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The EU's war on behavioral advertising

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281–290 of 420 posts

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense to me. You make it sound like a rosy cooperative relationship where advertisers want to follow the rules and regulators just haven't made them. Even so, regulation isn't "complete control" in any way. It seems more like the advertisers are always going to try to make the advertisements as effective as possible while toeing the letter of the law as closely as possible and ignoring the spirit of…

I'm saying the laws EU has released are too complex and indirect and cost too much money, and that if they wanted to ban behavioral advertising outright they should have and could have done that instead of what they have done.

> if they wanted to ban behavioral advertising outright they should have and could have done that instead of what they have done

Yes they could, so the question is why didn't they?

I suspect the answer is that there are lots of factions within the EU, some want to ban it and some don't and what they've done is a compromise.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've implemented gdpr. It's much more than that.

Don’t set cookies. Don’t capture Personal data. You’re 90% there.

Oh, no, there's more.

You must list all kinds of data processing you perform, find the appropriate legal basis (and data retention duration, etc.), make sure you only gather data you need (data minimization), know to who you transfer data, make your services secure by default, monitor for unauthorized access, and tell affected people when there is a breach. Perhaps make a risk assessment, but it depends on the processing you do.

Yes, it's work. But quite frankly, I'm cool with a law that expects anyone who processes personal data to secure their service, to properly inform people, and holds them accountable.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#283
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's already DNT(Do not track) in the browsers, but nobody respects it.

So there’s the problem. This should be sufficient?

exactly

and top is complaining that his industry was instead given unholy ammounts of money to agrue that it isn't.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense to me. You make it sound like a rosy cooperative relationship where advertisers want to follow the rules and regulators just haven't made them. Even so, regulation isn't "complete control" in any way. It seems more like the advertisers are always going to try to make the advertisements as effective as possible while toeing the letter of the law as closely as possible and ignoring the spirit of…

I'm saying the laws EU has released are too complex and indirect and cost too much money, and that if they wanted to ban behavioral advertising outright they should have and could have done that instead of what they have done.

> I'm saying the laws EU has released are too complex and indirect and cost too much money

No, and no, and no.

Most privcy-adjacent laws that EU has released in recent years are neither complex, nor do they cost too much money.

Well, they cost some money because businesses have this entrenched idea that they have an inalienable right to your data, so they don't even know which data they collect, sell, exchange, let leak, or use throughout their systems. Well, boo-hoo. Spend some time and money to get rid of this idea.

And the laws are "indirect" in the sense that all laws are indirect. They have to be general enough to be applicable not just in the year they were released to the technology of the time.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#285

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…

Could you give me a source for: `(it doesn't hurt that economically, consumer wealth in Europe is falling like a rock).` Where in Europe is consumer wealth falling, by how much, and why is this a trend? I could say the same about the US or Brazil or any other place, barring a source.

Median consumer is getting fucked by central bank loan rates, sky-high housing prices wherever jobs are and overall inflation. Talking from EU perspective, but probably applies to most of the world pretty well.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#286
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infinite money glitch for big tech, with dramatic externalities pushed to non-consenting general population. These externalities include death of traditional media, extreme levels of political polarization, and climbing suicide rate of teenagers, girls in particular. These things are caused in very large part by the big tech companies maximizing consumption of ads, and efficiency of ads targeting.

The only non-consenting advertising I can think of is public billboards - and I believe those should be banned, most definitely. Every single other type of advertising requires your explicit consent. YouTube? Google? Newspapers? All have your consent.

> Every single other type of advertising requires your explicit consent. YouTube? Google? Newspapers? All have your consent.

How exactly do they have that "consent"?

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

every regulation favours big companies in the trivial sense that there's a non zero cost to comply with any rule. However this is hardly a reason to not have rules, we also don't let startup companies throw waste into the river. Smaller companies aren't somehow inherently virtuous, if they can only exist by violating user privacy even more so than large companies, I'd rather deal with large companies. Small companies…

I hear you that small companies can suck even harder than big ones. But the idea of capitalism is that it’s a search function, looking for optimal solutions. So having many firms positioning themselves differently is better than having a couple in that you’re more likely to find a good best solution. We need some rules, but we need to err on the side of fewer not more rules. My point is that mass ads requires massed…

Ad targeting may be old good regional advertising. Or advertising in specific content rather than trying to target specific human beings based on their profiles.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#288
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The megacorporations are at war against humanity and won't stop until forced: they must profit and grow at the expense of civilization, climate, and biosphere. It's true the EU does not recognize it's in a war yet but they are at least trying to slow them down. The US is further behind.

Is EU really trying to slow it down? TikTok ban in US seems to be a common talking point. Meanwhile here very few people talk about it and those are seen as lunatics in most cases. Most people seem to happily approve all the GDPR dialogs too. While doomscrolling TikTok/Instagram/FB.

When you have a truly compliant gdpr dialog, aka simple yes/no, I found lots of non tech people around me click no. I'd say about 50%

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#289
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The megacorporations are at war against humanity and won't stop until forced: they must profit and grow at the expense of civilization, climate, and biosphere. It's true the EU does not recognize it's in a war yet but they are at least trying to slow them down. The US is further behind.

Is EU really trying to slow it down? TikTok ban in US seems to be a common talking point. Meanwhile here very few people talk about it and those are seen as lunatics in most cases. Most people seem to happily approve all the GDPR dialogs too. While doomscrolling TikTok/Instagram/FB.

> Most people seem to happily approve all the GDPR dialogs too.

What's a "GDPR dialog"? Do you mean a cookie banner? Nothing in GDPR requires a cookie banner.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#290

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.

The EU is not an uniform entity. Yes, you have citizens who sue Facebook, but then you have some members of the commission that wants to ban E2E encryption; but then, you have other members that absolutely don't want that, and the EDPS reminding everyone that it's actually illegal.
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