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Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

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Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#181

Post by ckastner »

whimsicalism wrote: post #6

[flagged]

> It is the lack of a predictable regulatory landscape in Europe that keeps them from being a hotbed of technological innovation

The EU recognizes the processing of personal data as a fundamental right.

That limits a certain kind of technological innovation, namely that which is in violation of that right.

> This decision, as I understand it, renders large swathes of tech service revenue models untenable.

Too bad for them, but so what? Now they can no longer label me and sell those labels of me to others, with no way of recourse to me if they get those labels wrong.

Complaining about this is a bit like Big Tobacco complaining they can no longer sell cigarettes to kids. Yeah, that's the point.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#182

Post by whimsicalism »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #82
Nextgrid wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This, among other things of course, helped sentence millions of people to poor and deprived lives for centuries. Wealth inequality is much worse in the US than Europe, so relatively speaking, "poor" in EU is still much better than "poor" in the US.

Just because someone has more material items than you doesn't mean your life is worse or that you are poor. Poverty isn't about how little you have to others - its about being able to provide and sustain yourself and your family in society. As far as I understand it, poverty is much less now than 100 years ago.

Let's see how people would vote/poll on the option of having fewer material items & goods.

Generally I find this rhetoric is popular when people are making decisions for other people rather than those people articulating their desires.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#183

Post by timeon »

whimsicalism wrote: post #98
jefftk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reading here is that an "instagram lite" that: 1. Showed you posts 2. Used what posts you liked to show you more posts you'd like 3. Also used that data to show you ads you're more likely to click on 4. Didn't give you a free choice on whether they did (3) Would still be illegal under the GDPR.

Yes, it is the post-hoc analysis that is the issue, not the "spying" which is just the modern-day spin on standard logging and business processes.

If you do not prefer term "spying", "voyeurism" fits as well.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#184

Post by temp3738868585 »

crazygringo wrote: post #88
jdiez17 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This decision, as I understand it, renders large swathes of tech service revenue models untenable. To be honest, good riddance. If it is no longer possible to offer users a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation (without explicit consent [0]), it forces companies to 1) innovate in order to offer such services for a sustainable price, and 2) encourages competition fro…

But why do you think legislation should be the one forcing that choice on everyone, rather than the market allowing consumers to choose? The issue isn't what we personally like or prefer for ourselves -- it's more about when we think it's legitimate to take away the right of businesses to experiment with business models, and of consumers to be free to enter into the tradeoffs they prefer. Why shouldn't a consumer be…

I think that legislation is the right choice when companies have proven to be repeatedly deceptive and manipulative about what they are actually doing.

If companies are hiding or downplaying what their true business models are, then consumers can not be expected to make an educated or informed choice about which companies to support or use.

When large companies with massive amounts of resources are also using them to spread propaganda, it becomes even harder for people to make informed choices.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#185

Post by whimsicalism »

dooglius wrote: post #115
quotemstr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest, good riddance. If it is no longer possible to offer users a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation Is it right that a tiny but loud minority be able to ban these ad-supported services for all of society? Going by revealed preferences, most people don't consider targeting advertising to be "spying and psychological manipulation". If they did, usage patte…

> most people don't consider targeting advertising to be "spying and psychological manipulation" A bit of a catch-22; if they did consider it that, then the manipulation wasn't very good, was it? The revealed preferences of companies to pay for advertising indicates that it is successful at manipulation, enough to justify its cost.

It is manipulation in the same manner that you are trying to manipulate me by posting your comment.

So much of this rhetoric involves assigning scary words "manipulation", "spying", etc. to everyday events.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#186

Post by timeon »

elcomet wrote: post #57
bunbun69 wrote: post #35

Meta can still use personal data for ads. They just have to explicitly ask for consent. I do not like these sensationalized titles on HN.

And no one will ever give them permission. Why would you?

> Why would you?

That is the point.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#187

Post by kmeisthax »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #15
Nextgrid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because we somehow ended up in a situation where spyware got effectively decriminalised doesn't mean it's a good situation especially in the long-term. If nobody is willing to pay for your product, maybe it shouldn't exist?

Can Meta cover its operational costs without personalized ads? Re: its ability to exist. Or is the issue that it’s unpalatable to wall st and investors and advertisers without ad personalization driven growth

The thing is, if Facebook fails to deliver ad revenue growth, the investors will move to extract value and disinvest from the company, which will kill it. All of the major tech giants were sold to Wall St. as a monopolization play - i.e. you are buying into the company that will own the future. If that turns out to not be the case and Facebook is merely a chat and blogging service, then why not move your money to more lucrative places?

Of course, there are some interesting complications to this. Mark Zuckerberg specifically structured Facebook so that he would have majority control over the company. The other shareholders are just along for the ride. He can't make radical changes in the ownership structure without minority shareholder consensus, but that's not that meaningful since Zuckerberg is already running what is effectively a privately-owned company on shareholder money.

Compare this to Twitter, which did a 180 on Musk's buyout offer so quickly that Musk spent months trying to fruitlessly wriggle his way out of the deal. They did not have a concentrated ownership structure, so the alternative would have been a slow shutdown or pivot away from microblogging. Instead we get to see a rich playboy destroy the company in real time.

The continued viability of the underlying business is probably not in question yet. Advertising existed before tracking, after all; and text and images are cheap to distribute. But there are other headwinds that could absolutely devastate these businesses:

- If CDA 230, DMCA 512, or equivalent regulations abroad were to be altered to favor copyright owners and creators over platforms, then that would massively increase moderation costs. Part of the reason why text and images are cheap to distribute at scale is because the platform does not have to account for copyright liability over billions of posts.

- Noncopyright censorship[0] laws (i.e. EU TERREG) impose similar costs and risks onto these businesses.

- The US might start enforcing their antitrust laws again, and if that does happen then Facebook is particularly vulnerable since their acquisition strategy was buying up all their competition.

[0] My personal opinion is that violence is not speech. However, there is enough of a risk of misidentification at scale that I'm fine using the word "censorship" here.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#188

Post by astrange »

jdiez17 wrote: post #26
whimsicalism wrote: post #6

[flagged]

> This decision, as I understand it, renders large swathes of tech service revenue models untenable. To be honest, good riddance. If it is no longer possible to offer users a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation (without explicit consent [0]), it forces companies to 1) innovate in order to offer such services for a sustainable price, and 2) encourages competition fro…

I agree that if anytime anyone came up with a business model you banned it, that would produce more innovation in business models. But you also wouldn’t get any of the products because you’ve banned all of them. So it seems like a bad way to run an economic bloc.

The EU in particular doesn’t even know what they’re doing and none of their poorly drafted “blue is green now because I said so” laws even work. You just get cookie banners everywhere.

The value you get from Facebook is the ads are relevant, rather than all being for cars you’re not going to buy. They don’t “use your data” to “make money”. They show you ads and you click on them.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#189

Post by owlglass »

whimsicalism wrote: post #154
cwkoss wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link those numerous studies, sounds like BS

https://mises.org/wire/poor-us-are-richer-middle-class-much-... Here's one analysis, but there are others. I would prefer a less conservative source.

When the Mises Institute publishes articles arguing that "drunk drivers cause accidents but so do sober drivers, and many drunk drivers cause no accidents at all," and therefore drunk driving should not be outlawed, it's hard to take this type of source seriously [1]. Note that the article above was published by the institute's founder.

[1] https://mises.org/library/legalize-drunk-driving

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#190

Post by Nextgrid »

rpastuszak wrote: post #83
Nextgrid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisers aren't altruistic and don't voluntarily subsidise poor people's access; advertisers want to target people with money. Poor people being able to "freeload" is a side effect of imperfect ad targeting - if advertisers could reliably identify someone's financial standing without hurting conversion rates they'd absolutely do so and deny access to poor people. If nothing gets done against ad targeting and non-c…

> Advertisers aren't altruistic and don't voluntarily subsidise poor people's access; advertisers want to target people with money. Yes and no, since at the same time _almost everyone can be monetised_, just at a lower CPM. Everyone, almost everyone has _some_ money they could spend on useless crap. The goal of advertising is not to inform (or "connect people with the brands they love") but to create a need. This is…

> just at a lower CPM

Yes, but if you can accurately predict the CPM ahead of time (without hurting conversion rates for high-CPM users), you could deny service to those users whose CPM wouldn't cover costs or required profit margins.

Of course, in reality the marginal cost of serving any given user is near-zero so ad-supported services are happy to serve just about anyone. That's why they'd survive just as well in an ad-less world as long as some minority of users is willing to pay.

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