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Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

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Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#161

Post by kerkeslager »

handrous wrote: post #113
amelius wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The advertising is a symptom, it's not the disease. Advertising also stimulates mass overconsumption. If we want to save the planet, advertising is among the top things we should ban right away.

Right, but the alternative in question is banning surveillance-based advertising . I'd prefer to curb surveillance itself, having the side-effect of eliminating surveillance-based advertising. Separately, yes, I'd like to see practically all public advertising banned (billboards are blight), and while I'd have to think on it some more before supporting a blanket ban on all advertising (I'm not sure it's workable, for…

From my perspective, both advertising and surveillance are bad, and both should be banned.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#162

Post by LegitShady »

jefftk wrote: post #160
binarymax wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse or not. GA phones home with vast information about user, and builds a profile of them. That profile is correlated across sites to personalize search results and sell ads.

I'm not being intentionally obtuse, but I also don't know all of Google's advertising business. I didn't think Google Analytics did that? What makes you think it does? (GA sends a message to Google, but I had thought that it was not linked to your behavior on other sites via GA?)

google analytics tells you the interest of your audience. how do you think it does this without correlating you to a profile they've built?

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#163

Post by NicoJuicy »

acituan wrote: post #144
jefftk wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a few actors can obtain competitive advantages by collecting data from across websites... This is going away: all the major browsers have said they are going to block cross-site tracking. (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)

The thing with information is that once it is shared, it can't be unshared. Sure, blocking cross-site tracking would ostensibly make monopolistic accumulation of new data more difficult, but except for the most decay prone information, there is already a comprehensive profile established for a good chunk of the users, which can be milked for a good while. This is not even taking into account of backchannel acquisitio…

It can be made useless if you don't have a identifier.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#164

Post by [deleted] »

convexfunction wrote: post #93
matheusmoreira wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it collects any data at all, it's surveillance. Anything else is a loophole.

You're betting this definition wouldn't have any serious unintended consequences? A hypothetical example: suppose it becomes a legal nightmare to have even heavily censored webserver request logs retained for any period of time if your company does any advertising at all. That is, even if you have no intent or even ability to use those logs for advertising purposes, it might be a lot of work to prove that to the law,…

[deleted]

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#165

Post by tqi »

kerkeslager wrote: post #132

Would any of the people who downvoted my post[1] without comment care to explain why? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761401 EDIT: Didn't think so.

It's an unworkable idea.

What is an ad, exactly? You cite Consumer Reports as a model - they have affiliate links on their reviews. Is that an ad? Is a sponsored social media post? A celebrity endorsement? Free products given to athletes in the hopes that they will be seen using it? Logos on clothing? Is the standard just "I know it when I see it"?

Also (in the US) it almost certain runs afoul of the First Amendment.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#166

Post by handrous »

kerkeslager wrote: post #161
handrous wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the alternative in question is banning surveillance-based advertising . I'd prefer to curb surveillance itself, having the side-effect of eliminating surveillance-based advertising. Separately, yes, I'd like to see practically all public advertising banned (billboards are blight), and while I'd have to think on it some more before supporting a blanket ban on all advertising (I'm not sure it's workable, for…

From my perspective, both advertising and surveillance are bad, and both should be banned.

Yeah, I don't think our opinions diverge too much on that. My ideal world wouldn't feature much of either of them—I think well-marked, in some standard and easy-to-spot way, ads in publications aren't so terrible, for instance, provided it's made clear up-front, say with some kind of cigarette-box style notice or warning, that there are ads in it. Though, again, if paid advertising just went away, in all forms, entirely, tomorrow I wouldn't be sad about it. But, as far as online ads go, it's the surveillance part that bothers me more than there being any ads at all, and that worries me way beyond its use in advertising.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#168

Post by blooalien »

jefftk wrote: post #148
blooalien wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm not bothered by Amazon doing this on their site when I'm there , and I even disable my adblocker on Amazon but limited to Amazon because I'm there to buy a product or service . Advertising at me if it doesn't get in the way of that quest is appropriate there. Covering my entire webpage I'm trying to research something else at with a full-page Amazon ad for a product I already bought just because I exp…

> Personally, I'm not bothered by Amazon doing this on their site when I'm there You may not be, but this is within what they cover in the report Vivaldi is recommending: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/202... (it's a good read, and there are a lot of things they object to even with only first-party tracking) > Perhaps advertisers should start paying us for our valuable time, attention, and b…

> …" (it's a good read, and there are a lot of things they object to even with only first-party tracking)"

Edit: It is a sorta good read… Just be nice if these sorta situations could more easily find some kinda valid balance instead of always escalating outta control to both extremes until laws have to get made… Lawmakers are rarely to be trusted to get these sorts of situations right anymore…

I've been using the Internet and networks long enough to understand how this stuff works. There's a certain degree of tracking that is literally unavoidable (without semi-extreme measures like TOR for one example at least) simply by the nature of how networks work. I know that by using any service online at all, I'm necessarily parting with some data about myself. Any data that's collected in that transactional networking sense I'm kinda largely okay with because it's just part of how things work by their very nature.

The stuff that bothers me is the excess of spyware, hundreds of kilobytes of tracking scripts, invisible pixels, browser fingerprinting, and other shady junk that's been bolted on by advertisers with no concern whatsoever for any harm it may bring to the network, the consumers, or often even themselves, as long as they make enough to cover the costs and make a profit. I understand the logic of it, but I don't necessarily agree with it in many cases. For me it's really all about how respectfully the entire situation is handled. Advertise at me in respectful ways, you probably don't get blocked (at least by me). Abuse me in any way, and I tend to get uppity with my adblocker and start thinkin' hard if I even need your site or service at all.

> "They don't pay you directly, but they pay the site you're visiting, and in most cases that's why the site is able to afford to create the content you're reading and show it to you for free."

See, the sites that aren't abusive with their advertising though actually find their way out of my adblocker for that exact reason. Because I'm fine with them making money ethically. Sites/services that implement abusive advertising practices not only get the ads blocked, but often get themselves blocked out of my "sites of interest". ;)

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#169

Post by lmkg »

LegitShady wrote: post #162
jefftk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not being intentionally obtuse, but I also don't know all of Google's advertising business. I didn't think Google Analytics did that? What makes you think it does? (GA sends a message to Google, but I had thought that it was not linked to your behavior on other sites via GA?)

google analytics tells you the interest of your audience. how do you think it does this without correlating you to a profile they've built?

Googe Analytics consultant here (not Google employee).

1. Google Analytics' primary identity signal is a first-party cookie. this is not shared between domains. There is no technical way to link identity between domains with different cookie values.

1a. Google Analytics has built-in library functions to allow site owners to share first-party cookie values between a whitelisted set of domains. This effectively lets one company with multiple sites share a first-party identifier, but still not let anyone (Google or otherwise) link that identity to identities set on other sites.

1b. BUT. But. BUT. Google is rolling out "Google Signals" for Google Analytics, which will use your Google Account as the identity signal instead for users who are logged in to Chrome. This, obviously, lets your identity be correlated across sites.

(Personally, I suspect that the availability of this feature played a part in Google's decision to let Chrome follow the industry towards blocking third-party cookies. But this is a baseless opinion, one step removed from a conspiracy theory.)

2. Google Analytics can link their identifier (the first-party cookie or Google Signals) to your DoubleClick profile via DoubleClick's third-party cookie. The checkbox that does this is unchecked by default. There are many other features of GA that encourage or require you to check this checkbox.

2a. Google's documentation (including legal contracts!) places limits in the data exchanged between the two profiles. Data exchanged does include demographic and interest information from DoubleClick's profile into GA. This is one of the big reasons why people click the checkbox.

To my knowledge, GA data is not used to inform the DoubleClick profile. GA data can be used to build an "audience" in various Google ad platforms, and direct ads to those people specifically, or to use as the basis for a "look-alike audience."

3. Google is a Processor under GDPR for Google Analytics, and a Controller under GDPR for Google Ads. To a first approximation, this means they make the specific legal claim that they do not use GA data for their own purposes. Linking Analytics and Ads data is... complicated and frankly I still haven't gotten an explanation of its legal status that I fully understand.

In my personal opinion, I don't think Google actually uses Google Analytics data. Most Analytics implementations are tire fires, and they can get all the data from other more reliable sources, like Publisher data or Chrome. Given that they have based on their entire GDPR compliance strategy for Analytics on being a Processor, I don't think the risk/reward is there.

(apologies for lack of copy-editing, the thunder's about to take my internet away)

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#170

Post by dang »

binarymax wrote: post #153
jefftk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Google Analytics even track cross-site today? Looking at it in developer tools I only see it using first-party cookies. But anyway, Google Analytics won't be able to do it because nobody will be able to do it. For example, here is Chrome's project to remove cross-site tracking: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb... (Still speaking only for myself)

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse or not. GA phones home with vast information about user, and builds a profile of them. That profile is correlated across sites to personalize search results and sell ads.

Please omit personal swipes from your HN comments. Your post would be fine without the first sentence.

Note this site guideline, including the last bit: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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