Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization • Hacker News Board

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#101

Post by mtgx » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 3:28 PM UTC

apinstein wrote: post #15

ThePhysicist wrote: post #8

I'm still surprised no one has yet figured out a way to store sensitive data about personal interests and preferences on the client-side and let the client itself pull appropriate ads for the user to see. The quality of such a system should be comparable or better to server-side technologies with the right amount of tuning, and much less privacy-invading than existing approaches. Personally I'd love to support more w…

This is the big idea I always pitched at hackathons (like startup weekend). I think it’s a great idea. 100% opt-in ads. My tagline was “a sufficiently relevant ad is indistinguishable from content.” It’s meant to be aspirational. The idea is that if you are looking to buy something, awareness of choices or information about that choice should be so valuable that it’s considered to be a benefit by the user. It’s basic…

The cheap CPC and cpm is why Google and Facebook would never consider doing that. Especially Google I've noticed recently that they try to be as misleading as possible to new advertisers to get them to pay a lot of money for crap as targettng. For instance they call what are effectively as interactions as clicks and refer to the cost as CPC even though in all of Google's other as types CPC refers to click to website. But in Gmail campaigns it means ad interactions which convert to almost an order of magnitude fewer clicks to website but the advertisers pay at best only half the cost of regular clicks.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#102

Post by rnhmjoj » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 3:37 PM UTC

throwaway6789 wrote: post #49

tinco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who is going to build that illegal feature into Google's services? And how much are that person, and the other persons that know about it, going to be paid for them to not be a liability? Maybe I'm naieve, but I feel building automated law breaking systems is not something corporations do. I have no doubt individuals within corporations break laws whenever they feel like they can get away with it, but leaving tra…

I take great care to separate my browsing sessions. Still I find YouTube recommendations on my main account on topics that I watched on another machine in my home network. My typical setup involves: 1. Virtualbox VM restored to a snapshot after each usage (browser completely clean, never uses my main Google accounts here) 2. Firefox on main machine with clear all cookies set, ublock origin. Rarely logs into my main G…

Check how unique your fingerprint is using panopticlick[1] and try to fix it by adopting more common settings. Also don't use Firefox Focus: it has telemetry and shares data with a third party[2]. Use the german version[3] if you must, it has telemetry disabled by default.

[1]: https://panopticlick.eff.org

[2]: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/02/12/firefox-focus-privacy-scan...

[3]: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.klar/

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#103

Post by idiomatic1 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

apinstein wrote: post #15

ThePhysicist wrote: post #8

I'm still surprised no one has yet figured out a way to store sensitive data about personal interests and preferences on the client-side and let the client itself pull appropriate ads for the user to see. The quality of such a system should be comparable or better to server-side technologies with the right amount of tuning, and much less privacy-invading than existing approaches. Personally I'd love to support more w…

This is the big idea I always pitched at hackathons (like startup weekend). I think it’s a great idea. 100% opt-in ads. My tagline was “a sufficiently relevant ad is indistinguishable from content.” It’s meant to be aspirational. The idea is that if you are looking to buy something, awareness of choices or information about that choice should be so valuable that it’s considered to be a benefit by the user. It’s basic…

This is the idea behind the Brave browser, right?

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#104

Post by AstralStorm » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

fapjacks wrote: post #78

tinco wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you ended in the "people that put too much effort in anti-tracking" bin, and you get recommendations for those kinds of people :p

You jest, but having worked in the ad tech industry, I can say this is actually a completely viable means of tracking people. This is why you don't load uBlock Origin into your Tor Browser or use a custom User-Agent string while using your VPN. Everything you do that is different than what everyone else does (i.e. the default) is a means of identifying you. And if I could do it at that startup, certainly Google can d…

If the bin is big enough or merges with other bins, it becomes the new norm.

Tor Browser has a strong "disable JavaScript" option that is relatively popular; the remaining vector is then tracking images and the rule would be to check for Tor exit node that hasn't downloaded the image cookie.

Even with JS on TB tries to reduce impact of such history based attacks.

Pretty targeted and obviously possible to fuzz.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#105

Post by Klathmon » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #11

I appreciate that Google appears to have reached out to local newspaper sites (qctimes.com, napavalleyregister.com), for Contributor. But if I were a major content publisher, the relatively small and mostly non-notable list of current Contributor sites [0] would make me think that Google isn't highly invested in this project. Which is not a good first impression considering that many people think that Google is too q…

IMO Contributor is still pretty new, and without users the time and effort spent implementing it probably isn't worth it yet, especially because many of those running adblockers just ignore it entirely (I can't even count the number of times I've read "why pay for contributor when adblockers are free?).

If/when it hits a critical mass of users, suddenly it will become a lot easier to justify the cost of implementation.

Hopefully tools like this can help get some sites to implement contributor or something like it so paying for access can get a foothold and become a viable option.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#106

Post by scotty79 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #48

Kalium wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. In that case, it's going to fail the test of being just as good pretty hard. Being able to target flexibly and based on user actions (or location, or other salient data) is really valuable to advertisers, in a measured-in-units-of-currency sense, and thus to publishers. It means better results from more narrowly targeted ads, and it also means more valuable ads to publishers. It's perhaps not impossible, but it s…

> fail the test of being just as good pretty hard Yeah I don't see the online ad business ever adopting something else because it's "as good", I think that browsers should drive this and ensure sites simply don't get this type of information, so the adoption to something better (for consumers) is driven by necessity . The adoption of a system like the one I'm describing rests solely on the fact that the current infor…

> Yeah I don't see the online ad business ever adopting something else because it's "as good", I think that browsers should drive this and ensure sites simply don't get this type of information, so the adoption to something better (for consumers) is driven by necessity.

Pretty much AdBlock could do that.

It let's you opt out of serverside-profiled and unprofiled ads, and opt-in into relevant ones profiled on client side.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#107

Post by simias » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #52

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I specifically seek them out, I have no interest in learning about new products or services ever. Thus, an ad would never be relevant enough to be content for me.

Well I do. Sometimes there's a product or a service that can provide value in a way I haven't thought about, or I haven't come around to specifically seek out yet. I don't mind seeing ads for such things. What I do mind is seeing ads for stuff I don't care about at all, and if the ads get in the way of what I'm doing.

I've been considering buying a 3D printer lately. I don't have a lot of experience in the domain and I'm not sure where to start, so clearly I'm actively looking about information regarding 3D printers.

What I'm definitely not looking for is ads. Actually I try to avoid anything that might remotely look like one, from official websites (obviously) to comparisons of 3D printers that look like they could be biased one way or an other. Because obviously every company selling 3D printers is going to tell you that theirs is the best you could ever find. Even if they don't outright lie they'll put the emphasis on their strong points while conveniently forgetting to mention the drawbacks.

I really think ads are useless from a consumer perspective. I can believe that there was a time where the best way to reach potential buyers was buying an ad in the newspaper but with the ultra-connected society we're in it's just a waste. Make a great product, send it to a bunch of influential bloggers in the market share you target to review and if it's good the word of mouth will do the rest.

In a society where you can find reviews and recommendations for basically anything online, why on earth would I ever want to see ads? If you need to convince your potential customers that they need your product by spamming them, maybe your product is not that useful in the first place.

Of course the dark side of this is that of course marketing has caught on, now we have "native advertising" and people getting paid to pretend that they like something.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#108

Post by falcor84 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #107

magicalhippo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I do. Sometimes there's a product or a service that can provide value in a way I haven't thought about, or I haven't come around to specifically seek out yet. I don't mind seeing ads for such things. What I do mind is seeing ads for stuff I don't care about at all, and if the ads get in the way of what I'm doing.

I've been considering buying a 3D printer lately. I don't have a lot of experience in the domain and I'm not sure where to start, so clearly I'm actively looking about information regarding 3D printers. What I'm definitely not looking for is ads. Actually I try to avoid anything that might remotely look like one, from official websites (obviously) to comparisons of 3D printers that look like they could be biased one…

>...people getting paid to pretend that they like something

If I remember my history correctly, this is how the very first radio sponsorships started as.

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#109

Post by rock_hard » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #8

I'm still surprised no one has yet figured out a way to store sensitive data about personal interests and preferences on the client-side and let the client itself pull appropriate ads for the user to see. The quality of such a system should be comparable or better to server-side technologies with the right amount of tuning, and much less privacy-invading than existing approaches. Personally I'd love to support more w…

Star Wars of all things provides a interesting vision here. Did you ever notice that for the most part the machines/robots are not networked? That AI seems to exist but is intentionally kept dumb (C3PO).

I think this is a interesting model. To as society come to the conclusion that more connection of devices, smarter AI is not the right solution. That what works best is the right amount of connection and AI

Re: Funding Choices – Google’s new tool for GDPR compliance and content monetization

#110

Post by yorwba » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #107

magicalhippo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I do. Sometimes there's a product or a service that can provide value in a way I haven't thought about, or I haven't come around to specifically seek out yet. I don't mind seeing ads for such things. What I do mind is seeing ads for stuff I don't care about at all, and if the ads get in the way of what I'm doing.

I've been considering buying a 3D printer lately. I don't have a lot of experience in the domain and I'm not sure where to start, so clearly I'm actively looking about information regarding 3D printers. What I'm definitely not looking for is ads. Actually I try to avoid anything that might remotely look like one, from official websites (obviously) to comparisons of 3D printers that look like they could be biased one…

I think ads are useless when you want to decide within a product category ("Which 3D printer should I buy?") but they can help you become aware of it in the first place ("There are affordable 3D printers now? Maybe I should get one.")

Unfortunately the majority of the consumer market revolves around a few common products and so most ads are about shifting revenue between functionally identical brands.

But I do occasionally see ads for relatively obscure stuff that might cause such an "I didn't know that existed." experience for other people. (I'm apparently hard to target.) For example https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=viva64.com are essentially ads, but they are still interesting to read, and afterwards you might be in the market for a code analysis tool.