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Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

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Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#151

Post by binarymax »

jefftk wrote: post #133
dalbasal wrote: post #119

Not a ton of depth in the letter itself, but I like the angle they take. It's not all about privacy or data security. " In addition to the clear privacy issues caused by surveillance-based advertising, it is also detrimental to the business landscape. " " In the surveillance-based advertising model, a few actors can obtain competitive advantages by collecting data from across websites and services and dominant platfo…

> a few actors can obtain competitive advantages by collecting data from across websites... This is going away: all the major browsers have said they are going to block cross-site tracking. (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)

The browsers intent may be to remove cross-site tracking, but we all know that Google Ads will still follow people around the web through latent signals (even if wrapped in something like FLOC), and other parties like KISSmetrics will continue the fingerprinting cat and mouse game.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#152

Post by zwkrt »

pasabagi wrote: post #55

I think there's a simpler way to achieve this. Force companies who leak personal data to pay reasonable damages to all the individuals involved, on the scale of 10-100 dollars, depending on how much personal info has been leaked. That would make businesses very quickly reassess how much data they need to keep, and how careful they need to be with it, without requiring any really radical legislation.

Facebook et al want the privacy discussion to revolve around “keeping your personal data safe” but that is just bald-faced propaganda that covers up the fundamental issue. It’s not like Facebook’s digital model of my behavior is really “mine” and they are just borrowing it or protecting it. They don’t even care about my data in the singular.

What they do have is a giant corpus of behavioral data spanning everyone on the planet. Companies can (statistically) detect that you are going to get a divorce, or that you are going to be pregnant. They know everyone who has been to jail, our sexual fantasies, how likely it is that our children will go to college.

Right now we say they sell ads, but you could just as correctly say that they take advantage of this incredible, unprecedented information advantage to directly change the world in their favor and in the favor of whoever can pay. It used to be used to sell clothing and frippery, but already SM is plastered with ads for political campaigns and brain-altering drugs. Their cultural hegemony will only increase over time, as the data gets better and the methods become more effective.

In this regime, what does it even mean for Facebook to “leak my data”? If anything I’d rather it was out in the open. (Although I’d much rather it didn’t exist!)

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#153

Post by binarymax »

jefftk wrote: post #147
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google analytics won't track cross site ?

Does Google Analytics even track cross-site today? Looking at it in developer tools I only see it using first-party cookies. But anyway, Google Analytics won't be able to do it because nobody will be able to do it. For example, here is Chrome's project to remove cross-site tracking: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb... (Still speaking only for myself)

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse or not. GA phones home with vast information about user, and builds a profile of them. That profile is correlated across sites to personalize search results and sell ads.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#154

Post by blooalien »

neolog wrote: post #140
jefftk wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a few actors can obtain competitive advantages by collecting data from across websites... This is going away: all the major browsers have said they are going to block cross-site tracking. (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)

No it isn't, Google will still track me across the web.

So will Facebook (and several others) if you take no steps of your own to block them. It's an escalating war of cat and mouse. You'll block them, they'll find a new way around it, you'll block them some more, they'll find another way. Eventually the only answer will be to shut down the Internet because it's become just too broken to use anymore.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#155

Post by handrous »

jefftk wrote: post #149
handrous wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can they still run A/B tests? If I were writing the rules, I'd exclude anything that looks routing-like. "IP address A sees version 1, IP address B sees version 2, with some amount of ephemeral data involved to support pinning" is fine. Basic hit-counter type stats are fine. (though I think A/B tests are abusive crap and would love to see them go away, on a personal level, I don't think they necessarily qualify as…

What about, on a page about x, showing "users who bought x often bought y" ads?

It'd obviously be a tough rule to craft. In some hypothetical world where I'm the Tzar of writing and enforcing this, I'd tend to allow leeway for companies using data that could be essentially a totally-anonymous incrementing counter (as in this case) to choose how to present their site, based on what's currently being looked at or requested but not on the browsing or purchase history of a particular user. It's using a person's own activity to target, manipulate, or "monetize" them that I find especially objectionable—and the data that's hoarded in the name of those abilities, simply dangerous in ways that the hoarding companies aren't made to account for (a huge negative externality, basically). In general I think if companies want market research they should pay for market research, not just run a dragnet spying operation against their customers. If they want something other than market research out of those data, then they probably ought to just be shut down (or, at least, that part of their business should be)

[EDIT] FWIW I don't think these kinds of rules should only apply to tech companies. Physical stores ("loyalty" cards, tracking shoppers' cell phones, that stuff) and banks and similar also shouldn't be able to spy on people, nor to sell or otherwise use data collected as a necessary part of their business against people. A store may reasonably have surveillance cameras, but ought not be able to sell the footage to another company to train & test its gait-recognition software, nor use facial recognition to track how often I visit the store or what I look at. That kind of thing.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#156

Post by blooalien »

jefftk wrote: post #149
handrous wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can they still run A/B tests? If I were writing the rules, I'd exclude anything that looks routing-like. "IP address A sees version 1, IP address B sees version 2, with some amount of ephemeral data involved to support pinning" is fine. Basic hit-counter type stats are fine. (though I think A/B tests are abusive crap and would love to see them go away, on a personal level, I don't think they necessarily qualify as…

What about, on a page about x, showing "users who bought x often bought y" ads?

I've gotten useful leads on products to research maybe buying from those type of ads before, but I only ever see them on sites I've whitelisted in my adblocker specifically because they're sites I buy things from (and a rare few sites I trust to be respectful about advertising placement). They're useful when they're done right tho.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#157

Post by pjerem »

falsaberN1 wrote: post #130
mdp2021 wrote: post #71

The problem is with the match of partial virtual profiles with individual-specific identities. That A uses a profile to visit www sites about code optimization, leisure mathematics, statistic software and StackOverflow, and commercial information about some IDE is shown, that may be welcome. That A uses another profile to visit www sites about baking cakes, nutriment science and ethnic restaurants, and information ab…

This makes me think. What happens when partial profiles are matched to the wrong person? Like, it's very likely these systems are going to match different people in the same household/network because... how can they even separate different people with different interests and a single person using many profiles? I suspect all our "valuable user data" is tainted by default and its monetary value is an illusion. We do k…

> Of course the strikes were to my friend's name, because they have no way to know some stranger did it instead.

For the anecdote, in France, we have a pretty stupid law (that was pushed by our really strong culture industry lobbies) where you can be pursued for downloading copyrighted content but also for not having secured your home network hardly enough so you can’t argue that’s it’s your neighbor over your wifi.

But it’s only a little part of what our culture mafia achieved here, we also have to pay a tax on every device with storage that is redistributed to « copyright owners ».

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#158

Post by falsaberN1 »

pjerem wrote: post #157
falsaberN1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me think. What happens when partial profiles are matched to the wrong person? Like, it's very likely these systems are going to match different people in the same household/network because... how can they even separate different people with different interests and a single person using many profiles? I suspect all our "valuable user data" is tainted by default and its monetary value is an illusion. We do k…

> Of course the strikes were to my friend's name, because they have no way to know some stranger did it instead. For the anecdote, in France, we have a pretty stupid law (that was pushed by our really strong culture industry lobbies) where you can be pursued for downloading copyrighted content but also for not having secured your home network hardly enough so you can’t argue that’s it’s your neighbor over your wifi.…

We have the same tax here. Pretty insulting when I'm a content creator myself (and I'd never pirate the artists it's protecting, I think they are all terrible), but not many ways left to import without bigger costs (customs).

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#159

Post by kerkeslager »

jefftk wrote: post #123
handrous wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, rather than targeting advertising I'd prefer to get to the actual point, and target mass surveillance and collection of huge troves of personal data no matter the purpose . Ban monetizing data (no selling, no pay-for-access, no derived products) and make leaks guaranteed to be expensive, so companies only keep what they have to to operate, with some large multiplier attached to the leak fine if it was related t…

I'm curious how you would see "ban monetizing data" play out in the case of an e-commerce company. Can they still run A/B tests? Show you products that they think you will want to buy based on your purchase history?

A/B testing can be done without collecting any personal data.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#160

Post by jefftk »

binarymax wrote: post #153
jefftk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Google Analytics even track cross-site today? Looking at it in developer tools I only see it using first-party cookies. But anyway, Google Analytics won't be able to do it because nobody will be able to do it. For example, here is Chrome's project to remove cross-site tracking: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb... (Still speaking only for myself)

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse or not. GA phones home with vast information about user, and builds a profile of them. That profile is correlated across sites to personalize search results and sell ads.

I'm not being intentionally obtuse, but I also don't know all of Google's advertising business. I didn't think Google Analytics did that? What makes you think it does?

(GA sends a message to Google, but I had thought that it was not linked to your behavior on other sites via GA?)

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