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Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

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Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#281

Post by lumost »

mgreg wrote: post #168
lumost wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few factors at play here when it comes to advertising. 1) Digital is taking over all ad-channels 2) Digital ads can be tracked and attributed ways that were never possible with traditional media 3) It turns out most non-targeted ads aren't actually that effective, and aggregate ad spend is falling. FB ads are effective and high value because of tracking. If tracking goes away, FB ad revenue will fall to t…

> 3) It turns out most non-targeted ads aren't actually that effective, and aggregate ad spend is falling. While this is a commonly held believe in many corners it doesn't appear to be well backed by data & research. Freakonomics also covered this topic in some detail recently. Some examples where it's proven untrue: Nytimes drops targeted advertising in Europe: https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdp…

Typically, platforms with smaller reach ( read most ad positions. Behavioral targeting on such platforms with large advertisers will probably only limit spend by cutting out bad impressions, and the in-house or external behavioral targeting isn't anything close to what FB offers.

FB/Goog dominate ad-spend as they are able to effectively match small advertisers with the appropriate audience, and these advertisers typically have specific customer goals in mind. If the goal of the ad buyers on the NYT is simply to associate their brand with the trustworthiness of the NYT, then there won't be much benefit from behavioral targets.

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#282

Post by TeMPOraL »

danShumway wrote: post #257
fingerlocks wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least someone in this thread gets it. Ad tracking really is about attribution, personalized ads are secondary nice-to-have. This is how small businesses figure out their advertising budget. Where are our customers coming from, or more importantly, where are they not coming from, so we know where to spend or not spend our limited resources? But I’m not surprised this isn’t pointed out more often. The hardcore priva…

Because (all other concerns and objections aside) the intent doesn't matter. Apologies for the crude analogy, but if I install a camera in your bathroom and say, "okay, technically I could watch you poop, but the only reason I'm actually doing this is to figure out when you're out of toilet paper", that explanation won't leave you satisfied. Similarly, if someone is tracking me across the web and trying to link my id…

You're too generous. I disagree with the parent that the intent is innocuous.

The intent is almost always to convince people to purchase something where they otherwise wouldn't purchase it - by a mix of catching them in a vulnerable moment, and brainwashing them with repeated exposure over time. It's malicious.

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#283

Post by TeMPOraL »

sriram_sun wrote: post #186
kibwen wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're more forgiving than I am. As far as I'm concerned, individual-targeted advertising has such inherently perverse incentives that even those starting out with good intentions (e.g. consensual opt-in) will eventually find themselves engaged in unethical, privacy-eroding behavior as a matter of course. Consider what would happen if you outlawed individual-targeted advertising. Ad relevancy falls overall. What then…

Exactly! How do you grow by 25% quarter over quarter without discovering new business models ? "Knowing" us even more and getting us to fork over 25% more! Or moving spend from a site outside of FB to within it. What could be the end result? I give the algorithms my bank account and they are responsible for restocking my fridge, refilling prescriptions to purchasing books and investing in my stocks? Some aspiring pro…

What bank account? With everything-as-a-Service, minimalism being trendy (a form of consumerism as a lifestyle), ever shrinking buffers in supply chains, ever shrinking apartments - soon we won't be collecting money on accounts, we'll be paid in and paying with securities. Your position at ACME will entitle you to 100 units of payment, which you'll allocate to different services.

(Note I said 100 units, not 100 units over time - since even now, people tend to get paid monthly, and subscriptions tend to bill monthly, it's only natural to factor out time from the equation...)

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#284

Post by TeMPOraL »

idreyn wrote: post #69
notyourwork wrote: post #3

Why would anyone agree to this? I don’t see a benefit to letting Facebook or any company track me across the internet. When did we ever decide this was what consumers wanted? Every time this topic comes up I check Facebooks stock price and realize how detached people are from facebooks revenue driven by the advertisement market.

I'm a simple man -- if I see a button with a primary intent color standing between me and my content I've been conditioned to press it, often before I realize what I'm doing or reading the accompanying text. Probably tens of millions of people will do the same here.

That's so true. Even though I consider myself privacy conscious, and hate all forms of surveillance capitalism, if there's something I need to read ASAP and I'm in a hurry, and the only thing between me and the content is a GDPR form, you can bet your top dollar I'll click "Accept all" without thinking, just to get the popup out of my face.

(Which is also why I'm strongly in favor of more aggressive fining for GDPR violations. "Accept all" shouldn't be the easiest choice on a website.)

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#285

Post by kiwidrew »

VRay wrote: post #200
munchbunny wrote: post #2

I'm glad Apple is at least making sure users are aware that this is even a thing. While people on HN are much more likely to follow the issue and do something about it, a lot of laypeople are just vaguely aware that Facebook might be a privacy problem without really understanding what levers they have to manage it themselves.

all I hear from my non-tech friends is "Oh yeah, the government and companies have 'my data' nothin I can do" they basically just assume they're living in a totalitarian society already and don't even think having any semblance of privacy is possible (or understand how easy it is for sinister, small-time third parties to spy on them via publicly-purchasable advertising data..)

The users have already been domesticated [1]. It feels like we have now come full circle back to the 80s to once again grapple with the inherent injustices of proprietary software. Except this time, the proprietary wolves have clothed themselves with "open source" software to prevent us from recognizing them.

[1] https://seirdy.one/2021/01/27/whatsapp-and-the-domestication...

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#286

Post by danShumway »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #282
danShumway wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because (all other concerns and objections aside) the intent doesn't matter. Apologies for the crude analogy, but if I install a camera in your bathroom and say, "okay, technically I could watch you poop, but the only reason I'm actually doing this is to figure out when you're out of toilet paper", that explanation won't leave you satisfied. Similarly, if someone is tracking me across the web and trying to link my id…

You're too generous. I disagree with the parent that the intent is innocuous. The intent is almost always to convince people to purchase something where they otherwise wouldn't purchase it - by a mix of catching them in a vulnerable moment, and brainwashing them with repeated exposure over time. It's malicious.

My goal in this conversation isn't to argue one way or the other about the ethics of our current advertising industry in general, it's to make the point that regardless of whether or not someone considers the advertising industry to be moral and/or its data usage innocuous, the tracking is still a problem.

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#287

Post by ogre_codes »

sanedigital wrote: post #179
kibwen wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're more forgiving than I am. As far as I'm concerned, individual-targeted advertising has such inherently perverse incentives that even those starting out with good intentions (e.g. consensual opt-in) will eventually find themselves engaged in unethical, privacy-eroding behavior as a matter of course. Consider what would happen if you outlawed individual-targeted advertising. Ad relevancy falls overall. What then…

> Overall advertising budgets are not dominated by the effectiveness of advertising, but by adversarial spending by their competitors. This is absolutely not the case. Google’s biggest ad clients achieve pretty incredible ROI (called ROAS) on each dollar they spend. And they track these obsessively—I supported a large travel client that had a small (but highly skilled) engineering team dedicated exclusively to their…

> This is absolutely not the case. Google’s biggest ad clients achieve pretty incredible ROI (called ROAS) on each dollar they spend.

Yet overall advertising spend is relatively flat. It's just shifted from one media to another.

Advertising will not collapse. Companies budgets for advertising is fairly flat as a percentage of revenue. Who get advertising dollars will shift, but even there, not too much.

Nor will we see more advertising. Sites have already bloated sites beyond the capacity of what most people will accept.

What will likely happen is more special interest content will continue to slip behind paywalls... much as it was in magazines and specialist journals you paid for prior to the web.

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#288

Post by 1123581321 »

purplecats wrote: post #199
1123581321 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not on Facebook so I can’t speak to what you personally see. However, I think the “support small business” angle is going to be somewhat compelling. I have, for example, two friends who are starting a niche business, offering a good and ethical service, and reaching people in that niche through Facebook and Instagram ads. The customers they find love what they’re doing and happily paying. If I had Facebook, I cou…

I have no empathy for them. I tried to advertise my dating business on there, and got insta-banned both times because they basically don't let you compete with their dating services.

I agree that’s wrong. Sounds like potential fodder for some of the ongoing legal surrounding Facebook.

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#289

Post by mrcartmenez »

kortilla wrote: post #222
kibwen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies obsess about these metrics because they don't want their ROI to be less than their competitors', because that would put them at a competitive disadvantage. It's not in doubt that individual-targeted advertising is more effective than than the alternatives; by eliminating user tracking you would be decreasing ROI across the board, but that's fine because, again, all that you're fighting for is a higher ROI t…

This model is based on the assumption that ads are for things the consumers already know about. This is not correct. Example: I type “housing insurance” into Google and the “organic” results are dominated by the mega insurance companies. Without targeted advertising, the ads are also dominated by mega insurance companies because they have the biggest advertising budgets. With targeted advertising, I can see an ad fro…

There’s a big difference between localisation of ads (which the industry has always achieved) and targeted ads that know you are interested in DIY vs hiring a contractor.

Saving that DIY enthusiast a single modification of their google search is not worth narrowing their entire experience of the web for, or worth giving up their privacy for.

And to OP’s original point. If your business relies on invading the privacy of others, your business should not exist

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#290

Post by 1123581321 »

bluesign wrote: post #181
1123581321 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not on Facebook so I can’t speak to what you personally see. However, I think the “support small business” angle is going to be somewhat compelling. I have, for example, two friends who are starting a niche business, offering a good and ethical service, and reaching people in that niche through Facebook and Instagram ads. The customers they find love what they’re doing and happily paying. If I had Facebook, I cou…

I bet for every one small business like your friend, there is 10 scammy business (something like selling 1$ item for 20$ with 40% discount) who is betting 10x more than your legit friend for impressions.

I’d love to see numbers if you have them. The idea that hurting bad small businesses is a positive externality is intriguing. I suppose we could hope that, opt-in or not, the move away from easy user tracking could benefit ethical businesses more than what you describe.
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