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Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

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Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#201

Post by notatoad »

floatingatoll wrote: post #198
mlinksva wrote: post #3

> Today, for instance, we see that a majority of people who install an ad blocker don't actually do it to block ads (that's just an added bonus). They are actually doing it to block tracking. Is there any evidence for this at all?

One of our mobile apps, Firefox Focus, pointedly targets users who want to block tracking but don’t care about advertising otherwise. I’ve personally heard a pair of unprompted non-tech people in a non-tech city discussing it over beer after work. I submit the existence of our app and my personal experience as sufficient to meet the terms of your question. “is there any evidence at all”: yes!

your anecdote - not evidence - supports a claim that some people care about blocking trackers more than blocking ads. Which is a lot less contentious a claim than "a majority of people who install an ad blocker don't actually do it to block ads"

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#202

Post by adventured »

MarkMc wrote: post #165

It seems to me that GDPR restricts economic growth. For example, I'd be quite happy to let my local supermarket sell my personal data to Google in exchange for a 3% discount on my grocery prices. Everone would benefit: (1) The supermarket gets an additional source of revenue; (2) Google can charge more for ads; (3) The toothpaste company gets better return on it's advertising; (4) I pay less for my groceries. GDPR pr…

> It seems to me that GDPR restricts economic growth.

It plainly does. It trades profit and economic potential for privacy, there's no question about that. I've seen near universal agreement from EU persons that that's a desirable trade in this case.

It gives US startups an immense advantage. They can grow far more profitably in the very large homogeneous US market, unhindered by GDPR-style restrictions & compliance, and then take their scale/resources and project into the rest of the world and comply with local requirements.

That US advantage will get larger by the year, as the globe perpetually fractures more and more on compliance requirements. It's going to become more difficult to operate in all foreign markets, as regulations for online services grow nearly everywhere. Most nations will put up barriers of compliance that will have a tangible cost. Europe will have numerous different GDPR-like regulations among its nations. There are 50 countries in Europe and only 27 are in the EU, that guarantees a messy, fractured compliance zone overall.

This is only the beginning of what will be a dramatic reshaping of the way you could formerly build once in almost any nation and easily go global with a service, that will become impossible without considerable financial resources.

It won't be: comply with GDPR and you're good. It'll be: build 50 different compliance systems to reach into 100 countries. Only very rich tech companies will be able to do it, something the US particularly specializes in building.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#203

Post by bklaasen »

lossolo wrote: post #193
return0 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have publicly funded broadcasters in most EU countries. That would be a terrible dependency for eastern europe, you wouldn't want putin-friendly government media teaching people what to vote next.

There is only one "eastern europe" country that is really Putin friendly and it's Hungary, the rest is anti Putin.

Many urban, educated folks in Serbia see Putin as a better ally than any European leader.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#204

Post by exolymph »

Arqu wrote: post #164
rossdavidh wrote: post #135

In fact, I think the author is underestimating the impact, right here: "Of course, making this change will have a dramatic impact on your revenue for single-visit traffic, because you basically have to design your ad model to work completely differently from how it works today." No, it will basically make a newsmedia site unprofitable. I think it is the EU that has not fully thought this through. Most of the news ind…

I completely disagree with this. Firstly, the media currently are too lucrative for my taste and thats why we have everyone being a journalist and publisher. By cutting down on the easy money, only those worth surviving will probably stand. This will seriously cut down on more than just ads, ie fake news and unverified sources. An alternative I'd love to see is sponsored articles as the main source of income for thes…

> Firstly, the media currently are too lucrative for my taste and thats why we have everyone being a journalist and publisher.

As someone who works in media: I'm sorry, what? Publishing is certainly not more lucrative than ever, and publishing online now is a far worse business than publishing a physical newspaper pre-cable TV. The proliferation of outlets is due to lower barriers to entry and less need for capex. Plus a little bit of VC optimism.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#205

Post by home_boi »

rossdavidh wrote: post #135

In fact, I think the author is underestimating the impact, right here: "Of course, making this change will have a dramatic impact on your revenue for single-visit traffic, because you basically have to design your ad model to work completely differently from how it works today." No, it will basically make a newsmedia site unprofitable. I think it is the EU that has not fully thought this through. Most of the news ind…

> In fact, I think the author is underestimating the impact, right here: "Of course, making this change will have a dramatic impact on your revenue for single-visit traffic, because you basically have to design your ad model to work completely differently from how it works today."

To add to this, the quote paints complying with the legislation as a simple redesign. It would require much more than a redesign. The technical, administrative and legal costs of implementing the new system from scratch would be magnitudes higher than implementing the current system from scratch. And add on changing requirements as the legislation is in its infancy.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#206

Post by Xylakant »

sumeno wrote: post #170
beojan wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, it will basically make a newsmedia site unprofitable. I think it is the EU that has not fully thought this through. Most of the news industry is already sickly, financially, and they mostly have no model other than advertising (with a very few exceptions). We have publicly funded broadcasters in most EU countries. The ad-supported news sites, on the other hand, are generally doing more harm than good. News outl…

You don't see the potential problem if the only media that is able to exist is that which is state sponsored? You may be happy with the state sponsored options now, but will that always be the case? Would you feel the same if you living in the Soviet Union or Germany circa 1940?

German public media is not state sponsored. It’s an independent entity which is paid for by public fees (not taxes, the money never goes through the governments coffers). There are some levers that could be used to exert some level of control, for example the height of the fee is set by a commission that is partly under government control and many ex-politicians get elected into high positions, but all in all, public media is fairly well removed from the governments control here. The constitutional court watches over this pretty well, too. The system has been set up in such a fashion exactly due to the experiences under the nazi rule.

I’m currently more concerned about private media having an agenda that promotes the right.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#207

Post by Azeralthefallen »

CydeWeys wrote: post #110
ptype wrote: post #91

I’m not convinced IP addresses are automatically personal data. Granted, they CAN be personal data, if they can be linked to a specific person. But assuming I just keep generic log files, and that I would not in a subject access request be able to tell someone the IP addresses that the user has used, is it really personal data? Also, it is not clear to me what other laws require in terms of keeping log files. It is p…

It doesn't matter what you consider IP addresses to be, it matters what European regulatory authorities consider them to be. And yes, many IP addresses can be linked to a specific person. I don't doubt that, by being logged in to Google, Facebook, and a bunch of other services, and by having an ISP that provides a unique IP address per subscriber, that the majority of sites out there that use 3rd party tracking know…

A stupid question, does this mean i now need to figure out a way to mask any IP addresses in any AWS logs? Like ELB/Cloudfront/VPC logs?

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#209

Post by filoleg »

lossolo wrote: post #183
krotton wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publically funded TV is prone to become a propaganda tube of the government. In some cases it already has (in Poland for example). Relying on it as the only news source would be silly (relying on a single news source in general is usually silly, but even more if the government directly handles the staffing).

BBC is counterargument to what you wrote. It shows that publicly founded news outlets can work without being government propaganda tube.

His argument wasn't that all state-funded news media is a propaganda machine. His argument was that it easily can become one, and you won't have a better option, since all the other news media would be choked out of existence.

Re: Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is

#210

Post by fasteddie »

mgiannopoulos wrote: post #83

The author claims that for one-time visitors you're not supposed to have any 3rd-party tracking code but uses Google Analytics which Ghostery counts as a tracking code. How's that going to work out for practically every site in the world?

Its going to work out that if they are under the coverage area for GDPR (have EU customers / EU nexus) -- they have to have visitors opt in to be tracked by GA, unless they can guarantee it cant be used to tie the user to any other PII.
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