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Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

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Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#41

Post by eitland »

harikb wrote: post #32
kpmcc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is certainly one part, but we could also shift business models away from advertising. Ads are a cancer on content and attention, and the fact that so much of the economy is centered around them is mind boggling.

Banning advertising doesn’t make this problem go away unless you can also enforce it worldwide. If Google went away, you will have Baidu or Yandex pick up the business. Are we in a position to regulate them too? Remember that ads existed before internet. They also had the same fundamental problems. Only those days one had to be rich to muck with society

> Banning advertising doesn’t make this problem go away unless you can also enforce it worldwide.

It makes the problem go away to a certain degree in areas were ads are banned. If we banned ads in Europe and US, Russians using Yandex and Chinese people using Baidu would still see ads but we would not.

However we wouldn't see much at all for a while I guess since a number of big internet companies seem to be almost clueless when it comes to ordinary decent business models like "I pay you money, you provide me service without telling every shady tracker in the process.

So I'm not arguing for a ban on advertising as that is completely unrealistic, would hurt tje economy badly, woild be next to impossible to enforce and also counterproductive: I've seen ads that improved my day or even my life.

But I certainly wouldn't cried if someone had stopped WhatsApp from selling out to Facebook. And I certainly wouldn't have cried if online ads became more like ads in newspapers and magazines: static, doesn't move, doesn't make noise, doesn't send requests, embedded into the page server side instead of running giant multi-kilobyte applications in my browser.

Maybe I'd even stop blocking ads of they were less dumb, more relevant and didn't make my computer crawl.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#42

Post by Viliam1234 »

javajosh wrote: post #21
keiferski wrote: post #20

Prepare yourself for ads from amorphous organizations with names like The Committee to Re-Establish Democracy or The Project for a New American Freedom. (No idea if these are real, I just made them up.) I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. The only long-term solution is education: foster a sense of skepticism towards all adv…

> foster a sense of skepticism towards all advertising Here, here. I would go further and say that human society needs a universal convention that flags paid speech as such, and gives people a clear protocol to filter any (or all) paid communication.

We already have laws saying that advertising must be marked as such. And the advertising companies are trying to make the marks as invisible as possible.

How little font size can you use? Maybe a size that a person with perfect eyesight can read, but older people cannot, and even the person with perfect eyesight would easily miss it, that is technically legal, isn't it? What if the font color is hard to distinguish from the background color? How far from the advertisement can the warning be placed? If there is a warning, and a small advertisement next to it, and then a longer unrelated text written in different visual style, but still on the same page, it is obvious that the warning applies also to that other text, right? Or, if you are Google, just say that "everyone knows" that the first two or three search results are paid for, so there is no reason to mark them explicitly.

(EDIT: What words should you use for the warning. "Advertisement?" "Sponsored links?" Is it okay to use some words that 90% of your readers would not be sure what they mean, but technically they mean what they are supposed to?)

Then there is the question of what exactly counts as "paid speech". If I send the money directly to you, obviously. If I instead send them to a charity you own? If there is no cash, but I give you hundred bottles of wine? Does it make a difference if you write wine reviews, and you use samples from my gift? If I send you a computer with pre-installed software that you review, and I tell you that you don't have to send the computer back when you are done? If I invite you for an expensive vacation... sorry, I meant "conference", paid by my company? Or what if I never give you anything, just offer to write the articles for you, so you can give them to your boss and take your salary without having to do any work? What if you actually pay me for writing the content, but I give you a discount if I can choose the topic? What if I offer free food for members of the press when they provide coverage for my event? What if no transaction ever happens, but I will simply provide coverage for my friends and ignore the people I don't know.

I am not sure if a clear line can actually be made here. Taken to extreme, even private bloggers would not be allowed to write blogs about topics they are interested in, without providing some disclaimer like "the topic of this article was not chosen impartially". That would be silly, wouldn't it? But then, everyone with more obvious conflict of interest will claim that their case is analogical to this.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#43

Post by javajosh »

tantalor wrote: post #34
javajosh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> foster a sense of skepticism towards all advertising Here, here. I would go further and say that human society needs a universal convention that flags paid speech as such, and gives people a clear protocol to filter any (or all) paid communication.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If you filter the paid speech then it follows you should also filter out the actual art, cinema, theater, etc. it paid for. Now you are left with what?

I have to be honest, I'm not sure how to respond. The mean part of me wants to call you out for being stupid, the angry part for using a strawman, the compassionate part wants to dig in and fix your misunderstanding, the wise part wants to smile, shake my head, and ignore it. So, as usual, I go with the meta part of me and just describe the other parts and I'll let you pick.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#45

Post by shawnz »

ignoramous wrote: post #12
stestagg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the plan. Once google have verified the advertisers, they can ‘help users understand the source of the advert’ by replacing the mini Ad icon with the advertisers’ favicon, to increase transparency..

> ...with the advertisers’ favicon, to increase transparency. My mom thinks any URL with a padlock next to it is über secure [0][1] and that she can give her bank details without worry. [0] https://zeltser.com/padlock-and-favicon-confusion-in-browser... [1] https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170416-W...

This is why Chrome and Firefox changed it to a grey padlock instead of a green one

https://blog.chromium.org/2018/05/evolving-chromes-security-...

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#46

Post by hardikgupta »

keiferski wrote: post #20

Prepare yourself for ads from amorphous organizations with names like The Committee to Re-Establish Democracy or The Project for a New American Freedom. (No idea if these are real, I just made them up.) I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. The only long-term solution is education: foster a sense of skepticism towards all adv…

> I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense.

Think from the perspective of an advertiser. Earlier, an advertiser could pay for any ad anonymously. Now any ad you want to show can be traced back to you. This is a meaningful difference. Even if you as a viewer can't pinpoint the specific person behind an ad, they are not completely anonymous anymore (to Google, to law enforcement that may have a warrant, etc). Of course, this change comes at the cost of a reduction in freedom from the lack of anonymity.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#47

Post by lapnitnelav »

harikb wrote: post #32
kpmcc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is certainly one part, but we could also shift business models away from advertising. Ads are a cancer on content and attention, and the fact that so much of the economy is centered around them is mind boggling.

Banning advertising doesn’t make this problem go away unless you can also enforce it worldwide. If Google went away, you will have Baidu or Yandex pick up the business. Are we in a position to regulate them too? Remember that ads existed before internet. They also had the same fundamental problems. Only those days one had to be rich to muck with society

It also doesn't solve the issue that ads are trying to address in the first place, which is to promote your business.

If you outright ban ads, they'll come back in a sneaky way, see influencer marketing / product placement in culture (movies mostly) for how it plays out.

It also prevents smaller businesses to compete with the larger ones because the larger ones have much more clout and branding power.

Not that it makes ads perfect, far from it. But at least ads are transparent unlike all the astro-turfing there is out there.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#48

Post by Viliam1234 »

stestagg wrote: post #6
vikramkr wrote: post #3

Would be nice if the information was not two clicks away but rather front and center, especially for political ads, but a really good step nonetheless

This is the plan. Once google have verified the advertisers, they can ‘help users understand the source of the advert’ by replacing the mini Ad icon with the advertisers’ favicon, to increase transparency..

Increased transparency would be having "Advertisement" (no abbreviation) and the advertiser's icon.

Replacing "Ad" with advertiser's icon is simply a method how not to display "Ad". I expect that many icons will not be company logos, but rather something that seems like it would normally appear in a web page: a small arrow, a tiny dot, a thumb-up, etc.

Then the Google will have credible deniability: hey, we didn't make the icon, the advertiser did, blame him. But of course they are the ones who refuses to display "Advertising" clearly.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#49

Post by ipython »

hardikgupta wrote: post #46
keiferski wrote: post #20

Prepare yourself for ads from amorphous organizations with names like The Committee to Re-Establish Democracy or The Project for a New American Freedom. (No idea if these are real, I just made them up.) I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. The only long-term solution is education: foster a sense of skepticism towards all adv…

> I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. Think from the perspective of an advertiser. Earlier, an advertiser could pay for any ad anonymously. Now any ad you want to show can be traced back to you. This is a meaningful difference. Even if you as a viewer can't pinpoint the specific person behind an ad, they are not completely…

Unless there is a government identification with photo of a real person associated with the ad, there is no transparency. Shell corporations and complex ownership structures will obscure any attempt at tracking the source otherwise.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#50

Post by zozbot234 »

hardikgupta wrote: post #46
keiferski wrote: post #20

Prepare yourself for ads from amorphous organizations with names like The Committee to Re-Establish Democracy or The Project for a New American Freedom. (No idea if these are real, I just made them up.) I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. The only long-term solution is education: foster a sense of skepticism towards all adv…

> I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. Think from the perspective of an advertiser. Earlier, an advertiser could pay for any ad anonymously. Now any ad you want to show can be traced back to you. This is a meaningful difference. Even if you as a viewer can't pinpoint the specific person behind an ad, they are not completely…

Ah, the "freedom" to be shown misleading ads...
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