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Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

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Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#151

Post by morgengold »

Targeted advertising should be banned.

There is absolutely no NEED for it. The advertisement industry will tell you that you want to be targeted so that you get the products you need/want. It's a twisted argument. I rarely/never got targeted with something useful. If consumers could freely choose, they always want ad-free stuff.

Massive societal costs come with targeted advertising. Especially psychological, political and social costs. I see no reason why we should take these risks collectively for the profit of few.

If "they" want it, they should show the evidence that it has no harmful effects. The burden of evidence should be on them.

Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#152

Post by therealdrag0 »

ben_w wrote: post #77
avalys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. So we ban advertising. Now you have to spend your “attention tokens” earning money to purchase the content you were previously getting for free. Is that better? How about we let people make this choice themselves, just as we do now?

> Is that better? “Better” by what metric? If the cost of showing 1000 ads is $5 [0], each advert is at worst replaced with needing 0.5¢ for a micro-transaction. It doesn’t take much time to earn that: Even if someone only earns $5/hour, it is 3.6 seconds. There are people on this site earning 30 times as much, for whom the delay between a new pattern of light hitting their retina and their conscious mind having the…

> We have ad blockers, we don’t have “I reject your ad, but here is some money” plugins.

Isn't that what Brave does?

Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#153

Post by stoev »

libertine wrote: post #140
stoev wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it is in the author’s employer best interest for the industry to switch to contextual advertising. But it is also in the best interest of the end user. So why is that a bad thing? I also don’t believe that behavioural advertising is better by definition. Even the article mentions some research to prove the contrary. I’ve seen it from first-hand experience as well. Which, of course, is anecdotal. But what is not…

>But it is also in the best interest of the end user. So why is that a bad thing? Like said, the bad thing would be more wastage and potentially less relevant advertising. The problem with advertising is that a campaign success is a multi variable equation that fiddles with human attention/retention of attention/memory and many other factors that makes us humans and regulate our perception. For example, I don't consi…

Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I do actually agree with many of your points. And you are right, this could be a much longer discussion. Let me just add this - your last sentence doesn’t have to be in past tense. I believe publishers still can set themselves apart and leverage their strengths. The next couple of years will show if GDPR and the CCPA can actually help to achieve that.

Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#154

Post by jstanley »

Razengan wrote: post #52
jstanley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also functioned for centuries without electricity, hot and cold running water, or good sanitation. The fact that we functioned without something doesn't imply that we're better off without it.

The fact that we functioned without something doesn't imply that we're better off with it.

Agreed. The fact that we functioned without it before is of zero information content when deciding whether we should function without it again.

Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#155

Post by antris »

jasonlotito wrote: post #73
antris wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any advertisement that is displayed/not displayed based on personal information of the potential viewer perhaps?

And here is the rabbit hole. What is the personal information? That you personally visited this site? Or is that not personal enough because we don't know who actually visited this site? Only that a browser visited this site. And if that's the case, couldn't any profile built out of a browser browsing many sites fall into the same bucket? What is personal information?

Yeah I could see that the knowledge that you have visited the site before and showing an ad based on that is a form of targeted ad. Personal information doesn't have to be accurate or complete to fit that definition. I think any information that falls into the bucket of profiling (answering "who is watching this ad?"), despite whether an actual real person can be identified just with that information could still be considered personal information.

To put it in shorter terms, showing ads based on personal information should be banned, no matter if the information is identifying or not.

Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#156

Post by Eridrus »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #138
ben_w wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that better? “Better” by what metric? If the cost of showing 1000 ads is $5 [0], each advert is at worst replaced with needing 0.5¢ for a micro-transaction. It doesn’t take much time to earn that: Even if someone only earns $5/hour, it is 3.6 seconds. There are people on this site earning 30 times as much, for whom the delay between a new pattern of light hitting their retina and their conscious mind having the…

Assuming these numbers are in the ballpark, it seems we could easily get rid of all ads. I tell my browser my max default micro-payment for a website view. If the site asks for that or less, I view the page. If the site wants more I can approve a larger payment or not view the site. Market dynamics will set the price levels for individual sites over time. The browser keeps track of my payment levels for different sit…

Google tried this twice with Google Contributor, Brave already exists. Outside of the privacy/hand-wringing about tech bubble, people don't actually want this.

Maybe you could drive a wedge around bandwidth, particularly on mobile where people pay for data, but despite all the articles written about this, most people are clearly not concerned enough about this to do anything.

Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#157

Post by rcxdude »

mLuby wrote: post #96
rcxdude wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is no data collection: only targeting based on stuff you explicitly enter on a clearly indicated form.

Right, but then like "accepting cookies" or ToS/EULAs they'll just make explicitly giving them this permission a requirement for using their application, and we're back to where we were before.

I don't mean you put in a form like 'collect my age', 'collect my occupation', etc. I mean there's a form which you can enter your age, occupation, etc. If it's made mandatory you can just lie.

Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#158

Post by thu2111 »

danaris wrote: post #72
avalys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. So we ban advertising. Now you have to spend your “attention tokens” earning money to purchase the content you were previously getting for free. Is that better? How about we let people make this choice themselves, just as we do now?

People don't get to make the choice themselves now. They are forced to see the advertising, whether they want to or not. Removing the advertising would, in fact, give them back choice they currently lack.

People aren't forced to do anything. They don't have to use content supported by ads, plenty of it isn't. And the biggest/best online ad networks offer controls, which nobody uses because vanishingly few people care.

Banning targeted advertising would be ridiculous. I'll say it: I love targeted ads. I'd much rather have usefully targeted ads than go back to the days of DoubleClick punch the monkey garbage, or "these beautiful twins" generic garbage. No targeted ads doesn't look like a blissful utopia of clean web pages, it looks like the existing web but all the ads are 10x more distracting and manipulative. We've been there, we know how it is. If you want a reminder just go to a news website in incognito mode and see what lowest common denominator dreck gets presented.

When I look around trying to find people supposedly harmed by targeted ads, I come up blank. I've never heard of this being a problem and I resent the constant efforts of "privacy justice warriors" to screw up the internet for everyone else. My internet experience is made far worse by invasive cookie banners than by ad cookies, if I had to pick which one to disappear with a wand there'd be no hesitation.

Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#159

Post by gilad_edelman »

stoev wrote: post #153
libertine wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it is also in the best interest of the end user. So why is that a bad thing? Like said, the bad thing would be more wastage and potentially less relevant advertising. The problem with advertising is that a campaign success is a multi variable equation that fiddles with human attention/retention of attention/memory and many other factors that makes us humans and regulate our perception. For example, I don't consi…

Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I do actually agree with many of your points. And you are right, this could be a much longer discussion. Let me just add this - your last sentence doesn’t have to be in past tense. I believe publishers still can set themselves apart and leverage their strengths. The next couple of years will show if GDPR and the CCPA can actually help to achieve that.

Author of the story here. Just made an account so I could chime in to say how great it is to see such a substantive discussion. On the point about being biased in favor of the media: Yes, absolutely, I believe a democratic society requires a thriving independent press to function, and that public policy should try to help that happen.

Re: Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?

#160

Post by jiveturkey »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #70

A few years ago I created an online business for serious cyclists and runners. Targeted Facebook ads enabled me to find customers for a few pennies each - I don't think I could have found customers any other way (apart from the trying to get 'free' ads via blogs/news/viral tweets etc). Targeted ads are the only way that small, new, local, or just poor companies can do advertising. It's a bit scary seeing what sites s…

> What I think is wrong, is then for facebook (or other apps) to sell, or leak that data in enough detail to match to our identity where it can be used for other purposes.

That's what everyone thinks is wrong. FB (and Google, and LI, etc) already tell you they won't use your data for other than ad purposes and that they won't resell your data as PII. The problem is

a) policing it

b) in case of inadvertent disclosure, there's no remedy. privacy compromises are permanent.

To date, it's a tradeoff we (society) have been willing to take.

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