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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

#611

Post by tatersolid »

b3morales wrote: post #261
JKCalhoun wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. I think when ad supported free services start shutting down people will move on with their lives. We'll find out instead how really unimportant Facebook, etc. was in people's lives. Put another way, how on earth did people get along without Facebook before there was a Facebook? I'm reminded of a comment from the guy that created the TV-B-Gone. He would turn off TV's in public places like self-service la…

This might just be me, but I've always found that TVs in public have this weird pull to them. Even if I have no feelings at all about what's on the screen (a soap opera I've never seen?) my gaze is still repeatedly drawn to it. If there's one around I generally try to position myself so it's not in my peripheral vision or I have to spend some effort ignoring it. It feels like whatever it is that keeps kids, as we say…

Humans are genetically programmed to focus on motion. This has its advantages for a hunter-gatherer out on the savannah.

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

#612

Post by JohnFen »

phreeza wrote: post #285
JohnFen wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just makes your device the spy. Sure, it's an increase in the amount of privacy, but it's not actual privacy.

How is it different from your browser history being stored locally?

Because the issue isn't where the data is stored, the issue is what the data is used for. In this case, it would be used in a way that still reveals personal information about me -- for instance, in a FLoC-type setup, it's still being revealed which cohorts I'm a part of.

Having the data stored locally is certainly better than having it stored in someone else's database. No argument there, that's an improvement. But that's just making the problem slightly less bad, not solving it.

These sort of schemes just strike me as being sneaky ways of continuing to engage in the abuse that the adtech world loves so much. The major difference being mostly what machines are doing the tracking.

Also, of course, your browser history isn't exactly private even though it's stored on your machine.

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

#613

Post by skinnymuch »

villasv wrote: post #429
reader_mode wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are products out there that would increase my quality of life that I'm not aware of or not actively thinking about. In an ideal world ads are about informing the consumer, so absolutely ads can provide value to you as well. One of the recent life improving products I never thought about before an ad is an electric toothbrush - honestly I saw them but I considered it a silly gadget. Saw a plug in a random video,…

Yes, there are plenty of products out there that I would like to discover. But these are one in a hundred. I'd gladly sacrifice the few valuable ones. In fact I already do this, because I use adblockers and pi-hole as much as I possibly can. I'm not completely against marketing. I pretty often buy things advertised in podcasts, stuff that obviously paid for product placement in specific places. But those are ads that…

What have you bought from podcast ads? I’ve never heard an interesting one. Possibly ever.

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

#614

Post by yarcob »

aerosmile wrote: post #610
yarcob wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's your takeaway, then I think you need to read this thread again. 1) Nobody is saying that ads aren't profitable or that marketers are throwing money out the window because they are stupid. The discussion is about whether invasive user tracking is effective. Ads can be profitable even though user tracking is ineffective. 2) This thread also is mostly about your very weak argument. You wrote: > Facebook has cr…

You're just confused about how marketing works. The fact that you're dissociating tracking sophistication from performance tells me all I need to know. To learn more, dig a bit into the iOS14 impact on the Facebook performance results.

I just tried to explain why people think your argument is fallacious.

You said:

> I am really curious to hear what's fallacious about it.

But apparently that was just a figure of speech, not an actual question.

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

#615

Post by droidist2 »

yowzadave wrote: post #560
janpot wrote: post #165

Often I hear the argument, people saying "I prefer ads that are relevant for me over random ads". But the result of the tracking is not only that you get "relevant" ads, it's that your timelines and your feeds and your news gets tweaked in ways that makes you engage with ads as much as possible. Not only do you get manipulated in buying stuff you didn't ask for (ads in general). You're also getting spoonfed content t…

I’m always shocked at how non-relevant the ads I see are. How many Ph.D’s at Google have dedicated their careers to targeting me more correctly, and yet: constant ads for stretchy water-wicking pants (I don’t go camping), solid brass pencil shavers (can’t remember the last time I used a pencil), and dating sites for seniors (I’m married and in my 30’s). Are these people just bad at their jobs? Don’t get me wrong, I p…

Google does seem utterly incompetent relative to their brainpower and budget.

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

#616

Post by ElFitz »

no_time wrote: post #562
flatiron wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My TV seriously wanted to put itself in some sort of demo mode if I didn’t connect it to wifi. That included restarting itself and redoing the settings every 30 minutes or whatever. It’s an insane ultimatum! So yeah it’s in a zone it can ping home base and nothing less. But for the 99% of people who can’t do that crap it sucks.

I always wanted to experiment with one of these but fortunately I managed to avoid them so far. I wonder what would happen if you limited their bandwidth to a couple of kbps. Just enough to get the pings across but make any ad download excruciatingly slow. Or write some kind of DPI rule that drops packets to the internet above a certain size.

People apparently mostly rely on PiHole & other similar options for that.

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

#617

Post by no_time »

ElFitz wrote: post #616
no_time wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wanted to experiment with one of these but fortunately I managed to avoid them so far. I wonder what would happen if you limited their bandwidth to a couple of kbps. Just enough to get the pings across but make any ad download excruciatingly slow. Or write some kind of DPI rule that drops packets to the internet above a certain size.

People apparently mostly rely on PiHole & other similar options for that.

Blocking outright is probably an edge case these devices will detect and handle differently in the following years as more and more people will be aware of the option.

That's why I think experimenting with more advanced sabotage will pay off in the long run.

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

#618

Post by kaba0 »

threatofrain wrote: post #211
janpot wrote: post #165

Often I hear the argument, people saying "I prefer ads that are relevant for me over random ads". But the result of the tracking is not only that you get "relevant" ads, it's that your timelines and your feeds and your news gets tweaked in ways that makes you engage with ads as much as possible. Not only do you get manipulated in buying stuff you didn't ask for (ads in general). You're also getting spoonfed content t…

I'm curious how much manipulation people think is involved in terms of buying things you didn't want. Enough to absolve someone of their financial responsibility for buying? Why or why not?

> I'm curious how much manipulation people think is involved in terms of buying things you didn't want. Enough to absolve someone of their financial responsibility for buying?

Well, marketing has some famous stories where seemingly counterintuitive things resulted in more buys, eg. Actimel (not sure whether it is called the same in the US as well, but this fruity milk drink with some added vitamins) was having trouble selling at their original price, but increasing the price and thus making it appear a more luxury item did the think for them. There are many small “hacks” in the human brain that are actively exploited by marketing so while I would not say that we are not responsible for our financing, we are at the very least heavily manipulated when shopping - and also, some people are easier to manipulate than others.

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

#619

Post by no_time »

awillen wrote: post #591
no_time wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cancer of targted advertising has only been with us for like 20 years. Small companies have existed way before that. Blaming people who want to protect those who don't even know what a server or a company is from their data being harvested because you can't sell them dog food is just ridiculous. That being said, if you are concerned about monopolies, there are better ways to fight them. Unfortunately they have be…

To channel my money towards anything I have to make money. To make money I have to sell things to customers. The world prior to 20 years ago was a very different one in terms of the scale and reach companies could achieve. Pretending as though the situation now is comparable is just naive on your part. And honestly, the drama of calling it a cancer is just silly and dramatic. If you think this is all so terrible, go…

>To channel my money towards anything I have to make money. To make money I have to sell things to customers.

Nobody said you should stop in this instant. I was criticizing how your approach to fighting your competitors inadvertently does a lot of damage to people that don't know any better.

>And honestly, the drama of calling it a cancer is just silly and dramatic. If you think this is all so terrible, go live in a commune instead of posting on a message board that is run by an organization that is deeply connected to big tech and all the things you're complaining about. I guess you probably can't see that connection all the way up there on your high horse, though.

This argument is basically the "yet you live in a society, curious" meme[0]. I work also work in tech(as an industrial automation contractor to be precise) so I enjoy the technical aspect of the conversations here. That being said I set a goal 5 years ago to not give SV gigacorps a single cent either directly or indirectly. It helps me keep a clean conscience in arguments like this.

Make no mistake I'm no leftie. I just find the direction the online world is heading deeply concerning. Social cooling[1] and all that. The fact that your means of making money is caught in this crossfire is not what I'm aiming for.

[0]: https://i.redd.it/whnuvoh4od031.jpg

[1]: https://www.socialcooling.com/

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

#620

Post by webinvest »

jimkleiber wrote: post #385
air7 wrote: post #366

I dislike being tracked as much as the next guy, but I often wonder what "our" ideal end-game goal is? By "our" I mean the typical HN crowd that understands both the technological and the economical implications of this. If we want top-grade products to remain available without a direct monetary transaction (i.e "free"), it seems we must give something that the product providers can turn into monetary value indirectl…

Your post inspires me to look at it from a real-world analogy. If I imagine that online ads are the same as offline ads, I start to think about what offline ad tracking would look like. I imagine cameras being on the streets to watch me walk down the street, following me to different stores to see what I buy, with whom I meet, and other activities to inform which billboards/street advertisements should exist. I think…

You could buy a billboard and stick a painting or picture you like on there
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