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The EU's war on behavioral advertising

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Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#61

Post by tomComb »

btbuildem wrote: post #34
JohnFen wrote: post #2

This is a wonderful start. Here's hoping it catches on outside of the EU as well!

I really wish Canada would grow a pair, and stand up to the big social media platforms -- especially in the light of the latest shenanigans with the availability of / paying for news. Whichever side of that debate you fall on, you have to admit that meta et al are in a position to strong-arm a country and have an impact on its laws. That's a terrible precedent, already having played out in Australia. Anything that ch…

I’m no fan of the power of big tech, well, except when it involves standing fast against the blatant political corruption of a government devising a bizarre and nonsensical law to funnel money to their corporate buddies (according to PBO analysis the most money goes to bell, rogers and Shaw).

Yes, Canada should develop strong privacy and competition laws, but I’ve lost hope that they wouldn’t just be whatever serves the interests of our local oligopolies.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#62

Post by JohnFen »

seydor wrote: post #53
someplaceguy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you re in tech your salary depends on advertising money somewhere along the chain You say that like it's a good thing.

without online media, computers would be in the sector of scientific instruments

So your assertion is that there would be no online media in the absence of behavioral advertising?

I rather suspect that's incorrect, for two reasons. We had plenty of online media before online advertising existed at all, and there are many ways of doing advertising without it being behavioral.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#63

Post by spunker540 »

btbuildem wrote: post #46

Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products -- chronological feeds, friends and follows only, etc is what users have been begging for and being ignored, because advertising trash salad is more profitable. If the long-term effects end up being along the lines of the big social corps withdrawing from the EU, I see that as an enormous win for that economic zone. The presence of…

Why do you think complex algos, complex feeds, across large search space (all content instead of friends and family) turns out to be more profitable? Are ads suddenly more valuable in that context? I don’t think so. And it’s certainly much more expensive to operate than a simple chronological feed of friends and family.

It comes down to time spent. People spend more time on the apps and see more ads. We can argue over whether that’s a sign people like the app more… but no one is being forced to scroll a feed they don’t enjoy. Interesting that people “are begging for changes” yet using the apps more and more anyways.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#64

Post by JCWasmx86 »

duringmath wrote: post #35

The EU's war is on US companies. They wouldn't be playing fast and loose with these regulations if their home born companies were the ones getting disadvantaged. They push draconian surveillance laws then claim sainthood when they go after Facebook. I guess you can hate Facebook et al and welcome this stuff but it's hard to deny how these laws are basically trade barriers aimed at the US tech industry.

No, you just have to follow the regulations. It's no "war on US companies" or anything like that. They wrote some good law (Albeit it has a few weaknesses), and enforce it now. And if you want to do business in the EU, you have to follow them.

I would say it's more a problem of the US companies, if they can't do business without violating EU regulations.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#65

Post by someplaceguy »

master-lincoln wrote: post #25
brap wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU is a huge fan of shooting itself in the foot with useless regulations, unable to think 1-2 steps ahead. Waiting for someone to tell you why "the destruction of the entire eu online advertising industry" is actually a good thing in their view.

Isn't the destruction of advertising (not just online) a good thing? It's skewing markets by creating demands that were not there before, but only for the big players who can afford to be in peoples faces everywhere. Advertising is often misinforming (or not informing) people about the products/services. It promotes a throwaway society where resources are wasted.

Exactly... As a general rule, all other things being equal, the more informed the participants in a market are, the better the efficiency of the market.

Advertising negatively affects markets because it leads people to make decisions based on things that are not necessarily in their interests, i.e. it leads people to make more uninformed (or misinformed) decisions.

In effect, it's basically exploiting a market externality: vulnerabilities in human psychology.

I mean, this is not always true. Sometimes, you might become aware of a great product or service due to advertising. But I am entirely convinced that, in general, the negative effects hugely, hugely outweigh the occasional benefit, just by observing how people usually make their buying decisions in their day-to-day lives (including me, I'm not immune to that!).

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#66

Post by asu_thomas »

omginternets wrote: post #47
jklinger410 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about this free market that everyone talks about? I don't think there are any protections around the reasonable expectation of privacy from a private industry perspective in the US. If you use the internet, or an app, you must protect yourself. I assume everyone is a capitalist, so wouldn't adding laws here somehow subsidize and therefore tarnish the market?

Most people balance the ideal of a free market with other ideals, such as freedom from corporate predation.

Small businesses use this kind of advertising as much or more, proportionally speaking, as corporations. And with a virtual guarantee of worse data security/privacy practices when applicable.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#67

Post by OfSanguineFire »

kvdveer wrote: post #31
hnhg wrote: post #7

I would rather be the subject of behavioral advertising and keep privately encrypted comms than the other way around, but apparently the EU has other ideas.

That means that we're living in your ideal world then... :) Right now, behavioral ads are on their last legs, and privately encrypted comms are still around. Proposals to limit encryption are being thrown around, but they are met with serious resistance, and none of them are currently close to implementation.

I have no doubt that Signal is now compromised, since its board was overhauled recently and now includes people with a US government background. Yes, the encryption model theoretically remains secure, but 1) Signal now uploads your contact list to their servers and claims it is secured by Intel’s secure enclave, but multiple vulnerabilities have been found in that, and 2) if targeted, most users are defenseless against a malicious update. Meanwhile, WhatsApp, which is heavily used by EU citizens, claims end-to-end encryption, but it leaks metadata and also chat content is leaked through the automated backups that most users don’t disable.

The only question is to what extent Five Eyes members besides the US get access to all that. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any initiative inside the EU to protect users better, while also letting us enjoy an internet without behavioral advertising.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#68

Post by JohnFen »

omginternets wrote: post #47
jklinger410 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about this free market that everyone talks about? I don't think there are any protections around the reasonable expectation of privacy from a private industry perspective in the US. If you use the internet, or an app, you must protect yourself. I assume everyone is a capitalist, so wouldn't adding laws here somehow subsidize and therefore tarnish the market?

Most people balance the ideal of a free market with other ideals, such as freedom from corporate predation.

Not to mention that Adam Smith himself made the point that there can be no free market in the absence of regulation.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#69

Post by seydor »

tsimionescu wrote: post #57
seydor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hint: there aren't . the web is like all the media before it

All the media that never tracked its users, yes.

people should remember that advertising was equally vilified at all times , whether it was on TV or print or radio. But at the time the EU was wise enough not to destroy its media economy. This time it's different

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#70

Post by legitster »

Uh... hmmm. I work in the industry and this article is very even handed but still a bit off.

We don't really have have a term for "behavioral" advertising. So a lot of things are being lumped together that don't necessarily fit.

For example, Facebook USED to be highly valued because of the amount of "targeting" (again, we don't use the term "behavioral") data they had. When you went to tell FB what you liked and didn't like they used that. They also kept that valuable data under lock and key - they have no interest in sharing it.

Things are a bit different now. Since they and everyone else switched to an endless "doomscrolling" experience, all that data is worthless. No one keeps their likes up to date, no one engages with content. So there's really not that much targeting ("behavioral") data out of FB anymore. So native ads are less effective, but people look at much more.

"Data brokerages" are pretty niche. They don't exist to the extent that people think they do. And the data they provide is often absolute garbage. Users switch phones, emails, numbers way too often to actually get anything resembling a permanent "lock". Marketing data ages FAST. Do you go to a store and find they have an address that is like 4 moves old? That's kind of the quality of brokerage data - it's good for filling in gaps, but is not nearly as valuable as first-party data.

So part of what you are seeing is not necessarily advertisers responding to upcoming EU regulations, but organic changes in what sort of advertising is even effective anymore. Third party cookies are not as useful as they used to be, and they cut into the big advertisers' monopolies on user data. So they are being phased out anyway.

> Attribution / measurement of advertising campaigns became more and more precise

This is the exact opposite of what is happening in the industry. There are so many different data sources that all conflict that data quality is often very dire in most large organizations. So there is a ton of fraud and snake oil used to justify advertising budgets.

However, where the author hits the nail on the head I think are future outcomes: EU markets are being deprioritized (it doesn't hurt that economically, consumer wealth in Europe is falling like a rock). Users are opting in to more advertisements (Instagram is quickly becoming the QVC of the internet). One thing he misses is the rising importance of sponsorships and physical marketing..

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