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Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

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Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#271

Post by mariusor »

throwawayboise wrote: post #267
mariusor wrote: post #73

For the past year I've had this ritual of clicking on every advertising tile as soon as it appears and mark it as irrelevant and that I don't want to see any more from that company. Currently this happens for a couple of days at the start of some months. So far I feel like this strategy has worked fine, 90% of the time I don't get served any unwanted content and I can view a decent timeline.

Why not just install a good ad blocker in your browser?

I use uBlock origin and uMatrix on top of Firefox's regular tracker blocking. I never heard of regular Facebook ad tiles being blocked by anything, but maybe I just didn't look into it enough. If you have some info about it, feel free to share.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#272

Post by mariusor »

officialjunk wrote: post #234
mariusor wrote: post #73

For the past year I've had this ritual of clicking on every advertising tile as soon as it appears and mark it as irrelevant and that I don't want to see any more from that company. Currently this happens for a couple of days at the start of some months. So far I feel like this strategy has worked fine, 90% of the time I don't get served any unwanted content and I can view a decent timeline.

do you worry any of the links are malicious?

No. I just want to see what my friends are up to, not ads.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#273

Post by LorenPechtel »

handrous wrote: post #203
rascul wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely recall that Google used to use text ads. Not sure if they still do, or if I recall correctly.

That used to be all they did. You'd see a lot of "of course I block all ads—except Google's, they're fine". They also didn't used to trick unsophisticated or distracted users into clicking ads by putting them inline with search results. Both changed, I assume, when someone was allowed to run an experiment and the projected profit trend line went from "exceptionally good" to "holy shit, it's all the money in the world…

And we don't even know if their measurement is right--they probably got a high rate at first because people weren't used to them and were deceived. As people wise up the effectiveness will drop.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#274

Post by pmontra »

mariusor wrote: post #73

For the past year I've had this ritual of clicking on every advertising tile as soon as it appears and mark it as irrelevant and that I don't want to see any more from that company. Currently this happens for a couple of days at the start of some months. So far I feel like this strategy has worked fine, 90% of the time I don't get served any unwanted content and I can view a decent timeline.

I used to do that too, then I installed Blockada. No ads anymore, even in apps.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#275

Post by gruez »

sp332 wrote: post #209
gruez wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This like if the local grocery store owner would install hidden cameras to spy on me at home and at work The more accurate analogy would be the grocery store owner teaming up with other local businesses to aggregate your shopping habits across stores into a central database. What you're describing would be if facebook installed a RAT on your computer after visiting it.

Exactly. All those other sites voluntarily send your data to Facebook. Edit: although they do track your physical location in real time through the app. That's more direct spying.

>Edit: although they do track your physical location in real time through the app. That's more direct spying.

But for that to happen you need to explicitly gave consent?

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#276

Post by mariusor »

imglorp wrote: post #251
mariusor wrote: post #73

For the past year I've had this ritual of clicking on every advertising tile as soon as it appears and mark it as irrelevant and that I don't want to see any more from that company. Currently this happens for a couple of days at the start of some months. So far I feel like this strategy has worked fine, 90% of the time I don't get served any unwanted content and I can view a decent timeline.

Is this really about wanted vs unwanted ads? How about tracking, aggregation, selling and reselling your data, and abandoned privacy therefrom? Malware? Bandwidth from downloading all the non-content? Burning cpu's to run the teraquads of javascript?

I do not want any ads. I'm using Firefox containers for isolating Facebook on regular websites, I liked 4 total pages, I removed most of the information from my profile, I have scrubbed 90% of my past activity. The only things I deliberately allow Fb to know are my friends and my old pictures. I feel like that is an equitable exchange for me using their website.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#277

Post by ClumsyPilot »

aerosmile wrote: post #205
masswerk wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about tracking back to content related advertising rather than tracking based advertising? All related studies are showing that the latter isn't working anyway. And, as these metrics (and ethics) suggest, it has been an illegitimate invasion, right from the beginning. The fancy "conversion rate" dashboards are just not worth it. Bonus: Maybe this will be an opportunity for content providers to reset the decline o…

> All related studies are showing that the latter isn't working anyway. This is very common on HN these days - stating something with a lot of confidence that turns out to be some self-constructed mental model that has nothing to do with reality. Then, add the obligatory "all related studies are showing it" and you have met the publishing standards. Legally or illegally, morally or immorally, for better or worse, Fac…

>"You want proof? Look at their financial statements."

Homeopathy peddlers make a killing, so does the agile consultants and th catholic Church, if this is proof they must both be right?

Just because someone made loads of money doesnt mean their claims are sciebtifivally valid.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#278

Post by handrous »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #273
handrous wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That used to be all they did. You'd see a lot of "of course I block all ads—except Google's, they're fine". They also didn't used to trick unsophisticated or distracted users into clicking ads by putting them inline with search results. Both changed, I assume, when someone was allowed to run an experiment and the projected profit trend line went from "exceptionally good" to "holy shit, it's all the money in the world…

And we don't even know if their measurement is right--they probably got a high rate at first because people weren't used to them and were deceived. As people wise up the effectiveness will drop.

All the non-tech-nerds I see use phones or computers hit the inline ads at a very high rate. As in, on most searches. They do not realize they are ads, mostly, or do but aren't paying attention.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#279

Post by masswerk »

renewiltord wrote: post #270
masswerk wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, there's a biased view in ad business and some of the perceived benefits and effects are rather tautological? (This is why we have studies.) You could also conclude from your remarks that there is a pervasive idea around ad teams that former generations (in the times of media analysis) were just delivering complete failures. However, this model had delivered for more than a century. How could this model perform…

The best thing about startups is that they test questions like that in a way that these studies can't. Because the participants have a very real and strong incentive to succeed they will perform that continuous search and hypothesis adjustment till they hit gold or die. If you truly have a Thiel hypothesis, you're going to get very rich. In software, we call this "talk is cheap; show me the code", but of course here…

The problem being only that these startups are still acting in the bubble of common beliefs of the field. So these are actually testing the beliefs, not their real-world effectiveness. (Also, at this stage, you have to comply and conform to the delivery networks right from the very beginning with little chance of competing with the big, established ones.)

Edit: Moreover, you had to compete with the paradigm of low effort, high interchangeability and big data. (Meaning: interchangeable code, interchangeable users, interchangeable professionals, interchangeable clients, and lean know-how stack as it's "all in the data". While this adheres to criteria of optimization, it doesn't necessarily mean that it represents an optimum of effectiveness, as well.)

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#280

Post by artursapek »

derwiki wrote: post #268
artursapek wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Twitter, I've been blocking every account that pushes ads. Slowly I think I've gotten most of them lol. I don't see as many now.

Is that a list that can be easily exported/imported?

I don't think so, which makes my account more precious :)
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