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The EU's war on behavioral advertising

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Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#391

Post by bastawhiz »

nologic01 wrote: post #376
bastawhiz wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is not advertising, the issue is the construction, classification and use of human profiles through the collection of behavioral data, by-and-large without the subjects being aware or cognizant of the possible short and long-term implications. I don't disagree that collection of data isn't bad, but two things: 1. The collection of data isn't the goal, the advertising is. The data is only practically valua…

I too see issues with advertising as such. It has created an unsatiable society that cannot find balance even though it churns through an ever growing slice of the planet. But I feel it is a longer term problem about how to organize markets and disseminate product availability in a less manipulative way. In a strange way the internet is actually a pull medium that should orient people more towards seeking information…

> Car manufacturers will want to grab and sell behavior, supermarkets, banks, toothbrushes, fridges, thermostats and doorbells will want to do the same.

I'm curious why you think so if the goal isn't advertising. Behavior data is useful for business that deals with behavior. But I can't think of broad reasons for these companies to collect such data when you're already a customer, because they don't need to affect your behavior that that point, right? Unless they're advertising to you.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#392

Post by dcow »

specialist wrote: post #370
dcow wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s play devils advocate for a moment: Why should I be able to control what someone else knows about me? Seriously? If you sit in a park bench and watch me running around on a hot day I can’t compel you to “forget I was there”. And if you use that knowledge as data to support opening a lemonade stand, and even to reach out to me directly and offer a discount on cold drinks, who is being socially harmed? Where is th…

> Why should I be able to control what someone else knows about me? The right to privacy is: - complete sovereignty over oneself, including data about oneself - control over public knowledge about oneself In other words: I am my data, my data is me. I own myself. To deny my fundamental right to privacy is to deny my personhood, to deny my membership in a society of equals. -- It's corny, but I sometimes liken privacy…

Usually the responsibility falls on the individual to not reveal their true name, though. Once known no-one gets to litigate knowledge of it. Usually one must change their identity so much that their true name changes as well, or forever be vulnerable. Everyone does have a right to privacy, to not be tracked and surveilled, what’s being discussed here is an extension of that that argues it’s unethical to retain any data about anybody period, even with their consent. I’m having a hard time making that much of a leap.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#393

Post by ssivark »

dcow wrote: post #375
zenapollo wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further (replying to my own comment), watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix. I almost didn’t watch it because I thought I’ve heard it all before. But it really shocks the conscious when you see it all laid out clearly with strong real world examples - building from the mental health crisis, to the culture wars, to the erosion of worldwide democracy writ large - all driven by the power of adtech.

To be honest, personally I’d argue for a stronger stance: the right to not be solicited . I think all advertising is poisonous and insidious and leads to the things you describe, not just targeted behavioral profiling. So I’d say the missing right that we need to codify lies somewhere in that realm. Still I think we’re a little stuck on the consent bit. If 98% of society consents to be solicited, all the problems of…

It’s illegal, in many places, to sell your vote. Extending that example to a general principle — if you have any decision making power/responsibility over others, then allowing it to be subverted (for pecuniary or other benefit) is a dereliction of fiduciary responsibility.

If you are only selling consequences on yourself (we can debate the legality of that, and protections necessary against exploitation) that’s a different scale of potential harm compared to selling away the power concomitant with your duties.

By that logic, it might be possible (if the potency of behavioral advertising can be established) to forbid people from holding decision making responsibilities (including voting) if they wish to sell away their decision making power for benefits.

At the extreme, imagine board members or government heads deciding a question of enormous importance, and their decision making getting hacked by personal behavioral targeting. If that sounds too fantastical, imagine a popular streaming service promoting an emotionally charged war drama (for Washington DC subscribers) when Congress is in session discussing geopolitics questions. Or more precise targeting analogues — aiming at key decision makers, or their friends/family. I doubt shareholders / stakeholders would be okay with that.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#394

Post by ssivark »

legitster wrote: post #96
JohnFen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news. But how does that square with the fact that the online ad industry continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked?

> If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news. Ummm. Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertising. It's really a slow return to how TV advertising and etc worked. > continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and safeguards than there were a decade ago. Let alone the amount of tools like…

> Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home.

And our opinions towards that changed precisely because some people started abusing that data to do targeting (and adversarial discrimination), exploiting scale, and the whole thing got out of hand.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#395

Post by xNeil »

troupo wrote: post #286
xNeil wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

You must accept their Terms of Service to use them. These terms of service state that they will show you advertising, and in order to use the website, you must agree to these terms. They have very clear consent.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#396

Post by andromeduck »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #366
dcow wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s play devils advocate for a moment: Why should I be able to control what someone else knows about me? Seriously? If you sit in a park bench and watch me running around on a hot day I can’t compel you to “forget I was there”. And if you use that knowledge as data to support opening a lemonade stand, and even to reach out to me directly and offer a discount on cold drinks, who is being socially harmed? Where is th…

> If you sit in a park bench and watch me running around on a hot day I can’t compel you to “forget I was there”. I will naturally forget because I’m a human with fuzzy memory / storage. I am not an highly consistent, available and resilient database which will store the information for the next 5 / 10 / 15 / 30 / N years. Appreciate this is a bit of a nit pick on your argument, but I feel it is also important becaus…

Would your answer really turn on whether the observer had imperfect memory? What if they had photographic memory?

Think the retention period for ad tracking is only a few months or years - probably because storage is too expensive these days and there isn't a terrible amount of value in keeping raw data forever.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#397

Post by developer93 »

uoaei wrote: post #336
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.

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

Weil, good for GDPR. Meantime, is there anything I can do to report sites that don't follow the letter of it?

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#398

Post by andromeduck »

FuckButtons wrote: post #377
speleding wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the collective will of an entire continent If you ask the average man on the content "would you like your behaviour tracked?" he will indeed reply "No!" But if you ask him "If you have to choose between seeing ads for women's clothing or ads relevant to your interest, which would you choose?", then he will pick the option that requires behavioural tracking.

I don’t think that’s true, I think most people would actually choose to have adverts that are irrelevant, much easier to tune them out if the signal to noise ratio is low. I think most people don’t like or want adverts in their lives at all.

Like Shen Yun?

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#399

Post by developer93 »

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!)

Well, that made me unreasonably happy, thank you Edit: and then realise it's not applicable to android Firefox where I do most of my browsing, but thank you anyway.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#400

Post by mantas »

FredPret wrote: post #389
mantas wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could be a product only for such a specific niche? All dentists is Cervelo market :) Even if you really really want to target specifically Chicago dentists, you’re probably better off doing a presentation at local dentists’ union or something along those lines. Or just doing old good cold calls. As for 19 year olds, just advertise in whatever is popular among such crowd? If 18 or 20 y/o sees it, it’s probably no…

Have you ever marketed anything? If you ever do, I hope you have an unlimited budget and time horizon to make your ideas work.

Why your budget and timing should take higher priority than my privacy? Arguably social coherence is at risk too since targeted ads in politics may be very nasty. Targeted ads benefit few at expense of the whole society.
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