Kerning¹ concerns pairs of characters; tracking² adjusts spacing over a range of them. What you’re seeing here is a consequence of text justification³ warping the text. Justification is rife with problems such as rivers⁴ and hard to get right.
It looks fine for me, but I'm on macOS, which comes with all the Windows fonts, including Times New Roman. What you're seeing might be due to your system not having a copy of that font? (PDFs can embed fonts, but don't necessarily.)
~$30M a month, ~$3.6B a year, I'm not sure what's Meta's annual profit but it doesn't seem like a drop in the bucket (assuming it can actually get enforced)
Norway has 5 million inhabitants, it sets the precedent for other countries to do something similar with fines scaled for their population. At that point it might start to hurt.
Meta makes about 25% of their revenue in Europe. Norway should be about 1-2% of the European revenue, so if we take the upper end of that. Norway should be on the order of 0.5% of their total revenue.
Meta's net income is about $6 billion / quarter. If we assume that revenue share translates to profit share, that means their profits from Norway are about $30 million / quarter, or about $300k / day.
So the fine is about a third of their profits from Norway. That seems like a pretty significant proportion. If such sums weren't significant, they'd not bother operating in Norway in the first place.
The real question is how much more do they make off of behavioral advertising. If it provides more than a 50% increase to revenue, they will keep it.
To say nothing of the very real possibility they may opt to lose money in Norway to fight this precedent there, as opposed to in a market like Germany or France.
> If such sums weren't significant, they'd not bother operating in Norway in the first place.
Not necessarily, given network effects it can be advantageous to operate it some markets at a loss if the network effects from that market helps you maintain market share in your profitable markets.
But what if the user actually consents by clicking on that dirty yellow "I AGREE" button? That was the whole defense of tech companies when it came to pushing forced content so far.
It wont be long before consumer ToS that take 57 minutes JUST to read will be deemed unenforceable. I'm surprised that any of these contracts could have ever been deemed "considered" by the consumer party, although I appreciate there have been rulings that say otherwise.
That doesn’t matter in a world full of iframes, js sdks, app/site integrations, and shadow accounts. A company with the massive reach of Facebook or Google can absolutely track you all over the web without you ever signing up for or even directly using any of their services.
You can also make a voluntary decision not to buy products from a company that dumps toxic waste into the water supply -- does that mean they should be able to do it?
Just because you are not giving them money or you can choose to personally opt out does not mean they are not doing societal harm, and a democratic government has a mandate to minimize the harm done on society as deemed by its population.
Libertarian justifications are great thought-pieces, but ignoring the social contract is only awesome if you are rich and have no empathy.
Um no. Unless you qualify as a refugee, you'll need a verified employment offer (or perhaps proof of self-sustaining wealth) to visit Norway as anything other than a tourist. Very few countries have an "open border" to allow anyone to just come in and start drawing on their social services.
Did you check that source you linked to? I did. (First of all, California is not 'the United States' it is a state in the United States, but whatever).
In order to obtain these benefits the person must otherwise qualify for social security and also be a 'qualified alien under color of law' or be a victim of human trafficking, domestic violence, or other serious crimes.
You don't get cash for being an undocumented immigrant.
> Did you check that source you linked to? I did. (First of all, California is not 'the United States' it is a state in the United States, but whatever).
It is part of the US? Is there any state in Norway that has similar benefits? (Love that when discussing good, part_of_US!=US, when discussing bad, part_of_US==US, but whatever)
> Did you check that source you linked to? I did.
Nah, I don't think you did. Let me paste the conditions so it s easier for you. What do you think point 3 means?
-------
An individual may be eligible for CAPI if they meet all of the
1. Are a non-citizen and meet the immigration status criteria in effect for SSI/SSP as of 8/21/96.
2. Are 65 or over, blind or disabled.
3. Are ineligible for SSI/SSP solely due to their immigration status. (This means they must either apply for SSI/SSP and have a notice of denial based on their immigration status alone, or submit other proof of ineligibility from the Social Security Administration.)
4. Must reside in California.
5. Their income must be less than the CAPI standards.
6. Their resources must be below the allowable limits of $2,000 for an individual or $3,000 for a couple.
7. They must successfully complete the application process.
You didn't read past the first line. I specifically pointed out item 3.
> 3. Are ineligible for SSI/SSP solely due to their immigration status. (This means they must either apply for SSI/SSP and have a notice of denial based on their immigration status alone, or submit other proof of ineligibility from the Social Security Administration.)
1. SSI/SSP qualification is because there was a Federal law passed which disqualified immigrants who had previously qualified for benefits, and the California law didn't like that and grandfathered in the people who got disqualified
2. In order to qualify under that law as an immigrant you have to pass the test which I screenshotted and linked to above ("snippet")
3. Your #3 above is just saying 'we aren't going to give you benefits if you aren't old or disabled so unless you are rejected solely because you got disqualified under the 1996 change we won't give you the benefits you wouldn't have gotten previous to 1996 and don't deserve because you aren't old or disabled
4. Your sources don't mention this law; they are non-sequiturs and they make me think you are just pasting the top google results that come up
But aside from the obvious risks to privacy, it has always surprised me that, given the recent affairs with political ads, this behavioural targeting hasn’t been banned everywhere.
US privacy support is nothing like the EU, unfortunately. This case in Norway is perfectly reasonable and its premises make sense. However primacy of corporatism makes it a much tougher row to hoe here in the states. You have to practically get nearly murdered by a stalker to see significant legal action.
You’re surprised the us government has caused an economic recession and capital flight by banning the primary revenue driver of some of our largest tech companies?
What surprises me is that, for a country that does not miss a single opportunity to flaunt its status as a democracy, its representatives do next to nothing to protect it from a well known threat.
The US gov defined free speech in a broad sense so that advertising is considered a form of speech. That means political advertising actually promotes democracy rather than threaten it - from their perspective.
That's a non-sequitur. Just because X receives Constitutional protections does not imply that X inherently promotes democracy. To illustrate, imagine that X = me giving a speech to 1 million people urging them to abandon democracy. That speech receives Constitutional protections but that speech is not promoting democracy.
I hate to come off as rude here, but America is probably the absolute last first world country to do anything to protect its citizens from the open market. If this is surprising to you, you aren't paying much attention.
I'm a bit confused by this, because it's saying that the Irish DPC found behavioral advertising to be illegal. I thought that decision was just about the use of standard contractual clauses for copying data to the US. Was there another decision on this as well, or was the scope of that decision wider than was reported?
I also don't see how the CJEU decision is saying anything about whether Meta's behavioral advertising currently complies to GDPR or not. It's saying that they can't justify the data processing via legitimate interest, and it's saying that just the mere fact of using Facebook or websites isn't consent. But isn't Facebook explicitly asking for consent these days?
> But isn't Facebook explicitly asking for consent these days?
Consent is a difficult term in software these days, because it's almost entirely driven by UX and legislation.
With a default yes checkbox and ToS buried in a link most users would sign away a lifetime of indentured servitude.
With a per item consent over the telephone from an operator with an overseas accent, most consumers would reject life saving medicine and vaccines because of a 1 in billion risk of an exotic harm.
Sure, I'm not talking about an opt-out form hidden in a basement lavatory with a "beware the jaguar sign" on the door.
Does Facebook really not have a standard consent prompt on first interaction with the site or the apps, requiring an explicit choice rather than defaulting, and with the same level of friction (single click) for consenting / not consenting?
I imagine they have such prompts and opt outs as minimally required by local regulations, but the problem of consent still exists.
Most users have no idea what cookies or behavioural advertising are and therefore can't give informed consent.
It's a hard problem because policymakers (including Apple) are put into a position of making the decision for large groups of people. However, those policymakers have their own interests.
Through a series of court cases and legislation, it's been decided that copyright and content moderation policies are okay to bury in ToS style documents but large parts of privacy policies aren't.
I don't enjoy this status quo but it's hard to come up with a politically viable alternative.
In practice it seems like dang does see most of the people who @ him, so maybe they have that string hardcoded somewhere for alerts. Or maybe he just reads all/most of the comments on all stories...
I doubt that's possible. It would be exhausting at best. But he probably does the equivalent of grepping them for [@]dang, and keywords that are typical in flamebait.
Got it, thanks. In principle we could put Norway up there, but as any such ban is going to be in a particular jurisdiction, and as the domain suffix already indicates which one it is, I think it's ok to leave it implicit. It's ok for readers to work a little bit sometimes.
Is there any real evidence that personalized advertising is more effective than context based? I know from first hand experience how it can be a nuisance.
I use Brave as my primary browser for it's ad blocking and anti-tracking features.
I use default Firefox for the limited cases where ads might be desirable or necessary.
6 months ago, I used Firefox to research autos before finally making a purchase. To this day, I still receive auto related ads whenever I use Firefox. Lots of businesses are wasting money to push these ads toward me now based on nothing more than my personal history.
> Is there any real evidence that personalized advertising is more effective than context based? I know from first hand experience how it can be a nuisance.
I'd love for someone who works in the advertising industry to reply to this, but speaking as a layperson: if it didn't work, they wouldn't use it. Basic rule of capitalism and min / maxing. The difference has got to be statistically significant, else it wouldn't be a multi-billion industry. Mind you, it may also have been really good marketing.
I'm sure it does work but the question is --- does it work *better* than simple, cheaper, more logic driven, context based advertising?
I know for a fact that it doesn't work in a lot of cases. Right now, businesses out there are paying to show me auto-related ads based solely on my personal history --- and it doesn't work because I bought a car 6 months ago.
"Context based" means displaying ads when I actively express an interest in a product --- like when I use a search engine to find info for a particular model or visit a web site dedicated to a particular brand.
Paying for ads based on nothing but personal history is really kinda dumb --- because history can be a poor indicator of current or future interest.
That does not mean for a fact that it doesn’t work. You’re in an audience group with millions of other people - the advertiser doesn’t care if x% of users already bought a car. They only care if targeting that audience is more efficient at driving purchases than other tactics (like context targeting).
They only care if targeting that audience is more efficient at driving purchases than other tactics (like context targeting).
So they don't care if they drive people like me to block personalized ads?
Ok, fair enough, I will carry on --- until personalized ads are banned outright or at least legally restricted based on stated personal preference (aka Do Not Track).
This has been answered time and time again, but from my experience hn doesn’t ask this question sincerely - it’s usually just bait to argue with someone. Here is a thread where the question was addressed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500138#36501923
But your guess is accurate, relevant section:
> These campaigns have strictly enforced goals of return on ad spend (or sometimes net profit return on ad spend). When a new client starts running big budgets they run incremental alit y tests with their internal data science team, a neutral third party vendor (paid regardless of the outcome), and with the platform their spending money on. Each team shares their analysis but brands usually just ignore the platforms numbers. The advertiser can determine in their own, with legit statistical analysis, whether purchases would’ve occurred even if they hadn’t seen an ad.
I would be so happy if can go back to a world where advertising happens purely based on the content like we've had for ages in TV/radio/magazines. The amount of privacy we've globally lost just for a few advertising dollars is atrocious.
I've never been convinced that it even adds that much value for advertisers, but they must think otherwise and I guess the sheer amount of money and effort that is put into targeted advertising shows otherwise.
> I've never been convinced that it even adds that much value for advertisers
It does, particularly for small businesses. I own a small ecommerce company, and there's just no way I could profitably advertise in the way you're describing. Current digital advertising is far superior on multiple levels:
- Scale: I started with a few bucks a day and can run very small tests. Neither possible with the kind of ads you're describing.
- Targeting: The current digital advertising is simply much better at targeting, which means my returns are much higher because a much higher percent of people who click on it convert. As a point of comparison, I've done newsletters (and very targeted ones - I run a dog treat company, so there are some good magazines/newsletters for my audience) and they're much worse than Meta ads.
- Feedback: At this point, I just won't do anything if I can't track the results. If you're investing in TV/radio/magazines, you're just guessing what works and burning a bunch of money on the stuff that doesn't.
Small, incredibly niche businesses come up often when we talk about ads. Probably because they are one of the few sympathetic business models that benefit from hyper-targeted ads.
It is nice that people can start these incredibly niche businesses, but we have to weigh that against the fact they we’ve built a massive surveillance apparatus and also the misinformation ecosystem that grew out of Facebook is screwing up politics around the world.
But ya know, dog treats, I guess it is a hard choice.
> we’ve built a massive surveillance apparatus and also the misinformation ecosystem that grew out of Facebook is screwing up politics around the world.
I'm also concerned about the misinformation ecosystem, but why is the surveillance apparatus a primary cause? I'd say the primary causes are a lack of content moderation and the incentives that the platform creates by putting likes as the main way that ideas spread.
in this case it clearly is? i don't care about capitalism's ability to unethically try to manipulate me into giving it money. if it sucks for business owners then that's too bad - maybe they should do something different with their time.
Yeah, well, that's where we differ. I think giving small business owners access to tools to show up in front of an audience that is interested in them is worthwhile while you believe almost all consumer products should be sold only by megaconglomerates who can afford large blocks of advertising.
That's a pretty big difference in our viewpoints and while HN currently tends towards yours, I have no doubt that my objectives lead to a better world for consumers (and actually, non-consumers as well) than yours.
I don't think active management of company size works successfully. The enforcement division of any nation would be a significant portion of GDP. And what happens to products like the iPhone? After the ten thousandth iPhone, you're a $10 mm revenue company and someone else sells the next iPhone? I'm not convinced that's better for consumers and non-consumers.
> That's a pretty big difference in our viewpoints and while HN currently tends towards yours
This is an interesting phenomenon no matter what the topic is - I experience it too. It's human nature to feel counter culture. I believe HN is pretty strongly pro-capitalism for reasons that are obvious due to the nature of the site.
I don't think small business owners are innately more deserving of money. They still make money off the backs of others, just at smaller scales. Competition is important to make capitalism less sociopathic but small business owners aren't meaningfully competing with Amazon.
Also to be clear, I think all advertising is unethical. It's a spectrum for sure though.
That's not true. I am old enough to remember that we had boutique dog treats in the 90s, too. The vet my parents used sold some, and I recall several nearby bakeries (not chains) selling house-made dog biscuits.
Yeah that’s the current situation is better for small businesses is a bit of a weird take, considering how consolidated the world has gotten in the last 20 years.
While there might be anecdotes to support such a claim, the numbers tell a different story. Any reduction in friction is bound to benefit the businesses with the largest footprint, as they can leverage economies of scale and recursive synergies.
> Yeah that’s the current situation is better for small businesses is a bit of a weird take, considering how consolidated the world has gotten in the last 20 years.
I think it's more nuanced than that - it's not that the current situation overall is better, it's that the state of advertising is better. On the other side of things, the ability of large corporations to achieve greater economies of scale is decidedly worse for small businesses, to your point. The fact that targeted advertising is there helps to offset that a bit.
Yes but the barrier to start a internet-only small business with advertising is the lowest it's ever been. Before you were either only local (bad luck if there's already a pet store in your town), or you had to be huge. Online advertising is a great equalizer that has allowed many regular people to run successful businesses without much starting capital.
What you are describing is targeted advertising, not behavioral advertising. The article discusses a ban on behavioral advertising. Behavioral is targeting advertising based on how a user interacts with content on the internet, instead of basing it on their personally stated interests, which they have control over.
In your case, instead of targeting advertising at users that scroll past cat videos and choose to watch dog videos, you could target advertising to users in a dog owners FB group.
Totally - the most positive ad experience I've ever had was when I was looking for a gift for my then-girlfriend and was served an ad for a company that offered private tours of the SF Zoo where you got to meet the red pandas. I got a great experience that I otherwise would never have known about, and the company + zoo both made money. This is good!
> And even better (for the consumer), a higher percentage of people who _see_ the ad are likely to actually be interested in the topic.
Which inadvertently means the consumer is forced to see less ads, since each ad is capable of generating more revenue and therefore there doesn't need to be as many of them.
So, you've sacrificed some privacy, and in exchange you get less ads and better targeted ads. Was this a good trade-off for the consumer? I don't know. It probably doesn't make a big difference to our lives one way or the other.
It seems obvious to me that there is genuine benefit: otherwise it is a giant scam against the advertisers as well as an invasion of individual privacy, and there would be lobbing from larger commercial entities affected to make the scam illegal if it were one.
Though that there is a benefit to businesses, however small, does not make me inclined to be happy that I am stalked throughout my personal life online by a great many advertising firms, and information about me gleaned from that stalking bought and sold between them, in order for those businesses to experience said benefit.
If it were banned globally, the “but how do I run my business otherwise?” question is a problem for the businesses, not me.
The “most people don't mind, you are just being contrary” argument that I've seen once or twice is bunkum. If that were the case it would not be so often be made such a faf to opt-opt.
One thing where I feel current privacy laws are a little off, is disallowing blocking for people who don't opt in. I've quite happy to be given a choice of “let this list of hundreds of third parties track you, or go away” (in case you haven't guessed, I'll go away) as long as no tracking is initiated between my arrival and going away without opting-in.
I don't particularly care if advertisers build a profile of me for the purpose of advertising. I use ad blockers and I rarely if ever see ads when doing anything online.
My concern is that all this profile data is being slurped up by people who can really do harm: governments and their TLAs. People don't get sent to re-education camps (or worse) by companies trying to sell dog treats.
> I don't particularly care if advertisers build a profile of me for the purpose of advertising. [But I do care about not seeing ads in the first place, so] I use ad blockers and I rarely if ever see ads when doing anything online.
I am the reverse. I don't block ads per se, but I absolutely block scripts (which has the effect of blocking ads) because I find the spying completely unacceptable.
Like you, my problem isn't advertising, but the tracking. Though unlike your position this isn't because I block the adverts regardless. I wouldn't block the advertising if it were not for it being intimately linked with the tracking & recording. Apart from simply avoiding sites that carry rudely irritating adverts (huge pop-overs, auto-playing audio & video, …) that is.
> People don't get sent to re-education camps (or worse) by companies trying to sell dog treats.
No, but they might by state agencies that gain access to the data (by fair means, at least as defined by their laws, or foul) to use as part of a larger profile.
My personal concern isn't state entities. Maybe this is some of my old-fashioned-ness speaking out but the idea of being followed around is just icky much like being followed home from the pub of an evening, or otherwise tracked in the real world, would be.
Of course, there are people for whom state agencies are a concern, and not just state agencies but various negative activist groups and other undesirables: I know a few people who don't want parts of their personal lives (gender status, abortion, the fact they consider themselves atheist, etc.) tracked because in the wrong hands it could, even in 2023, lead them and/or their loved ones to come to harm. They don't want an advertising company holding information about them because this is just one hack away from a lot of other groups having the information, and while it is highly unlikely that they are tracking such information they likely have something that could help derive it (location data being the most obvious factor there, and advertiser love to track that).
I agree, there's a creepiness to it, but demographic-based target marketing isn't exactly new. Remember when products used to come with a "warranty registration card" that not only asked for your name and address and phone number but your income, SSN, other products you owned, hobbies, age, marital status, etc? Or you'd enter a contest to win something, and the entry form asked for similar information?
All of that went into databases that were bought and sold, matched and merged with each other, for purposes of lead generation and target marketing.
What Meta and Google are doing is nothing new, they just have much better collection and segmentation than was ever possible, and it's much more covert than what was ever possible.
All those were up-front and optional (though maybe the wording made the details seem less optional). The surveillance done by the advertising industry these days is definitely not up-front nor optional where they can possibly make it automatic/required/both.
> What Meta and Google are doing
It isn't just Meta and Google. It is a great many companies large and small.
> is nothing new
Even if I accepted the equivalence, the industry having done a smaller version of this surveillance in the past doesn't make it right. My friend traded a bit of weed in the 90s, that would be no reason for us to take an “it is what it is” attitude if he traded a ton of crack today!
Yep, I agree with what you're saying here. My personal preference is to allow greater advertising, even putting my own use for it aside, because I both generally believe it's better to let markets do what they will and also because I have a significantly above-average understanding of what's being tracked and how it's being used. My preference is for transparency, education and possibly regulation around how data that is collected can be sold to/shared with others.
Still, I definitely the side of wanting to restrict it more in order to protect folks, and I think it's very much a worthy debate to have.
What digital advertising platform do you use? I am looking for methods to promote my small business and have an idea of my audience but want to understand the most efficient way to reach them.
So you're asserting that marketing companies know people better than they know themselves? If that's true, that's incredibly damning of marketing companies and is a great argument for why they should have access to less individualized data about people.
You’re conflating several different things here. Facebook et al could easily change the targeting criteria to match the content your ads are being displayed next to, rather than the audience that is looking at it. Especially with AI content description and summarization tools. The fast feedback and targeting you can get from digital advertising could still be available without mass surveillance.
No, what you're suggesting misunderstands why these ads work well.
I don't care what content you're looking at. I care who are you. Specifically, I care whether you're a person who owns a dog and spends money on high-quality/luxury dog goods. Whether you're looking at something related to dogs or a post by someone in your family about a wedding last weekend doesn't matter.
Displaying my ad next to dog-related content would be much, much worse from a targeting perspective. Instead of targeting the people who are likely to buy my product, it'd end up targeting people watching dog videos. The set of people who watch dog videos is much broader than my target audience - my mom watches dog videos sometimes, and she's a cat person!
> Specifically, I care whether you're a person who owns a dog and spends money on high-quality/luxury dog goods.
Thing is, that is non of your god damned business.
You can show your ads next to dog videos or whatever other content you like. You don't get to spy on me just because you think you'll learn better ways to try to manipulate me.
If targeted advertising were really about helping get the information to interested people who want that information, then content based advertising would accomplish that.
>I don't care what content you're looking at. I care who are you. Specifically, I care whether you're a person who owns a dog and spends money on high-quality/luxury dog goods. Whether you're looking at something related to dogs or a post by someone in your family about a wedding last weekend doesn't matter.
I think you have it backwards. You don't care who someone is. Rather, you care about "people most likely to buy my product," and much, much more about people who actually buy your product. Their name, family history, life story and other information is irrelevant.
Having the money to pay and the will to buy are the only important things.
As such, which was alluded to by others, instead of spying on/tracking people to hazard a guess (perhaps even a good guess, but not necessarily) what they're likely to purchase, let's just ask them up front to list the things they are interested in, with the ability to modify such a list whenever they like.
And make that list opt-in, of course.
Then use the database of those lists to target ads. People see ads for stuff they're interested in, those who aren't interested don't see them. Which is a win-win for consumers and advertisers. Consumers only see relevant ads and advertisers know their ad impressions are among folks who are actually interested.
Sure, there are lots of reasons to argue against a voluntary database like that, not least of which ad-supported sites would suffer.
But if you (like me) don't earn a living via ad-tech, even such a flawed idea seems like paradise compared to the current levels of spying/tracking which would make a Stasi[0] wet dream look decidedly soft-core.
You're conflating. As a small business, he can do small targeted advertising and expect some positive results. Untargeted simply wouldn't be feasible at a low scale to expect results.
Targeted advertising does allow 'the little guy' to reach their expected audience a bit better.
Double check parent to the comment you responded to. It’s not responding to the one you think it’s responding to.
The comment was:
> I would be so happy if can go back to a world where advertising happens purely based on the content like we've had for ages in TV/radio/magazines. The amount of privacy we've globally lost just for a few advertising dollars is atrocious.
> […]
The one you are talking about meanwhile, is a different comment. A sibling comment which was also in response to the few dollars thing.
Exactly. Advertising revenue increases with more accurate consumer targeting. If you can show an ad of a product to a consumer who's most susceptible to make a purchase, at exactly the right time they need it, a sale is pretty much guaranteed. Currently advertisers spend millions on ad campaigns that have very low and innacurate conversion rates. The more they know about the potential consumer, the more their user data and thus a targeted ad is worth.
Microtargeting is a sickening trend enabled by adtech, but the fact it works much better than traditional ad campaigns is a reason advertisers would never want to go back.
And then there's the data broker market, which on its own is worth billions of dollars. This is an entire adjacent industry symbiotic with adtech. None of this is going away anytime soon.
How do you suppose "we" make it illegal? Advertisers spend millions on lobbying to ensure pesky laws don't get in their way. They have politicians in their pockets, and millions of internet users behind them who think that giving up their data in exchange for a "free" internet is worth it.
The chances of this ever changing are practically zero.
It's funny because this philosophy makes a lot of sense. Nobody has given it a name yet though as far as I know.
The philosophy that mass advertising is a malaise that hurts more than helps. That humans inherently can't be trusted with data. No matter how benevolent the cause may seem, that data is not going to be safely leveraged in the interest of the people that data represents.
Take Cambridge analytica scandal for example. People thought they could trust Facebook with their opinions. It turns out that data was being farmed and sent to a political aggravator who is being paid by the Republican party. Some could say it is one of the things that turned the election of 2016 to Trump. Zuckerberg had no problem with this.
This is the kind of philosophy I'm talking about. Getting rid of this kind of garbage.
>Some could say it is one of the things that turned the election of 2016 to Trump. Zuckerberg had no problem with this.
This is just patently false. There is no evidence for this whatsoever.
Also CA wasn't really Facebook's fault. A third party broke FB's TOS and committed perjury once FB caught them. Both parties have FAR more sophisticated ad targeting companies.
I remember the Web of the 1990s and early 2000s where there were plenty of sites operated by hobbyists and academics that had no ads at all. Of course, there were also e-commerce sites like eBay and Amazon that didn't have ads since their business models didn't rely on them.
The Web would look different without targeted ads, but not everything will be behind a paywall.
Advertising and paywalls aren't the only available business models. One would think that with all the modern technology we would have alternative sustainable business models on the web.
Turns out, we do. Brave's BAT is a great model, regardless of what you think of Brave Inc.
Searching for a niche topic on an internet without advertising: 10 results of pages run by hobbyists, who care so much about their topic of interest that they are willing to pay out of their own pocket to make information available to others
Searching for a niche topic on an internet with advertising: 1000000 results of SEO spam, senseless AI generated articles, 10 minute ad-filled youtube videos, posted by people who have no intent to actually provide high quality information but just see internet users as hoards of mindless meat to show advertisements to
Searching is the key word there. Without ads, Google would be behind a paywall. Without ads, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc. would also be behind paywalls.
It sucks that the middle ground has basically been abandoned. Simple sponsor slots on niche websites that are focused on specific topics. You have a blog about bicycles with an audience? Seems the perfect space for a bicycle related company to advertise on. Work out a deal for a rate and there you go. The brand can figure out if it’s worth it based on referrals or other metrics.
I get it, it involves a lot of manual labor and it messy and it’s easier to just slap some js code and forget about it.
Targeted ads exist as part of an open source ecosystem. Small websites cannot attract advertisers to email them directly to buy ad space, and so they auction off their unused inventory through open ad exchanges. To be pedantic, targeting is not a necessary part of this, and what qualifies as "targeting" may differ based on your views: is it targeting to serve an ad based on the content of the website, ignorant of the user seeing the ad? Most would probably say no. However, it is targeted advertising which improves the effectiveness of campaigns and brings in more revenue for those publishers. Without targeted ads, publishers such as blogs and newspapers would make less money and be less competitive with the larger, closed end-to-end ad platforms like Facebook and Google.
I believe that we have the choice between targeted advertising and an internet dominated by 3 or 4 websites (though some argue we're already there). I don't believe that most people would pay to get through paywalls, and so they would simply get their news and media from less reputable sources which spam misinformation on facebook to farm clicks
With respect, that's BS. First of all, of course it would be possible, but you would need to be smarter with your traditional campaigns to reach customers.
And secondly, if you do B2B advertising then your MO is cold contacting businesses, email campaigns, social media, trade shows, etc. Why do you need behavioral data of your users to advertise to them? And how would you even know they represent a business from just their behavior?
> The amount of privacy we've globally lost just for a few advertising dollars is atrocious.
What is the actual consequence of this "lost privacy"? What would be tangibly different in your life right now if you hadn't "lost" it?
My answer - nothing whatsoever, no harm comes to me at all from some statistical algorithm calculating what ads I might want to see, and in fact I've bought several cool products off Instagram that I didn't know about otherwise. This is a completely illusory harm that has been made up by what is essentially a cabal of professional agitators and propagandists.
In fact, I would go further and say we would actually be worse off without personalized advertising. Personalized ads help connect innovative products with the people who would benefit from them. Without a way to reach these niche audiences, these products might not be able to exist, and the community would be worse off.
You may suffer no harm, but there are plenty of real stories of others who have.
I maintain that it doesn't matter. Harm isn't necessary to reasonably object to being spied on. Just wanting to not be under surveillance is more than sufficient.
Does that mean local business would be cut out of internet advertising because ads can't be shown based on your city/state/country? That would be a tangible loss. "The amount of privacy we've globally lost" doesn't seem like a real thing.
I honestly just don’t understand why anyone would care about this distinction. I’d support a total ban on all advertising, but I simply can’t fathom giving a damn about exactly which data points were used in the targeting.
Not me. I want ads to be hyper-personalized, because I want them to be relevant. I don't mind ads at all, *so long as they are for things I might actually be interested in*. What drives me nuts though, are ads that are so totally and obviously un-suited for me. Like, I see ads all the time on Facebook where if I click the "Why did I see this ad" button, it turns out the advertiser was "targeting" (if you can call it that) "people over 18 years of age, with a primary location in the United States."
Seriously, WTF? I wish FB didn't even allow ads to be so broadly scoped. There is approximately NOTHING that is legitimately going to be of interest to everybody in that group. It's bad for the advertiser, bad for the user, and probably bad for Facebook to even have that.
No, I say figure out that I'm a libertarian atheist with strong interests in open source software, bicycles, guns, and electronics test equipment, and show me ads for those things first and foremost. Target the hell out of me, please.
But you don't get that choice. As long as ad companies have data about you, they can distribute you in whichever bucket they like. Similar to how I get recruiters offering me PHP positions on LinkedIn despite PHP not being anywhere close to my profile.
There's no way for you to say "you can use my data but only the way I like it" unless you sign some explicit agreement. When you give up your data, you also consent to be placed into whatever bin they want you to be placed in. They don't care about whether you get to see exactly the ads that you want to see, as long as they believe their cost to benefit ratio is right.
This is why you should want your data to belong to you, so that you could make an informed decision about what kind of content you see.
I want ads to be hyper-personalized, because I want them to be relevant.
I don't, because ads are 10% informing me of the existence of products I might be interested in, and 90% psychological manipulation trying to induce me to buy stuff whether it's in my best interest or not. If the advertiser knows more about me, that can increase the effectiveness of their manipulation.
I say figure out that I'm a libertarian atheist with strong interests in open source software, bicycles, guns, and electronics test equipment, and show me ads for those things first and foremost. Target the hell out of me, please.
It seems like a win-win solution would be for browsers to send an optional user-controlled header describing your interests. Sort of like Google's topics API, but entirely under your control rather than mined from your browser history.
> The Norwegian Data Protection Authority imposes a ban on Meta carrying out behavioural advertising based on the surveillance and profiling of users in Norway.
I skimmed through the article, but what is behavioral advertising based on the surveillance and profiling of users defined as? Almost everything I know tracks their users and usage of products/services/apps e.g. websites, apps on your phone, your phone, laptop, car etc. Even this website has the pop up about cookie tracking etc.
Does this mean they are ok with collecting data on the users but not using it for advertising (or selling the data)? Are all companies involved with such business models affected or just one company singled out? Can a business offer a 10% off on first purchase or when you signup deal? If I visit Amazon or any shopping website, is it not ok to have the home page search results based on purchase and search history or it should be a static page/search results always? Can my book review blog have affiliate links to purchase the book? Are content recommendations based on usage history/likes on YouTube/Netflix/Spotify legal?
> The decision does not for example stop Meta from targeting advertising based on information a user put in their bio, such as place of residence, gender and age, or based on interests a user has provided themselves.
I haven't read the decision itself, but it seems like it comes down to whether the input element in the UI is designed to convey persistence or not. When you type into a text input labeled "interests" and then whatever you entered continues to be shown when you look at that field again in perpetuity, persistence is sufficiently conveyed, so it can be used for advertising. When you type into a text input labeled "search" and then whatever you entered is echoed back only in that particular SERP never to be seen again after that, the UI doesn't convey persistence and therefore it can't be used for advertising purposes. If search history is conspicuous, then maybe? But as for links, I don't see how persistence could be conspicuous enough. They cause a GET rather than a POST, for one thing, which semantically means not changing state beyond access logs used for sysadmin troubleshooting.
The pattern I personally hate is when nearly every item in a list has a "read more" option that merely reveals the last 5% of the content. The truncation was clearly applied only to measure read rates based on these "read more" clicks, not for lack of real estate, and therefore to gather behavioral data with some plausible deniability.
I wonder if it would be possible to make unsolicited advertisement illegal. Something difficult to imagine in the world we live in, but I believe it could be possible:
- no ads in the public space
- magazines and newspapers with 2 versions: with ads (lower price) and without ads (higher price)
- TV and radio: special channels only for ads
- internet: banners are blank and marked as Ad, you can only see them if you click on them.
Wishful thinking?
The Amazon Kindle does a version of this. They offer a more expensive ad-free version and a cheaper one that displays ads on the lock screen. I have already chosen twice to pay more for the ad-free model, and I'm glad to have been given the choice.
'no ads in the public space' seems to me like one of those well-intentioned ideas that sounds good but has a lot of edge cases. What about if I am a plumber and I have my business logo on the side of my truck. Is that advertising? What if I have a sign in front of my shop? If someone really likes skittles and they mention that (unpaid) on a TV show is that advertising? What if skittles sends me some free skittles after, is it retroactively advertising now? What if I have a negative experience with one provider that ends up driving business to a different provider when I relay it. Is that advertising?
It seems like instead of starting from an overly broad position the best thing to do would be to start specifically. We could start by moving content online back into being protocol-based instead of walled gardens. Let me subscribe or not subscribe to whatever content I want without being beholden to a platform.
The length of a law doesn’t reduce its murkiness - in fact it makes it more pronounced. That is why (in the common law systems) there is so much discussing and re-discussing of topics that plenty of other cases already covered, using new approach angles. If you make laws longer and more complex, you only make them serve more those that have the budget to explore all branches of the decision tree.
I mean, sure. Corruption exists. But the that's another issue entirely. Your comment doesn't add to the question of the GP - "does the existence of edge cases make implementing a law extremely difficult?" The answer is no. You could probably outline all the exceptions and applications of such a law in a few pages.
And if you did want to write it in close to one line, it wouldn't be particularly difficult either.
Simply outlaw _selling_ (or giving away) of ad space in public.
You want to put your own logo on your storefront, side of vehicle, brochure, public bus, charging station? Sure. You want to sell that space to the highest bidder to place their own ad? Nope.
This would eliminate 99% of billboards, bus stop ads, etc without creating any ambiguity as to whether a business is allowed to identify itself in public.
One caveat might be that it would be desirable to carve out an allowance for e.g. "10% of sales go to Charity X".
Good news! I now am a landlord whose sole property for lease is land upon which a sign can be placed. I also offer an unrelated sign building service and my friend offers a sign painting service!
If we assume advertising is ROI positive, wouldn't this quickly become a world where only the biggest companies could advertise? Apple has a large retail footprint and could buy the physical billboard footprint; my local tax accountant cannot.
Most of these questions have easy answers in the implementations already out there:
* Set a maximum size on a sign. You can have a sign in front of your shop or on your car as long as it isn't larger than a well-defined square footage.
* If no one paid to have skittles mentioned, it's not advertising.
* Accepting and giving gifts in professional contexts is already known to be fraught, an anti-advertising law wouldn't significantly alter that.
* If the competitor paid you to share the negative experience or paid for the airtime/venue in which your shared it, it's advertising, otherwise it's not.
This is unlikely to happen in most cities, as avertising is embedded in our culture now. Can you imagine what NYC and Times Square would look like with no ads? (Turns out much better[1] IMO, but I'm not sure everyone would agree.)
Rather, I think the only way to make this happen is to move adblockers to the real world. The user would wear AR goggles that would hide any detected ads. I'll be using that the second AR becomes accessible for everyday outdoor use. An audio adblocker would be great as well.
Honestly, I'm surprised that sites invest so heavily in this approach because it leads to your advertisers trolling your users, and is basically sacrificing the actual experience of the site and the access to advertisers that the users might actually possibly buy products from.
"Here's a long weird video that promises a big payoff in the end... and then fails to deliver. The user is interested because they want to see how it ends, but they didn't actually like it. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that."
"Here's an incredibly confusing graphic. The user paused to figure out what the hell is going on. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that."
"Here's a poorly cropped image of something possibly very strange. The user clicks through to find nothing related to that image after the clickthrough. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that."
I'm just as concerned about behavioral targeting for non-advertising content. It seems weird to disallow targeting for one type of content and not another. Behavioral targeting of the majority of content (advertising is a minority) is increasingly the norm, and it is what is making society more stratified and balkanized.
If you look at the information collected by any of Meta’s apps do they really need more information on their users than their users’ local tax authority, for example, might have?
>[regarding personal information e.g., demographics, political beliefs] ...the mere fact that a user visits websites or apps that may reveal such information does not in any way mean that the user manifestly makes public his or her data
Part of the underlying reasoning, given in the court decision that prompted this ban[1]. I think this gets at the core of what makes such data collection & utilization in targeted advertisements so problematic.
Also of interest from the same, regarding processing of any data in general without explicit consent:
>only on condition that the data processing is objectively indispensable such that the main subject matter of the contract cannot be achieved...
Where subject matter means the purpose for which the user is using the site. And then this:
>the personalised advertising by which the online social network Facebook finances its
activity, cannot justify [data processing] ...in the absence of the data subject’s consent
Basically, "But that's how we keep the lights on" is not sufficient to justify using this data without consent. I can't easily think of a product or service that could not function, as a matter of practicality, unless it used my data without my consent. If a product or service cannot function without such data, it seems like that would be pretty clear by the nature of the product? Are there counter examples to this where the exception might apply?
> Are there counter examples to this where the exception might apply?
The "legitimate interest" basis for processing data is meant for things like security, fraud prevention, etc.
So more concretely, credit card buyers can't to opt out of data processing for fraud prevention, because that's what every fraudster would do. Or as another example, sites need to be able to log data like IP addresses for a reasonable time to figure out if they're under a Dos attack, or a password stuffing attack, etc, and to block abusive IPs. These can't require consent, because an attacker will not give consent. (And you can't just block everyone that withholds consent either.)
Legitimate interest is definitel not supposed to be used as "it's our legitimate interest to make as much money as possible", and it's kind of crazy how many companies have tried that. There's just no ambiguity to that.
But there is various interesting and ambiguous middle ground. Is a site allowed to claim legitimate interest in order to use Recaptcha to protect their login form? It is necessary to protect that login page one way or another. But there could be other ways to protect it with a smaller data footprint. Those ways might not be as effective, or they might not be more expensive, but obviously the law doesn't specify any kind of crisp criteria for just what tradeoffs are acceptable.
Am I the only one who thinks ads (including non-tracking/privacy-respecting ads) are universally bad & should be regulated much harder than today? And mostly helps bad products and large companies?
182 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] thread1 mill NOK (~$100k) daily fine if breached.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_spacing
³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_alignment#Justifie...
⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography)
$100k a day is $3m a month which is $36m a year.
Even if it were $30m a month, it would still be $360m a year.
Meta's net income is about $6 billion / quarter. If we assume that revenue share translates to profit share, that means their profits from Norway are about $30 million / quarter, or about $300k / day.
So the fine is about a third of their profits from Norway. That seems like a pretty significant proportion. If such sums weren't significant, they'd not bother operating in Norway in the first place.
That is, if they openly just keep paying the fine instead of stopping, then the fine will continue to increase.
To say nothing of the very real possibility they may opt to lose money in Norway to fight this precedent there, as opposed to in a market like Germany or France.
Not necessarily, given network effects it can be advantageous to operate it some markets at a loss if the network effects from that market helps you maintain market share in your profitable markets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/tax-prep-companies-taxpa...
Just because you are not giving them money or you can choose to personally opt out does not mean they are not doing societal harm, and a democratic government has a mandate to minimize the harm done on society as deemed by its population.
Libertarian justifications are great thought-pieces, but ignoring the social contract is only awesome if you are rich and have no empathy.
https://www.cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/cash-assistance-for-im...
In order to obtain these benefits the person must otherwise qualify for social security and also be a 'qualified alien under color of law' or be a victim of human trafficking, domestic violence, or other serious crimes.
You don't get cash for being an undocumented immigrant.
Snippet:
* https://imgur.com/a/EfkryYN
It is part of the US? Is there any state in Norway that has similar benefits? (Love that when discussing good, part_of_US!=US, when discussing bad, part_of_US==US, but whatever)
> Did you check that source you linked to? I did.
Nah, I don't think you did. Let me paste the conditions so it s easier for you. What do you think point 3 means?
------- An individual may be eligible for CAPI if they meet all of the
1. Are a non-citizen and meet the immigration status criteria in effect for SSI/SSP as of 8/21/96.
2. Are 65 or over, blind or disabled.
3. Are ineligible for SSI/SSP solely due to their immigration status. (This means they must either apply for SSI/SSP and have a notice of denial based on their immigration status alone, or submit other proof of ineligibility from the Social Security Administration.)
4. Must reside in California.
5. Their income must be less than the CAPI standards.
6. Their resources must be below the allowable limits of $2,000 for an individual or $3,000 for a couple.
7. They must successfully complete the application process.
-----
"meet the immigration status criteria in effect for SSI/SSP as of 8/21/96."
> 3. Are ineligible for SSI/SSP solely due to their immigration status. (This means they must either apply for SSI/SSP and have a notice of denial based on their immigration status alone, or submit other proof of ineligibility from the Social Security Administration.)
In case you didn't Google further.
https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2021/02/california-...
https://www.santoslloydlaw.com/i-am-undocumented-do-i-qualif...
2. In order to qualify under that law as an immigrant you have to pass the test which I screenshotted and linked to above ("snippet")
3. Your #3 above is just saying 'we aren't going to give you benefits if you aren't old or disabled so unless you are rejected solely because you got disqualified under the 1996 change we won't give you the benefits you wouldn't have gotten previous to 1996 and don't deserve because you aren't old or disabled
4. Your sources don't mention this law; they are non-sequiturs and they make me think you are just pasting the top google results that come up
But aside from the obvious risks to privacy, it has always surprised me that, given the recent affairs with political ads, this behavioural targeting hasn’t been banned everywhere.
I also don't see how the CJEU decision is saying anything about whether Meta's behavioral advertising currently complies to GDPR or not. It's saying that they can't justify the data processing via legitimate interest, and it's saying that just the mere fact of using Facebook or websites isn't consent. But isn't Facebook explicitly asking for consent these days?
Consent is a difficult term in software these days, because it's almost entirely driven by UX and legislation.
With a default yes checkbox and ToS buried in a link most users would sign away a lifetime of indentured servitude.
With a per item consent over the telephone from an operator with an overseas accent, most consumers would reject life saving medicine and vaccines because of a 1 in billion risk of an exotic harm.
Does Facebook really not have a standard consent prompt on first interaction with the site or the apps, requiring an explicit choice rather than defaulting, and with the same level of friction (single click) for consenting / not consenting?
Most users have no idea what cookies or behavioural advertising are and therefore can't give informed consent.
It's a hard problem because policymakers (including Apple) are put into a position of making the decision for large groups of people. However, those policymakers have their own interests.
Through a series of court cases and legislation, it's been decided that copyright and content moderation policies are okay to bury in ToS style documents but large parts of privacy policies aren't.
I don't enjoy this status quo but it's hard to come up with a politically viable alternative.
I think it's this one.
Is there any real evidence that personalized advertising is more effective than context based? I know from first hand experience how it can be a nuisance.
I use Brave as my primary browser for it's ad blocking and anti-tracking features.
I use default Firefox for the limited cases where ads might be desirable or necessary.
6 months ago, I used Firefox to research autos before finally making a purchase. To this day, I still receive auto related ads whenever I use Firefox. Lots of businesses are wasting money to push these ads toward me now based on nothing more than my personal history.
I'd love for someone who works in the advertising industry to reply to this, but speaking as a layperson: if it didn't work, they wouldn't use it. Basic rule of capitalism and min / maxing. The difference has got to be statistically significant, else it wouldn't be a multi-billion industry. Mind you, it may also have been really good marketing.
I'm sure it does work but the question is --- does it work *better* than simple, cheaper, more logic driven, context based advertising?
I know for a fact that it doesn't work in a lot of cases. Right now, businesses out there are paying to show me auto-related ads based solely on my personal history --- and it doesn't work because I bought a car 6 months ago.
"Context based" means displaying ads when I actively express an interest in a product --- like when I use a search engine to find info for a particular model or visit a web site dedicated to a particular brand.
Paying for ads based on nothing but personal history is really kinda dumb --- because history can be a poor indicator of current or future interest.
So they don't care if they drive people like me to block personalized ads?
Ok, fair enough, I will carry on --- until personalized ads are banned outright or at least legally restricted based on stated personal preference (aka Do Not Track).
But your guess is accurate, relevant section:
> These campaigns have strictly enforced goals of return on ad spend (or sometimes net profit return on ad spend). When a new client starts running big budgets they run incremental alit y tests with their internal data science team, a neutral third party vendor (paid regardless of the outcome), and with the platform their spending money on. Each team shares their analysis but brands usually just ignore the platforms numbers. The advertiser can determine in their own, with legit statistical analysis, whether purchases would’ve occurred even if they hadn’t seen an ad.
I've never been convinced that it even adds that much value for advertisers, but they must think otherwise and I guess the sheer amount of money and effort that is put into targeted advertising shows otherwise.
It does, particularly for small businesses. I own a small ecommerce company, and there's just no way I could profitably advertise in the way you're describing. Current digital advertising is far superior on multiple levels: - Scale: I started with a few bucks a day and can run very small tests. Neither possible with the kind of ads you're describing. - Targeting: The current digital advertising is simply much better at targeting, which means my returns are much higher because a much higher percent of people who click on it convert. As a point of comparison, I've done newsletters (and very targeted ones - I run a dog treat company, so there are some good magazines/newsletters for my audience) and they're much worse than Meta ads. - Feedback: At this point, I just won't do anything if I can't track the results. If you're investing in TV/radio/magazines, you're just guessing what works and burning a bunch of money on the stuff that doesn't.
It is nice that people can start these incredibly niche businesses, but we have to weigh that against the fact they we’ve built a massive surveillance apparatus and also the misinformation ecosystem that grew out of Facebook is screwing up politics around the world.
But ya know, dog treats, I guess it is a hard choice.
I'm also concerned about the misinformation ecosystem, but why is the surveillance apparatus a primary cause? I'd say the primary causes are a lack of content moderation and the incentives that the platform creates by putting likes as the main way that ideas spread.
That's a pretty big difference in our viewpoints and while HN currently tends towards yours, I have no doubt that my objectives lead to a better world for consumers (and actually, non-consumers as well) than yours.
This is an interesting phenomenon no matter what the topic is - I experience it too. It's human nature to feel counter culture. I believe HN is pretty strongly pro-capitalism for reasons that are obvious due to the nature of the site.
I don't think small business owners are innately more deserving of money. They still make money off the backs of others, just at smaller scales. Competition is important to make capitalism less sociopathic but small business owners aren't meaningfully competing with Amazon.
Also to be clear, I think all advertising is unethical. It's a spectrum for sure though.
While there might be anecdotes to support such a claim, the numbers tell a different story. Any reduction in friction is bound to benefit the businesses with the largest footprint, as they can leverage economies of scale and recursive synergies.
I think it's more nuanced than that - it's not that the current situation overall is better, it's that the state of advertising is better. On the other side of things, the ability of large corporations to achieve greater economies of scale is decidedly worse for small businesses, to your point. The fact that targeted advertising is there helps to offset that a bit.
Maybe so, but I personally don't think that's worth abusing the public with tracking.
In your case, instead of targeting advertising at users that scroll past cat videos and choose to watch dog videos, you could target advertising to users in a dog owners FB group.
And even better (for the consumer), a higher percentage of people who _see_ the ad are likely to actually be interested in the topic.
This compared to the annoying ShaneCo ads that have been plauging radio stations for years.
On the corner of State St and 7200 South. Open Monday through Fridays til 8, Saturdays til 5. Closed Sundays.
Which inadvertently means the consumer is forced to see less ads, since each ad is capable of generating more revenue and therefore there doesn't need to be as many of them.
So, you've sacrificed some privacy, and in exchange you get less ads and better targeted ads. Was this a good trade-off for the consumer? I don't know. It probably doesn't make a big difference to our lives one way or the other.
Though that there is a benefit to businesses, however small, does not make me inclined to be happy that I am stalked throughout my personal life online by a great many advertising firms, and information about me gleaned from that stalking bought and sold between them, in order for those businesses to experience said benefit.
If it were banned globally, the “but how do I run my business otherwise?” question is a problem for the businesses, not me.
The “most people don't mind, you are just being contrary” argument that I've seen once or twice is bunkum. If that were the case it would not be so often be made such a faf to opt-opt.
One thing where I feel current privacy laws are a little off, is disallowing blocking for people who don't opt in. I've quite happy to be given a choice of “let this list of hundreds of third parties track you, or go away” (in case you haven't guessed, I'll go away) as long as no tracking is initiated between my arrival and going away without opting-in.
My concern is that all this profile data is being slurped up by people who can really do harm: governments and their TLAs. People don't get sent to re-education camps (or worse) by companies trying to sell dog treats.
> I don't particularly care if advertisers build a profile of me for the purpose of advertising. [But I do care about not seeing ads in the first place, so] I use ad blockers and I rarely if ever see ads when doing anything online.
> People don't get sent to re-education camps (or worse) by companies trying to sell dog treats.
No, but they might by state agencies that gain access to the data (by fair means, at least as defined by their laws, or foul) to use as part of a larger profile.
My personal concern isn't state entities. Maybe this is some of my old-fashioned-ness speaking out but the idea of being followed around is just icky much like being followed home from the pub of an evening, or otherwise tracked in the real world, would be.
Of course, there are people for whom state agencies are a concern, and not just state agencies but various negative activist groups and other undesirables: I know a few people who don't want parts of their personal lives (gender status, abortion, the fact they consider themselves atheist, etc.) tracked because in the wrong hands it could, even in 2023, lead them and/or their loved ones to come to harm. They don't want an advertising company holding information about them because this is just one hack away from a lot of other groups having the information, and while it is highly unlikely that they are tracking such information they likely have something that could help derive it (location data being the most obvious factor there, and advertiser love to track that).
All of that went into databases that were bought and sold, matched and merged with each other, for purposes of lead generation and target marketing.
What Meta and Google are doing is nothing new, they just have much better collection and segmentation than was ever possible, and it's much more covert than what was ever possible.
The new part is making it nonoptional.
You never had to enter a contest or send in a warranty card, after all.
> What Meta and Google are doing
It isn't just Meta and Google. It is a great many companies large and small.
> is nothing new
Even if I accepted the equivalence, the industry having done a smaller version of this surveillance in the past doesn't make it right. My friend traded a bit of weed in the 90s, that would be no reason for us to take an “it is what it is” attitude if he traded a ton of crack today!
Still, I definitely the side of wanting to restrict it more in order to protect folks, and I think it's very much a worthy debate to have.
Pound for pound, people prefer ads that are relevant to ads that are irrelevant.
What they are annoyed by is the volume (in multiple senses) of the ads. That's it.
They just take it out on other things.
Yes. I'm saying it's a low bar because people don't know themselves.
I don't care what content you're looking at. I care who are you. Specifically, I care whether you're a person who owns a dog and spends money on high-quality/luxury dog goods. Whether you're looking at something related to dogs or a post by someone in your family about a wedding last weekend doesn't matter.
Displaying my ad next to dog-related content would be much, much worse from a targeting perspective. Instead of targeting the people who are likely to buy my product, it'd end up targeting people watching dog videos. The set of people who watch dog videos is much broader than my target audience - my mom watches dog videos sometimes, and she's a cat person!
Thing is, that is non of your god damned business.
You can show your ads next to dog videos or whatever other content you like. You don't get to spy on me just because you think you'll learn better ways to try to manipulate me.
If targeted advertising were really about helping get the information to interested people who want that information, then content based advertising would accomplish that.
I think you have it backwards. You don't care who someone is. Rather, you care about "people most likely to buy my product," and much, much more about people who actually buy your product. Their name, family history, life story and other information is irrelevant.
Having the money to pay and the will to buy are the only important things.
As such, which was alluded to by others, instead of spying on/tracking people to hazard a guess (perhaps even a good guess, but not necessarily) what they're likely to purchase, let's just ask them up front to list the things they are interested in, with the ability to modify such a list whenever they like.
And make that list opt-in, of course.
Then use the database of those lists to target ads. People see ads for stuff they're interested in, those who aren't interested don't see them. Which is a win-win for consumers and advertisers. Consumers only see relevant ads and advertisers know their ad impressions are among folks who are actually interested.
Sure, there are lots of reasons to argue against a voluntary database like that, not least of which ad-supported sites would suffer.
But if you (like me) don't earn a living via ad-tech, even such a flawed idea seems like paradise compared to the current levels of spying/tracking which would make a Stasi[0] wet dream look decidedly soft-core.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
The problem is that it isn't "just a few" dollars.
There are several multi-billion-dollar companies that have been founded on exactly that.
When there's that much money to be made, there's almost no way to stop it. Human history is rife with examples of greed run amok.
Targeted advertising does allow 'the little guy' to reach their expected audience a bit better.
The comment was:
> I would be so happy if can go back to a world where advertising happens purely based on the content like we've had for ages in TV/radio/magazines. The amount of privacy we've globally lost just for a few advertising dollars is atrocious.
> […]
The one you are talking about meanwhile, is a different comment. A sibling comment which was also in response to the few dollars thing.
Microtargeting is a sickening trend enabled by adtech, but the fact it works much better than traditional ad campaigns is a reason advertisers would never want to go back.
And then there's the data broker market, which on its own is worth billions of dollars. This is an entire adjacent industry symbiotic with adtech. None of this is going away anytime soon.
Unless we make it illegal. Then it'll be restricted to shady enterprises for whom the legal risk doesn't matter.
The chances of this ever changing are practically zero.
The philosophy that mass advertising is a malaise that hurts more than helps. That humans inherently can't be trusted with data. No matter how benevolent the cause may seem, that data is not going to be safely leveraged in the interest of the people that data represents.
Take Cambridge analytica scandal for example. People thought they could trust Facebook with their opinions. It turns out that data was being farmed and sent to a political aggravator who is being paid by the Republican party. Some could say it is one of the things that turned the election of 2016 to Trump. Zuckerberg had no problem with this.
This is the kind of philosophy I'm talking about. Getting rid of this kind of garbage.
This is just patently false. There is no evidence for this whatsoever.
Also CA wasn't really Facebook's fault. A third party broke FB's TOS and committed perjury once FB caught them. Both parties have FAR more sophisticated ad targeting companies.
The Web would look different without targeted ads, but not everything will be behind a paywall.
Turns out, we do. Brave's BAT is a great model, regardless of what you think of Brave Inc.
You could run non targeted adds by sponsoring sites that are close to your business.
You could have a mix of premium and free content.
You could figure out other ways to connect with potential customers.
Targeted ads are not the be all and end all of web monetisation.
Searching for a niche topic on an internet with advertising: 1000000 results of SEO spam, senseless AI generated articles, 10 minute ad-filled youtube videos, posted by people who have no intent to actually provide high quality information but just see internet users as hoards of mindless meat to show advertisements to
Which kind of internet would you rather have?
And nothing of value would be lost.
I get it, it involves a lot of manual labor and it messy and it’s easier to just slap some js code and forget about it.
There was a time, not all that long ago, that targeted ads were simply impossible to do. And yet, ad-supported media existed nonetheless.
And there was a time when the vast majority of what you saw on the web wasn't ad-supported or behind a paywall. So clearly that model also works.
I believe that we have the choice between targeted advertising and an internet dominated by 3 or 4 websites (though some argue we're already there). I don't believe that most people would pay to get through paywalls, and so they would simply get their news and media from less reputable sources which spam misinformation on facebook to farm clicks
And secondly, if you do B2B advertising then your MO is cold contacting businesses, email campaigns, social media, trade shows, etc. Why do you need behavioral data of your users to advertise to them? And how would you even know they represent a business from just their behavior?
What is the actual consequence of this "lost privacy"? What would be tangibly different in your life right now if you hadn't "lost" it?
My answer - nothing whatsoever, no harm comes to me at all from some statistical algorithm calculating what ads I might want to see, and in fact I've bought several cool products off Instagram that I didn't know about otherwise. This is a completely illusory harm that has been made up by what is essentially a cabal of professional agitators and propagandists.
I maintain that it doesn't matter. Harm isn't necessary to reasonably object to being spied on. Just wanting to not be under surveillance is more than sufficient.
What harm would come to people simply registered as Jewish in Germany prior to WW2?
Seriously, WTF? I wish FB didn't even allow ads to be so broadly scoped. There is approximately NOTHING that is legitimately going to be of interest to everybody in that group. It's bad for the advertiser, bad for the user, and probably bad for Facebook to even have that.
No, I say figure out that I'm a libertarian atheist with strong interests in open source software, bicycles, guns, and electronics test equipment, and show me ads for those things first and foremost. Target the hell out of me, please.
There's no way for you to say "you can use my data but only the way I like it" unless you sign some explicit agreement. When you give up your data, you also consent to be placed into whatever bin they want you to be placed in. They don't care about whether you get to see exactly the ads that you want to see, as long as they believe their cost to benefit ratio is right.
This is why you should want your data to belong to you, so that you could make an informed decision about what kind of content you see.
I don't, because ads are 10% informing me of the existence of products I might be interested in, and 90% psychological manipulation trying to induce me to buy stuff whether it's in my best interest or not. If the advertiser knows more about me, that can increase the effectiveness of their manipulation.
I say figure out that I'm a libertarian atheist with strong interests in open source software, bicycles, guns, and electronics test equipment, and show me ads for those things first and foremost. Target the hell out of me, please.
It seems like a win-win solution would be for browsers to send an optional user-controlled header describing your interests. Sort of like Google's topics API, but entirely under your control rather than mined from your browser history.
I skimmed through the article, but what is behavioral advertising based on the surveillance and profiling of users defined as? Almost everything I know tracks their users and usage of products/services/apps e.g. websites, apps on your phone, your phone, laptop, car etc. Even this website has the pop up about cookie tracking etc.
Does this mean they are ok with collecting data on the users but not using it for advertising (or selling the data)? Are all companies involved with such business models affected or just one company singled out? Can a business offer a 10% off on first purchase or when you signup deal? If I visit Amazon or any shopping website, is it not ok to have the home page search results based on purchase and search history or it should be a static page/search results always? Can my book review blog have affiliate links to purchase the book? Are content recommendations based on usage history/likes on YouTube/Netflix/Spotify legal?
I haven't read the decision itself, but it seems like it comes down to whether the input element in the UI is designed to convey persistence or not. When you type into a text input labeled "interests" and then whatever you entered continues to be shown when you look at that field again in perpetuity, persistence is sufficiently conveyed, so it can be used for advertising. When you type into a text input labeled "search" and then whatever you entered is echoed back only in that particular SERP never to be seen again after that, the UI doesn't convey persistence and therefore it can't be used for advertising purposes. If search history is conspicuous, then maybe? But as for links, I don't see how persistence could be conspicuous enough. They cause a GET rather than a POST, for one thing, which semantically means not changing state beyond access logs used for sysadmin troubleshooting.
The pattern I personally hate is when nearly every item in a list has a "read more" option that merely reveals the last 5% of the content. The truncation was clearly applied only to measure read rates based on these "read more" clicks, not for lack of real estate, and therefore to gather behavioral data with some plausible deniability.
It seems like instead of starting from an overly broad position the best thing to do would be to start specifically. We could start by moving content online back into being protocol-based instead of walled gardens. Let me subscribe or not subscribe to whatever content I want without being beholden to a platform.
Simply outlaw _selling_ (or giving away) of ad space in public.
You want to put your own logo on your storefront, side of vehicle, brochure, public bus, charging station? Sure. You want to sell that space to the highest bidder to place their own ad? Nope.
This would eliminate 99% of billboards, bus stop ads, etc without creating any ambiguity as to whether a business is allowed to identify itself in public.
One caveat might be that it would be desirable to carve out an allowance for e.g. "10% of sales go to Charity X".
* Set a maximum size on a sign. You can have a sign in front of your shop or on your car as long as it isn't larger than a well-defined square footage.
* If no one paid to have skittles mentioned, it's not advertising.
* Accepting and giving gifts in professional contexts is already known to be fraught, an anti-advertising law wouldn't significantly alter that.
* If the competitor paid you to share the negative experience or paid for the airtime/venue in which your shared it, it's advertising, otherwise it's not.
It is one of the best things that have happened in Poland imho.
https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/before-and-after-pics-r...
https://i.redd.it/landscape-law-in-gdańsk-v0-uo6ihqfs43ba1.j...
https://www.boredpanda.com/before-after-removing-ads/?utm_so...
"TV and radio: special channels only for ads " - we have cable channels without ads
"internet: banners are blank and marked as Ad" - why would anyone click?
Rather, I think the only way to make this happen is to move adblockers to the real world. The user would wear AR goggles that would hide any detected ads. I'll be using that the second AR becomes accessible for everyday outdoor use. An audio adblocker would be great as well.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/times-square-new-york-no-adverts-lo...
I probably wouldn't. I'd just keep doing what I currently do -- avoid environments that are saturated with ads.
"Here's a long weird video that promises a big payoff in the end... and then fails to deliver. The user is interested because they want to see how it ends, but they didn't actually like it. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that."
"Here's an incredibly confusing graphic. The user paused to figure out what the hell is going on. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that."
"Here's a poorly cropped image of something possibly very strange. The user clicks through to find nothing related to that image after the clickthrough. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that."
Part of the underlying reasoning, given in the court decision that prompted this ban[1]. I think this gets at the core of what makes such data collection & utilization in targeted advertisements so problematic.
Also of interest from the same, regarding processing of any data in general without explicit consent:
>only on condition that the data processing is objectively indispensable such that the main subject matter of the contract cannot be achieved...
Where subject matter means the purpose for which the user is using the site. And then this:
>the personalised advertising by which the online social network Facebook finances its activity, cannot justify [data processing] ...in the absence of the data subject’s consent
Basically, "But that's how we keep the lights on" is not sufficient to justify using this data without consent. I can't easily think of a product or service that could not function, as a matter of practicality, unless it used my data without my consent. If a product or service cannot function without such data, it seems like that would be pretty clear by the nature of the product? Are there counter examples to this where the exception might apply?
[1] https://www.datatilsynet.no/en/news/aktuelle-nyheter-2023/te...
The "legitimate interest" basis for processing data is meant for things like security, fraud prevention, etc.
So more concretely, credit card buyers can't to opt out of data processing for fraud prevention, because that's what every fraudster would do. Or as another example, sites need to be able to log data like IP addresses for a reasonable time to figure out if they're under a Dos attack, or a password stuffing attack, etc, and to block abusive IPs. These can't require consent, because an attacker will not give consent. (And you can't just block everyone that withholds consent either.)
Legitimate interest is definitel not supposed to be used as "it's our legitimate interest to make as much money as possible", and it's kind of crazy how many companies have tried that. There's just no ambiguity to that.
But there is various interesting and ambiguous middle ground. Is a site allowed to claim legitimate interest in order to use Recaptcha to protect their login form? It is necessary to protect that login page one way or another. But there could be other ways to protect it with a smaller data footprint. Those ways might not be as effective, or they might not be more expensive, but obviously the law doesn't specify any kind of crisp criteria for just what tradeoffs are acceptable.