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The EU's war on behavioral advertising

thisisunpacked.substack.com

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Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#171

Post by [deleted] »

legitster wrote: post #145
avianlyric wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused, do you prefer chronological feeds from friends and family or not? GP is saying that feeds driven by friends and family would be an improvement to their products, and new EU law will drive that behaviour by making it hard for companies like Facebook to indiscriminately force black box recommendation algorithms on people. Isn’t that exactly what you say you want? And thus you agree with this statement > I…

> I’m confused, do you prefer chronological feeds from friends and family or not? Yes. I would prefer this. FB no longer gives me a customized feed. I get a generic feed tailored to my demographics - brain achingly dumb posts about Disney and Marvel and memes I don't care for. And I am unable to unsubscribe from any of them because none of them are based on my preferences. This has been FB's response to the EU sancti…

[deleted]

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#172

Post by dooglius »

seydor wrote: post #38
slater wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found the online marketing person! And there are plenty of reasons.

if you re in tech your salary depends on advertising money somewhere along the chain

Unless you have unusually good psychological resistance to ads, you're ultimately paying that money back in in one way or another, since advertising is a net profitable business.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#173

Post by itronitron »

spunker540 wrote: post #63
btbuildem wrote: post #46

Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products -- chronological feeds, friends and follows only, etc is what users have been begging for and being ignored, because advertising trash salad is more profitable. If the long-term effects end up being along the lines of the big social corps withdrawing from the EU, I see that as an enormous win for that economic zone. The presence of…

Why do you think complex algos, complex feeds, across large search space (all content instead of friends and family) turns out to be more profitable? Are ads suddenly more valuable in that context? I don’t think so. And it’s certainly much more expensive to operate than a simple chronological feed of friends and family. It comes down to time spent. People spend more time on the apps and see more ads. We can argue ove…

Scrolling a feed doesn't mean a person is watching the feed, in fact you could argue the opposite. It seems like the content is engineered to be skipped over while still registering as a view.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#174

Post by thih9 »

> Prior to ATT, every app by default had access to your advertising ID, i.e. it was opt-in by default.

Nitpicking, it was not opt in, as the user did not opt in. It would be more accurate to say: "consent was implicit", or even "the app could access the user's advertising ID without the user's consent".

I feel that it's important to distinguish "opt in" as something that requires explicit user action.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#175

Post by nceqs3 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #162
nceqs3 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read how vague the laws are. It's all designed to extract fines from US companies.

The TL:DR of GDPR is "just don't drack your users without their consent". Why is that difficult for US corporations to follow? Even '90s web was by default GDPR complaint.

Yes, the huge and profitable 90s web.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#176

Post by someplaceguy »

ppsreejith wrote: post #150
someplaceguy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but can you provide an actual argument explaining why advertising (in general) is a good thing for society and the economy? You've mentioned multiple times the "it's good at extracting huge sums of money out of people making decisions against their own interests, which goes on to fund other endeavors" argument, but I don't think that's a good thing on the whole. If you can forgive a huge exaggeration from my part…

I wrote a reply but since it became too long, posted it as a comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37266563

That was an interesting comparison of behavioral vs non-behavioral ads, thanks.

But my question was geared towards the value of advertising itself, in general (if there is any).

I am aware of the unknown unknown problem you mentioned (I think), but in my experience as a layman, very very rarely (if ever) was I introduced to a great product or service through advertising that I wouldn't be aware of in other ways.

Conversely, the amount of ads for substandard products and services (i.e. those which I know for sure there are better alternatives, at least for me and others around me) is infinitely greater.

And I don't think it's just because the ads are not targeted enough. I'm pretty sure I am a hugely interesting target for many, many companies, but I am simply not interested in them (and never will) because other companies have much better products/services (many of which I already use).

I am assuming, of course, that the only reason they're interested in targeting ads to me, is to influence me to make a buying decision that I wouldn't do otherwise, and not just because I wasn't aware of the product/service. Because if it wasn't for influencing me making a buying decision, why would they spend the money to show me an ad?

That's why I always try to ignore (and block) ads as much as possible, even though that's not always possible (e.g. street ads). Yet, I am still being bombarded with non-stop ads and I have no question that I'm being negatively influenced by them, especially in those areas I know very little about (e.g. cleaning products) or am susceptible to being influenced against my own interests (e.g. fast food or other crappy, addictive food products).

In my experience, the success rate of my own research (when looking for a product/service) or even word-of-mouth recommendations has far, far outweighed the success rate of all the ad campaigns I've ever been a target of, from my own perspective (not from the companies' perspectives, of course).

So it's not that I don't see any value in advertising, which I don't (unless you're the advertiser), it's that I think it's actively damaging to society (due to leading people to make bad buying decisions) and the economy in general (due to increased inefficiency).

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#177

Post by FirmwareBurner »

nceqs3 wrote: post #175
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TL:DR of GDPR is "just don't drack your users without their consent". Why is that difficult for US corporations to follow? Even '90s web was by default GDPR complaint.

Yes, the huge and profitable 90s web.

"Won't someone please think of the big-tech ad profits?" - You

Why should the web's profitability or lack thereof, be my problem as a user? That the SV elite can't buy platinum plating on their yachts? Are they sharing that wealth with me? Then, good riddance! My privacy is more important than your wealth.

There's been profitable SW companies and careers before user tracking became the norm. Remember when Windows came without any ads and blogs and forums had generic non-targeted ads?

Same how the big tobacco industry got kneecapped for our own health and the greater good, a similar tech industry correction is long overdue. Is this the world you want for your kids?

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#179

Post by EMIRELADERO »

sib wrote: post #159
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "no reason"? The reason is that the user's data privacy rights come first. If interests collide, privacy must come out on top. I'm curious on how you could have missed this ideological position that powers those regulations after years of headlines after headlines about the topic.

If that's all it were, then the trade would be "you can get this [free like beer] service if you agree to give up some personal data, otherwise you don't get the service." As it is, the law says "You, company, must give users a service for free even if they choose not to give you the data."

That's akin to taking a law prohibiting the (voluntary) sale of organs to mean that everything's free now.

Some things are above the concept of "market". Personal data is one of those things. That's the ideology behind these laws.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#180

Post by goodpoint »

tomComb wrote: post #61
btbuildem wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish Canada would grow a pair, and stand up to the big social media platforms -- especially in the light of the latest shenanigans with the availability of / paying for news. Whichever side of that debate you fall on, you have to admit that meta et al are in a position to strong-arm a country and have an impact on its laws. That's a terrible precedent, already having played out in Australia. Anything that ch…

I’m no fan of the power of big tech, well, except when it involves standing fast against the blatant political corruption of a government devising a bizarre and nonsensical law to funnel money to their corporate buddies (according to PBO analysis the most money goes to bell, rogers and Shaw). Yes, Canada should develop strong privacy and competition laws, but I’ve lost hope that they wouldn’t just be whatever serves…

Big companies are not standing against corruption. They are the ones pushing the biggest envelopes.
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