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The EU's war on behavioral advertising

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Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#331

Post by drakonka »

malermeister wrote: post #322
developer93 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I nearly always take the time to scroll through and untick all the permissions, or find a different site because screw them, that's why. I realise I'm in the minority.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-mat... This should make it a lot easier :) It auto-handles most gdpr permission walls, and yes, you can set it to reject all - that's what I do! (I'm sure this exists for Chrome, too, but if you care about this sort of thing you really should be using Firefox!)

Thank you for this; I've been manually unticking everything since these regulations came into effect and have to admit it was getting a bit tiring (plus sometimes I was too hasty and accidentally clicked "Accept" when the cookie buttons were in a weird order or had non-standard wording.) I hope this helps me decline all the things more efficiently.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#332

Post by mordae »

johndhi wrote: post #130

As a lawyer working on these topics, this is a poor phrasing. EU regulators don't need to "war" with advertisers - they have complete control over them. There's no other side of this war, just regulators issuing commands that industry tries to follow. It's confusing as a war is because the regulators decided not to make the law say, 'behavioral advertising is illegal,' and instead have spent years slowly awakening to…

Not quite. Ad companies win the elections, so the pressure on the elected politicians is to have really good relationship with them.

What that means for the clerks trying to regulate the ad business... Well...

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#333

Post by curtisf »

developer93 wrote: post #303
troupo wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone who serves HTTP in the Eu and includes third party tracking, shows you an idiosyncratic consent banner. Often these things download a large amount of JS as well. > That’s completely and utterly idiotic. Yes. And that's not the fault of the law, but the fault of the companies. 1. The law doesn't talk about browsers, or cookies, or banners. It's a General Data Protection Regulation. It applies in equal measu…

As a very much devils advocate, one could argue that some companies make a revenue steam or of serving ads, so taking steps to do that is their legitimate business. I personally think that's a screwed up business model but there you are. I've always found legitimate business to be annoyingly vague.

Legitimate interest is defined by GDPR.

"I can make money by collecting this data" is not a legitimate interest.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#334

Post by cccbbbaaa »

midasuni wrote: post #327
cccbbbaaa wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proces…

So you are choosing to capture personal data.

Personal data has a very wide definition under GDPR:

>‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

An IP address, or an email address is personal data. Even a pseudonym or a session ID is personal data. Yes, having a log for security purposes (GDPR recital 49) captures personal data (even just access dates and requested URLs may be considered to be personal data). Yes, a comment section on a blog may capture personal data.

Once again, I'm fine with all of this. But ignoring GDPR by not capturing personal data is more complex that it might seem.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#335

Post by jaclaz »

legitster wrote: post #98
jaclaz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two things do not seem to me as contrasting, there is an industry gathering the data and selling them (with promises and snake-oil) and other people buying those data. Whether what is sold is accurate or not is another thing, as long as it is perceived as "good enough" by the buyers it will be bought anyway. I don't think that many companies (buyers) have the guts to stop for - say - 6 months all advertising on a…

Again, take the data buying and selling and set it aside. That's kind of like a whole separate thing. Even without data brokers, there is tons of fraud and snake-oil. When you are comparing advertising success, website traffic, email delivery, product usage, etc - actually getting consistent user data between them is a nightmare. Everyone has incentive to pump up their own numbers. And oftentimes the reporting you ar…

Yes, we are saying exactly the same things, though in a slightly different way.

The results of this (or that) advertising are either non-measurable or poorly measured, and the way advertising budgets are calculated (and spent) is - to say the least - perverse.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#336

Post by uoaei »

developer93 wrote: post #301
LelouBil wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%

Personally I nearly always take the time to scroll through and untick all the permissions, or find a different site because screw them, that's why. I realise I'm in the minority.

GDPR mandates that they are all already unchecked except for the so-called "essential" or "functional" ones.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#337

Post by saiya-jin »

mantas wrote: post #278
imglorp wrote: post #237

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.

The only reason TikTok was banned in US is because its Chinese company. Have you completely missed all-out trade/informational/technology war US has declared on China in past few years? Huawei, ban on chips and so on and on.

Facebook is doing exactly the same and wish to emulate TikTok as much as possible, sharing all data with US 3-letter agencies as required (most probably meaning everything all the time). They are just behind and lost the social momentum. Haven't heard anything about Meta products ban in US, probably because it will never ever happen.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#338

Post by janosdebugs »

developer93 wrote: post #303
troupo wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone who serves HTTP in the Eu and includes third party tracking, shows you an idiosyncratic consent banner. Often these things download a large amount of JS as well. > That’s completely and utterly idiotic. Yes. And that's not the fault of the law, but the fault of the companies. 1. The law doesn't talk about browsers, or cookies, or banners. It's a General Data Protection Regulation. It applies in equal measu…

As a very much devils advocate, one could argue that some companies make a revenue steam or of serving ads, so taking steps to do that is their legitimate business. I personally think that's a screwed up business model but there you are. I've always found legitimate business to be annoyingly vague.

It does not seem that argument will fly: https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2022/tiktok-italia...

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#339

Post by troupo »

developer93 wrote: post #303
troupo wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone who serves HTTP in the Eu and includes third party tracking, shows you an idiosyncratic consent banner. Often these things download a large amount of JS as well. > That’s completely and utterly idiotic. Yes. And that's not the fault of the law, but the fault of the companies. 1. The law doesn't talk about browsers, or cookies, or banners. It's a General Data Protection Regulation. It applies in equal measu…

As a very much devils advocate, one could argue that some companies make a revenue steam or of serving ads, so taking steps to do that is their legitimate business. I personally think that's a screwed up business model but there you are. I've always found legitimate business to be annoyingly vague.

You can still serve ads without tracking, collecting enormous amounts of data etc.

"Legitimate interest" is there to cover areas that are too numerous to cover in a law. E.g. combating fraud is a legitimate activity, and it requires more data than you strictly need to operate your business.

However, as with all things, companies will try and exploit any and all loopholes possible.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#340

Post by FredPret »

mantas wrote: post #287
FredPret wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if the target market for your specific content is 10k people? And they are spread out geographically?

Let's say you develop a new product/service aimed at a thin slice of the population - say, dentists in Chicago, or 19 y.o. females across the US, or beginner coders, or people with older dogs in the state of Utah.

How do you reach these people?

Not through a national/regional ad campaign - your ad budget is likely $10-$100/day. This is why we all need targeted ads.

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