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Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

fundingchoices.google.com

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Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#71

Post by detaro »

consumer451 wrote: post #63
contravariant wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can find a few small fines, but as far as I can tell nobody went to jail for that one.

> A Volkswagen AG compliance executive who pleaded guilty in the U.S. for his role in the company’s $30 billion emissions cheating scandal was sentenced to 7 years in prison. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-execut...

And Germany temporarily jailed a bunch of executives (including Audi's CEO, who is still in jail as far as I know) this year to stop them interfering with investigations, and results of those investigations might lead to more being sentenced once they're done.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#72

Post by sputr »

cirenehc wrote: post #40
dx87 wrote: post #27

Gotta love their choice of wording, "recover lost revenue from ad blocking users", like blocking ads is equivalent to stealing money from the site owner.

But that's true isn't it? What's with this entitlement that sites should be ad-free while still providing value? I own a blog, there is no way I could have a profitable subscription based model (believe me, I tried).

If I'm correct you only gain money from advertising when the user clicks on an ad. If the user does not click (and you could argue that people who install adblockers will not) than no money was lost.

The entire debate around copyright and online monetisation is trapped in "entitlement" of publishers in the METHOD of extracting value. Have you ever considered that maybe it's not that people don't want to support you financially, but that you're methods are wrong?

So maybe subscriptions don't work, but let's take pirates as an example. Multiple studies have proven that pirates spend more money on the things they pirate than non-pirates. So in actuality piratisation is increasing the amount of money publishers are making since the act of piracy it self actually represents no cost to the publisher.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#73

Post by lotu »

gaius wrote: post #34
skj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it does cost them money to serve you the site.

Their bandwidth bills would be a lot cheaper if they weren’t sending megabytes of JS for every kb of actual content

Bandwidth isn’t the main cost of running a website you also have to pay people to make content. Compared to that bandwidth is free.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#74

Post by bryanrasmussen »

contravariant wrote: post #58
tinco wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, and it was ridiculously dumb, lots of people go to jail and big fines were levied. I suppose that you have a point and corporations might do it. At the same time I like to believe it's just not worth it for them.

I can find a few small fines, but as far as I can tell nobody went to jail for that one.

yes, VW was small fines. GDPR, especially for something like what is being suggested here, would be astronomical. Not saying nobody will do it, because humans are stupid.

to quote vincent vega re: the keying of his car, it would be worth having them do it, just to catch them doing it.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#75

Post by kalcode »

shakna wrote: post #53
cirenehc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's true isn't it? What's with this entitlement that sites should be ad-free while still providing value? I own a blog, there is no way I could have a profitable subscription based model (believe me, I tried).

I understand your issues... But I'm downloading your code, how it is displayed, and whether I run it your way is up to me - I already requested it, and your server fulfilled the request. If you wanted contractual obligations, they need to happen before you hand over the content.

That isn't a very good argument. Just cause you downloaded something doesn't give you the rights to it.

If that was the case piracy would be legal, software trails wouldn't be legal. Windows license or photoshop trial up? Well I downloaded, your server fulfilled the request. I have legal rights to it now.

Oh, this art? I am selling it. Well I saw it on the internet, my computer downloaded, their servers fulfilled it. If they didn't want to hand over the rights they should've blocked me from viewing it.

That kind of argument is an argument I expect in a non-tech site with people making excuses. You know that isn't a solid argument you made at all.

The way the internet works doesn't create a vector that allows that. If they did implement that you'd need a multiple round trip check, the site would be slammed for being slow to respond cause it have to download a script, check if your blocking, report back then start the downloading process for the site. Just not feasible.

Those smaller sites would lose to bigger sites that can get away with slower response times or ignore pre-checking anyways.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#76

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #8

I'm still surprised no one has yet figured out a way to store sensitive data about personal interests and preferences on the client-side and let the client itself pull appropriate ads for the user to see. The quality of such a system should be comparable or better to server-side technologies with the right amount of tuning, and much less privacy-invading than existing approaches. Personally I'd love to support more w…

Or just show ads relevant to the content? What better indicator of what the user is interested in right now?

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#77

Post by zzzcpan »

mtgx wrote: post #65
tinco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who is going to build that illegal feature into Google's services? And how much are that person, and the other persons that know about it, going to be paid for them to not be a liability? Maybe I'm naieve, but I feel building automated law breaking systems is not something corporations do. I have no doubt individuals within corporations break laws whenever they feel like they can get away with it, but leaving tra…

You're right. Google probably wouldn't build an outright illegal feature. However Google would and has built features that are at the very least in legal grey areas/haven't been explicitly regulated. Thing like the WiFi tracking feature, bypassing safari's cookie restrictions, tracking android users' location even when they opted out of that or had their GPS feature turned off, and so on. They did and will do that ag…

Google was fined billions for outright illegal practices and is mostly concerned about power, not illegality.

Furthermore, in hierarchical structures people only care what those above them think. "Illegality" of the feature is something for lawyers, not them. At best they rely on morals, but even that is screwed by perks, incentives, the environment they work in, peer pressure, management, corporate propaganda, etc. Generally in such structures you can make people do anything, even kill other people and be ready to get killed.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#78

Post by fapjacks »

tinco wrote: post #57
throwaway6789 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take great care to separate my browsing sessions. Still I find YouTube recommendations on my main account on topics that I watched on another machine in my home network. My typical setup involves: 1. Virtualbox VM restored to a snapshot after each usage (browser completely clean, never uses my main Google accounts here) 2. Firefox on main machine with clear all cookies set, ublock origin. Rarely logs into my main G…

Maybe you ended in the "people that put too much effort in anti-tracking" bin, and you get recommendations for those kinds of people :p

You jest, but having worked in the ad tech industry, I can say this is actually a completely viable means of tracking people. This is why you don't load uBlock Origin into your Tor Browser or use a custom User-Agent string while using your VPN. Everything you do that is different than what everyone else does (i.e. the default) is a means of identifying you. And if I could do it at that startup, certainly Google can do it in a million more ways a million times more accurately.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#79

Post by niftich »

Google Contributor was service from Google that used a pool of money set aside by the user to bid on ad slots, and if a particular ad auction was won, the ad would be replaced in the pageview with a pictorial pattern of the user's choice. The program was not well publicized, although tech journalists have covered it and I have written [1] about it in my comments when Brave and Flattr came up and have wondered why Facebook (sitting on a huge trove of real identities) never did the same.

But in 2017 it was shut down for a few months, and relaunched as a program which would omit all ads from the target site if the site was a partner, and the user has marked that site in their account. The amount charged for each pageview is set by the site [2]. Only a handful of websites are supported, although most are news sites -- local papers or TV channels.

This new Funding Choices program aims to greatly expand the list of sites that use Contributor by offering a managed solution that solves a better-than-before subset of two pain points at once: regulatory compliance and monetization.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20google%20contributor... [2] https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/7359560

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