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Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

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Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#171

Post by inetknght »

jefftk wrote: post #141
inetknght wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah but what is a leak? Any time someone who's not me or a direct party to a transaction or conversation learns something about me then that is a "leak". > Do you consider it a leak when a data transfer to another company is intentional? If I do business with my bank then the bank should have no right to sell my information to a third party for any reason whatsoever. If I do business with my hair stylist then the…

> someone who's not me or a direct party to a transaction or conversation It sounds to me like this definition strongly promotes consolidation. The bigger a party is, the more information it would be allowed to have and the more ways it can use it to cross-sell. > If I do business with my hair stylist then the credit card processor should not have any right whatsoever to do anything with the facts... Should the credi…

> Should the credit card company be allowed to use the information about your transaction to assess how likely it is that someone has stolen your card?

I've been called by the credit card company many times for failed transactions that I've authorized. When fraud did occur then I was not contacted by my card company and I had only noticed the fraud because I actively monitor my card.

The credit card company should be able to determine what it wants without providing the information to any other entity. No, I do not think that the credit card company should be permitted to sell the information about my transaction under the guise of determining how likely it is that someone has stolen my card.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#172

Post by Marsymars »

spinningslate wrote: post #28
charcircuit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then just post about your IDE on Elixir forums. Not all users of Elixir hang out on Elixir forums. There are plenty that spend the majority of their time on the internet elsewhere. >and I certainly don't want ad companies that are following me on random websites to know that I'm a programmer who is interested in Elixir or any other data about me. Why not? Systems can become more efficient if they know you better.

>Why not? Systems can become more efficient if they know you better. Because I didn't give them permission. I've no issue with anyone who willingly trades their privacy/digital footprint in return for services. I don't want to. I will happily pay money for services I want. But, in all practical ways, the choice has been taken from me. It's impossible to have an online life without Google, Facebook, and myriad others…

> And I decline cookie consent on every site I visit. It's tiresome, but I do it.

I don't think this is really worthwhile. It's akin to reporting every Google/fb ad as "I don't want to see this/this isn't relevant to me". Easier to just block ads/cookie consents from ever appearing, and set cookies to automatically delete after tab closure.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#173

Post by amelius »

jefftk wrote: post #143
amelius wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Force companies who leak personal data to pay reasonable damages to all the individuals involved Companies like Google and Facebook already leak. Proof: start an ad campaign on e.g. Facebook targeted at people who have trait X, but sell a product Y not related to X. For people who click on the ad and buy your product Y, you now know they have trait X. And you can now also link that to their address info.

Run an ad campaign in a magazine dedicated to a sensitive topic, selling something by mail-order. For people who write to you and buy your product, now you know they are interested in that sensitive topic. (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)

Well, you've just found another leak ;)

By the way, scale matters too.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#174

Post by squiggleblaz »

blooalien wrote: post #154
neolog wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The simpler answer is to just ban it. The law doesn't need to be technically detailed or envision every single technological adaptation: it just needs to be sufficient for a judge to be able to recognise it when a prosecutor describes it and a defence lawyer attempts to pull the wool over their eyes. It needs to be focused on outcomes.

Once banned, Google and Facebook will submit. They will attempt to lobby against the reforms, eventually saying "it will prevent legitimate business: it represents a small fraction of our revenue, but we are selflessly lobbying on their behalf to ask you to implement this technically specific law to reign us in". Ignore them. You don't listen to the hitman when they comment on homicide laws.

And ensure that the penalties amount to a ban. The US congress and courts can and do terminate human lives. Whatever penalty they propose on abstract legal entities is not too harsh; even if they completely dismantled Google and destroyed all of their economic value, it is nothing compared to the things we do to natural living breathing humans in response to criminal behavior.

Profitable companies will submit to a law that aims to control their behavior.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#175

Post by jimbob45 »

kerkeslager wrote: post #86

Frankly, I don't think this goes far enough: "Ban advertising" would be better. Almost every problem with the internet right now is caused by advertising if you dig through the chain of causality. From social media patterns that addict you to conflict and conspiracy, to popups, adware and spam, to constant attacks on our attention even when we're driving and could literally kill someone with inattention, to spreading…

You need some amount of advertising. If you invented the cure for AIDS tomorrow, how are you going to tell everyone about it? Word-of-mouth works, but only so far. Perhaps over time, people will naturally Google "cancer cures" but will your business still be solvent by then?

If you want to talk about leveling the playing field, you have to be more strategic with your legislation. Don't ban advertising. Ban spending on advertising above some limit. No one benefits from Coca-Cola showing yet another commercial on TV other than the commercial producers - society certainly doesn't benefit though. Make companies spend their ad dollars wisely.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#176

Post by jefftk »

inetknght wrote: post #171
jefftk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone who's not me or a direct party to a transaction or conversation It sounds to me like this definition strongly promotes consolidation. The bigger a party is, the more information it would be allowed to have and the more ways it can use it to cross-sell. > If I do business with my hair stylist then the credit card processor should not have any right whatsoever to do anything with the facts... Should the credi…

> Should the credit card company be allowed to use the information about your transaction to assess how likely it is that someone has stolen your card? I've been called by the credit card company many times for failed transactions that I've authorized. When fraud did occur then I was not contacted by my card company and I had only noticed the fraud because I actively monitor my card. The credit card company should be…

> I've been called by the credit card company many times for failed transactions that I've authorized. When fraud did occur then I was not contacted by my card company and I had only noticed the fraud because I actively monitor my card.

Yes, credit card antifraud has both false positives and false negatives. It's not clear to me whether you're going from there to saying that it is useless?

> I do not think that the credit card company should be permitted to sell the information about my transaction under the guise of determining how likely it is that someone has stolen my card.

I think I misunderstood you earlier. When you wrote "the credit card processor should not have any right whatsoever to do anything with the facts..." I thought you meant that they shouldn't be allowed to use the credit card data to do anything, including fraud prevention, not just that they shouldn't be allowed to sell it?

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#177

Post by Vinnl »

apatheticonion wrote: post #60

Physical storefronts have over time learned how to optimise their presentation to achieve higher conversion. Initially it was experimentation with layouts, with time they added cameras which helped understand customer behaviours. This expertise is commonly outsourced to physical marketing companies who dispatch "merchandisers" to your store to help optimise your layout to fall in line with the layouts they have desig…

> these companies don't really want to know you, they just want to ensure they are able to serve relevant ads to someone like you.

"Relevant" is their PR-speak, but really it's just whether you're in the desired target audience. If I target an ad that discourages people from voting to vegetarians or people who like Fox News, that ad is not necessarily more relevant to them.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#178

Post by only_as_i_fall »

Opposition to online surveillance always makes me wonder why nobody has attempted to create adversarial browsers or plug-ins.

I'm not aware of how difficult it would be technically, but wouldn't a good solution to be simply throw troves of noise at Google Amazon and Facebook to drown out the actual signal?

For example, how valuable would online advertising even be if 20% of all users were continously clicking through the ads and opening the landing pages in a virtual browser that the user never even sees?

What about opening every search result at random and simply closing the page again after a few seconds?

Is there some reason this kind of idea is infeasible or illegal?

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#179

Post by ganbatekudasai »

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?

Taking cost vs. benefit into account, I would default to "no". This one in particular seems like a "neat little feature", but "neat" does not cut it if it threatens to make legislation against surveillance-based advertising less effective.

I'm not sure many customers will miss it, if they really notice. Yes it can be a bit helpful, but many other things in the world would be "a bit helpful" and yet are nowhere near justifying their cost and effect (e.g. we stopped using radioactive chemicals in substantial amounts for everyday products very, very quickly).

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#180

Post by pavel_lishin »

only_as_i_fall wrote: post #178

Opposition to online surveillance always makes me wonder why nobody has attempted to create adversarial browsers or plug-ins. I'm not aware of how difficult it would be technically, but wouldn't a good solution to be simply throw troves of noise at Google Amazon and Facebook to drown out the actual signal? For example, how valuable would online advertising even be if 20% of all users were continously clicking through…

> if 20% of all users were continously clicking through the ads and opening the landing pages in a virtual browser that the user never even sees?

Those adoption figures are wildly, unreasonably optimistic. I doubt you could get 20% of HN readers in this thread to install such an extension; you'd be lucky if you got 2%.

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