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Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

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Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#181

Post by hpoe »

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…

People actually have created adversarial browser extension checkout AdNaseum (https://adnauseam.io/) which will click every single ad on a page, as well as acting as an adblocker that is based on ublock.

In addition the TrackMeNot (https://trackmenot.io/) extension will randomly create search requests in the background constantly generating useless noise.

If you combine them you get a wonderful situation where random searches are performed and then all the ads on the search result are clicked. I've currently clicked on 2210 ads today while just having it open in another tab on my browser.

Join the fight my friends.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#182

Post by _jal »

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)

Be careful not to confuse one cross-site tracking techniques with cross-site tracking. Ask about company behaviors that may be of interest, not specific mechanisms. You can always ask about the mechanisms later.

"Will you use information about users from third-party sites when making decisions about how to interact with them?"

"Will you use data about offline purchases made by users when deciding how to interact with those users?"

Etc.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#183

Post by jefftk »

blooalien wrote: post #156
jefftk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm confused by your ad blocker comment, because most listings like this won't be recognized as ads. They look like product suggestions, and they are entirely first party.

(On the other hand, I think the law as you're proposing it would cover them)

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#184

Post by JumpCrisscross »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #174
blooalien wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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

This is a terrible philosophy for legislating. It undermines the rule of law, i.e. that you should ex ante be able to determine if what you're doing is legal or not.

What you're describing is rule making. Congress regularly does this, in passing a law that requires such and such agency propose (or even implement) rules that achieve this or that within so many days.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#185

Post by alisonkisk »

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…

The argument is bad for privacy, since the business solution to that problem is the same for other IP antitrust: mandating non-discriminatory licensing to anyone who wants access to the data.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#186

Post by alisonkisk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #184
squiggleblaz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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 This is a terrible philosophy for legislating. It undermines the rule of law, i.e. that you should ex ante be able to determine if what you're doing is legal o…

This is fundamental to the rule of law. Judges and juries apply the law to the facts. Civilians can ask the government to review their plans in advance and make a ruling.

We don't say murder laws are bad because there's no way to know in advance if "bashing someone's head in with a pipe who dies a month later" counts as murder.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#187

Post by only_as_i_fall »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #180
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%.

Probably, but IIRC that's about how many users are estimated to run ad blockers which was the basis.

Obviously less people care about privacy than care about intrusive ads, but if such features were combined you might get momentum.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#188

Post by alisonkisk »

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)

Is Google going to give back the $100B is made from cross site tracking in the past?

Is Google going to consider YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and Android Location history different sites, or is "having an effective monopoly an exemption to crosss-site tracking prohibition?

Does anything in the proposal prevent server-side cross-site tracking? (No.)

Is Google going to stop buying third party tracking data like credit card transactions?

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#189

Post by alisonkisk »

cartoonworld wrote: post #85
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.

I don't think that's gonna cut it, but definitely on the right track. Its going to require some kind of legislation, or an insurance requirement that renders the insurers as de-facto regulators. This is still crazy hard due to the possibility of regulatory arbitrage, just open shop in Anguilla or wherever. Without the auditing, compliance, and domain experts to verify and implement this, its going to be extremely har…

> open shop in Anguilla or wherever.

That doesn't grant a GDPR exemption. The "shop" still operates in jurisdiction.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#190

Post by shkkmo »

cartoonworld wrote: post #139
shkkmo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is it is not easy to asses the security risk of small businesses in a cost effective way for insurance companies. It's really hard to come up with a set of regulations here that protects users data and doesn't completely disadvantage startups and small businesses.

Well, in this instance I would argue that the current state of affairs also completely disadvantages startups and small businesses. Kaseya has a whole portfolio of services marketed to small, medium and startup business (as well as larger) that their customers bought in order to enable them to leverage this business model in the first place. They've since burned countless providers, torching their relationship with c…

I agree and just because something isn't easy doesn't mean it isn't worth the effort to get right.
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