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EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

reuters.com

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Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#41

Post by pryelluw »

GradientAssent wrote: post #38
jka wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads could be placed into a search engine, and user agents could choose to request relevant ads based on the page they are viewing (the context) and/or the current user's profile (if the user opts-in to their profile being included). Advertisers would compete within that search engine to have the most relevant and accurate product and service offerings to match demand, and would pay the search engine provider for the…

And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business? It does actually cost money to operate a good search engine.

How about they find alternate revenue channels? Like every other business in the world?

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#42

Post by onion2k »

GradientAssent wrote: post #38
jka wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads could be placed into a search engine, and user agents could choose to request relevant ads based on the page they are viewing (the context) and/or the current user's profile (if the user opts-in to their profile being included). Advertisers would compete within that search engine to have the most relevant and accurate product and service offerings to match demand, and would pay the search engine provider for the…

And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business? It does actually cost money to operate a good search engine.

And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business?

A few years ago my response to this would be that I'd gladly pay Google $10/year for access to Search without adverts, but over the past couple of years that's changed. Google have become so utterly terrible at handling customers that I no longer would. I'll only use Google services if they're free. The idea that Google might just kill my account without notice leaving me with no access to search would be catastrophic.

I would gladly pay a different search engine company for access to a good search service though.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#43

Post by fauigerzigerk »

badjeans wrote: post #39
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would mean getting every single cookie banner, insterstitial ad, newsletter begging screen, country selection, TOS confirmation, etc, on every single visit.

A lot of those can be blocked with e.g. ublock (the "annoyances" filters, not on by default)

Yes but apples_oranges suggested that deleting cookies was an alternative to more complex/advanced technical solutions.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#44

Post by jonathanstrange »

dominotw wrote: post #33
KDJohnBrown wrote: post #29

What the EU should really do is fine / tax monopolists like Google and Facebook into submission then invest that money into the EU-based startup ecosystem.

can't google just threaten to pull out like they did in australia?

That could indeed potentially create a little bit of friction for a few weeks before everyone had replaced their services with different solutions.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#45

Post by Sayrus »

speedgoose wrote: post #31
EGreg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disqus loads a million external resources That’s so stupid, why not just take your OWN cookie and use it in the backend to send to all these resources, proxying through your own server or having a CNAME for theirs under your domain?

I guess it's often much simpler and cheaper to not try to hide it. The CNAME practice is becoming more and more common. See https://blog.apnic.net/2020/08/04/characterizing-cname-cloak... or https://medium.com/nextdns/cname-cloaking-the-dangerous-disg... or https://www.laquadrature.net/2020/10/05/le-deguisement-des-t... I think proxying or doing it server side only will be implemented later when these people will be…

CNAME cloacking has gone even further, ad company now ask you to put a A/AAAA record pointing to one of their IPs as CNAME uncloaking was working pretty well.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#46

Post by GradientAssent »

pryelluw wrote: post #41
GradientAssent wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business? It does actually cost money to operate a good search engine.

How about they find alternate revenue channels? Like every other business in the world?

Sounds like a great opportunity for you to enter the market and capture one of these alternative revenue channels with your ad-free search engine.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#47

Post by DCKing »

apples_oranges wrote: post #15

People. Just. Delete. Your. Cookies. Regularly. I am baffled about the crazy amount of debate and technical solutions to a problem that was solved the moment Cookies were invented. In the 1990s I suppose.

This is not productive to this conversation.

Please don't propose technical solutions for things that should be solved by law. Protection should be the default, and not up to your own cleverness vs. the cleverness of trillion dollar industries. If that is the fight you have to fight, you will lose either immediately or eventually (see also the next point).

Please don't propose technical solutions that are mostly ineffective due to the huge amount of brainpower spent on browser fingerprinting, super cookies and other means of persistence. Cookies were invented in the 90s, and the means of being more clever than those deleting cookies were invented soon after.

Please don't speak with such condescension about these topics. People might mistake your confidence to imply you are actually on to something, but if the solution to the problem was so simple it would have been solved already - and the industry behind this would be dead or pivoted away.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#48

Post by simias »

GradientAssent wrote: post #38
jka wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads could be placed into a search engine, and user agents could choose to request relevant ads based on the page they are viewing (the context) and/or the current user's profile (if the user opts-in to their profile being included). Advertisers would compete within that search engine to have the most relevant and accurate product and service offerings to match demand, and would pay the search engine provider for the…

And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business? It does actually cost money to operate a good search engine.

Make me pay for it.

The ad industry's biggest accomplishment is making most users believe that they can have access to state of the art search engine, video streaming, messenging etc... for "free". It means that it's incredibly hard to compete with a different business model.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#49

Post by melomal »

yulaow wrote: post #5

At this point honestly I just wish for a general ban on tracking ads of any kind. Just give me good old contextual ads and remove some MBs of js, with the only purpose of tracking me, from most websites of the internet.

The thing is these ads are not exactly effective either. I mean you'll read about the guru's with 90% conversion rate at 0.50c per click or some garbage like that but when you run them yourself, with what is considered a normal company (not a unicorn) you somehow find yourself with a They are crazy cheap though and essentially act like a TV/Radio ad. It's about getting repeated exposure, even if it's not a direct conversion (because it never is). Everyone wants to get rich quick these days and highly customized ads appear to be the best way to get there.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#50

Post by GradientAssent »

onion2k wrote: post #42
GradientAssent wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business? It does actually cost money to operate a good search engine.

And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business? A few years ago my response to this would be that I'd gladly pay Google $10/year for access to Search without adverts, but over the past couple of years that's changed. Google have become so utterly terrible at handling customers that I no longer would. I'll only use Google services if they're free. The idea that Google…

Google's revenue per user is unfortunately much higher than $10/year.
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