means to test
It is not "opt-in". The popup tells you to change those settings and if you don't do anything, it is on. Just by unchecking the box in settings does not turn off all telemetry.
> Calling studies "malware" is just disingenuous.
I guess you don't remember the "Mr.Robot" incident[1] that we were not suppose to know about and many did not consent? Pushing an update with "Studies" enabled by default and then pushing this malicious software is not consent!
> I don't see what MITI has anything to do with the rest.
Mozilla* is not in a position to be calling out other companies when they themselves are guilty of doing the exact same things.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/16/firefox-mr-robot-extensi...
That was not malware. I will explain this a thousand times if I have to. If you didn't manually configure its secret setting, it did literally nothing.
> Malicious computer software that interferes with normal computer functions or sends personal data about the user to unauthorized parties over the Internet.
Taking up a couple KBs of space to do nothing is not even comparable. From a moral standpoint, was it okay from them to install that extension on people's computers? No. Was it malware? No.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define+malware&t=h_&ia=definition
Uh huh.
> MITI[1] (Ministry of Truth)
"Coral is a Mozilla project that builds open-source tools to make digital journalism more inclusive and more engaging."
"Mozilla will develop a web literacy curriculum that addresses misinformation, and will continue investing in existing projects like the Mission: Information teaching kit."
"Later this year, Mozilla will be releasing original research on how misinformation impacts users’ experiences online."
"Imagine: an augmented reality web app that uses data visualization to investigate misinformation’s impact on Internet health. Or, a virtual reality experience that takes users through the history of misinformation online."
Terrifying, really. They want to make an ~educational pamphlet~.
> DRM (EME)
Very reluctantly joining other browsers is 'pushing'?
Cherrypick much?
> Mozilla’s Open Innovation team will work with like-minded technologists and artists to develop technology that combats misinformation.
Goes hand in hand with:
> ...cognitive bias, belief echos, and algorithmic filter bubbles.
> Mozilla will partner with global media organizations to do this, and also double down on our existing product work in the space, like Pocket...
I would have less of an issue with this if traditional media organizations where less bias and publicly retracted stories or incorrect information. It seems that, in modern times, the bar for what counts as real journalism is quite low and breaks down when journalists and media organizations won't admit when they are wrong. Mozilla is also a bias organization since Brendan Eich was forced to resign[1] just because he donated his own money to an unfavorable organization. As a gay man, I don't want to live in a world where people are not allowed to express how or why they feel a certain way about a given topic. Mozilla* is not the right organization/company/project to combat the problem of "fake news" or assert that they are.
With the long laundry list of issues with Mozilla, they are not* in any position to take the moral high ground when it comes to the issue at hand (tracking/telemetry) or in the case of being the gatekeeper of the truth.
.. > Very reluctantly joining other browsers is 'pushing'?
They were in a position to say no but they always seem to take the "everyone else should stop doing this thing except for us" route. The choice they made sure did not help their market share in any way (since that is what many argue).
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mozilla-ceo-resignation/m...
And I wasn't happy with the EME decision but how the web goes there is almost entirely chrome's fault at this point.
> telemetry
is not tracking. please think about this rather than outrightly dismissing it.
> ADs
Ads are a legitimate way of making money on the Internet. I don't like them, but many services we use online are available because of them. Google is what it is because of Ad revenue. Firefox needs ads, there is no other way of surviving. It is laudable however that they are leading the movement in making ads transparent and building a framework of not having intrusive ads.
> malware
This is laughably innacurate. Mr. Robot was a terrible mistake, but it was not malware. Neither does Moz peddle actual malware.
> MITI
what does that have to with any of the above? Also the EU and many other orgs are thinking about the same thing. The Internet is new and we need to think about controlling the spread of misinformation. I'm going to make the best assumptions about you, so I'm hoping you can see why experiments in that realm can be advantageous.
> DRM
Again, a necessity. You cannot watch most news online without DRM. Supporting DRM is not the same as campaigning for DRM, which brings me to the biggest surprise I found in your comment of all the others...
> I trust Apple more than I trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Mozilla Project
...seriously? Apple? Apple is your privacy company? And you were just complaining about telemetry and pushing updates and DRM. Ugh.
When low information people use subjective words like NEW and NEED it's clear that they are spreading misinformation. So, your comment IS misinformation as the internet doesn't "NEED" to be controlled. If it does, I propose we start by censoring you.
My Original comment:
> At this point, I trust Apple more than I trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Mozilla Project (the bar is quite low for Apple).
Way to take things out of context ;)
> what does that have to with any of the above? Also the EU and many other orgs are thinking about the same thing. The Internet is new and we need to think about controlling the spread of misinformation. I'm going to make the best assumptions about you, so I'm hoping you can see why experiments in that realm can be advantageous.
I guess maybe you should look into the black mirror before you think about censoring others (I guess you are in favor of speech for me and not for thee). You already spread misinformation with the redaction of my original comment.
> DRM >> Again, a necessity. You cannot watch most news online without DRM. Supporting DRM is not the same as campaigning for DRM, which brings me to the biggest surprise I found in your comment of all the others...
More false information being spewed. I have never been prompted to install the DRM plugin on any (mainstream) news site that I've visited. Point me to just one.
I don't trust Apple, either — they seek to pull everyone into their walled garden and don't respect their users' freedom.
I used one app that banned me arbitrarily by iPhone ID. I’d want to reset it
If we're going as far as to advocate cycling tracking IDs each month, that means that at each switch, we've lost our "relevant" ads until we rebuild them up. So why not go full on no tracking IDs?
With Apple pushing privacy as being the factor that separates them from their peers, I don't see why they wouldn't have privacy on by default in this area. Apple Ads are gone now, right? So no skin in the game?
Are you talking about the idea you just proposed or the petition at hand? I definitely agree on the former; what you are describing makes absolutely no sense.
It’s not a perfect fix but adding a once a month calendar todo seems like a good short term fix for the privacy conscious.
You’ll end up getting a lot of ads for apps and services you potentially already own, which is the “downside”.
FWIW: Worked in mobile ad tech for five years so I know this space.
Thanks for the clarification.
I don't mind that. I usually get product recs from things like Wirecutter. I much prefer the model where a site I trust recommends a product, then get a referral bonus when I buy it on Amazon than tracking my web history to "nudge" me.
Since iOS can't let me use extensions, many of the tools I use to protect my privacy (adblocker, JS whitelisting, etc) aren't doable on iOS. So even small hacks like this are interesting to me.