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Brave files adtech complaint against Google

reuters.com

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Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#201

Post by sincerely »

fiatjaf wrote: post #137
sincerely wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really strange claim, from the perspective of someone not invested in any specific implementation of crypto or blockchains...why would the first product in a given (tech) category be the one that lasts the longest? That would be like expecting WebCrawler to be the dominant search engine or Six Degrees to be the dominant online social media site, or Mosaic to be the browser with the highest usage %. I can't…

Basically you think Bitcoin cannot ever be "the one that lasts the longest" just because it was the first implementation? That's a valid argument, but it makes no sense to think that all other arguments that claim the contrary are invalid and can only be made by people with evil intentions of enriching themselves.

I mean, you just made the claim without any sort of support besides saying that BTC + Lightning alone will "truly function as money" and, absent any arguments, it's much easier to imagine the opposite.

I think it's reasonable to think that people that just say "bitcoin good altcoin bad" without really saying anything else aren't making good faith contributions to discussion and may have other motives.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#202

Post by yuhong »

nightsd01 wrote: post #170

From what I understand, Google isn’t actually giving away people’s data to “hundreds of companies” for advertising purposes. When an advertiser wants to target a specific group of people, Google doesn’t say “here’s everyone’s private data, good luck”. GOOGLE does the filtering and targeting internally. I’m sorry but that isn’t evil or bad. Unless we want to start paying for google searches and Facebook, this is how i…

Yea, I mentioned in the essay that "In many cases, advertisers managed “remarketing” lists of “anonymous” visitors that was being tracked by cookies from a central console without thinking of the privacy problems, treating visitors almost as numbers. "

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#203

Post by nubela »

jonathansampson wrote: post #54
martindale wrote: post #14

Brave's strategy of replacing ads with other ads isn't going to do anyone any good. They could've used payment channels to build a content distribution network, but alas...

I'd like to respond, as a developer on the Brave project. We don't simply replace ads with other ads. The entire ad landscape has been co-opted by those who aim to collect as much data about you as is possible. Over 600 million devices were running some form of ad-blocking software in 2017, and that was an increase of 30% from the year prior. This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done. Users…

> We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown, and when (the user controls all of this)

You realise that's what every ad-revenue driven company says right?

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#204

Post by barber5 »

britch wrote: post #60
jonathansampson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to respond, as a developer on the Brave project. We don't simply replace ads with other ads. The entire ad landscape has been co-opted by those who aim to collect as much data about you as is possible. Over 600 million devices were running some form of ad-blocking software in 2017, and that was an increase of 30% from the year prior. This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done. Users…

I'm curious, do you have any evidence that most people are installing ad blockers as a privacy measure? I don't have any hard evidence, but I imagine most people block ads because they don't want to have to scroll past a bunch of banners and videos to read the article they want to read. Certainly there are many people who are concerned about privacy, but I don' think that's what's driving the popularity of ad blocker…

I'm not aware of any evidence that shows that directly. But there a good number of surveys that show that people don't want advertising to target them based on their interests.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1478214

"Contrary to what many marketers claim, most adult Americans (66%) do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests. Moreover, when Americans are informed of three common ways that marketers gather data about people in order to tailor ads, even higher percentages - between 73% and 86% - say they would not want such advertising. Even among young adults, whom advertisers often portray as caring little about information privacy, more than half (55%) of 18-24 years-old do not want tailored advertising. And contrary to consistent assertions of marketers, young adults have as strong an aversion to being followed across websites and offline (for example, in stores) as do older adults."

Also see https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1989092 (64% find the idea of ad targeting to be invasive, most participants would prefer random ads to targeted ads) https://news.gallup.com/poll/145337/internet-users-ready-lim... (67% of those polled said advertisers shouldn't be able to "match ads to your specific interests based on websites you have visited")

References all came from a paper by Jonathan Mayer. Third-Party Web Tracking: Policy and Technology which I'd heartily recommend to anyone who is interested enough to be this deep into the comments (https://jonathanmayer.org/publications/trackingsurvey12.pdf)

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#205

Post by barber5 »

nubela wrote: post #203
jonathansampson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to respond, as a developer on the Brave project. We don't simply replace ads with other ads. The entire ad landscape has been co-opted by those who aim to collect as much data about you as is possible. Over 600 million devices were running some form of ad-blocking software in 2017, and that was an increase of 30% from the year prior. This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done. Users…

> We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown, and when (the user controls all of this) You realise that's what every ad-revenue driven company says right?

I think what he's saying is that they do the inferences from localhost, more or less (see e.g. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving...)

There are a number of proposed systems under the rubric of "privacy preserving advertising systems" and they are very different than what ad-revenue driven companies are doing today and similar to what he is proposing above.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#206

Post by barber5 »

quotemstr wrote: post #103
jonathansampson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to respond, as a developer on the Brave project. We don't simply replace ads with other ads. The entire ad landscape has been co-opted by those who aim to collect as much data about you as is possible. Over 600 million devices were running some form of ad-blocking software in 2017, and that was an increase of 30% from the year prior. This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done. Users…

So you're replacing ads with other ads, and you have reasons. Everyone who makes money has reasons why his profit is in reality some kind of selfless social good. It's what it takes to reconcile human psychology with capitalism. You're still replacing ads with other ads.

This is a fair point under some ways of looking at the problem. It could be that advertising is just nasty no matter how it is implemented, and thus any system that uses advertising will be tainted. I'm sympathetic to that analysis and am constantly trying to flesh it out.

With that said, what jonathansampson is proposing mitigates at least one harm of advertising: ubiquitous tracking which violates privacy.

They're trying to replace ads with ads that don't require tracking by third parties.

There's actually a whole area of research on this that's pretty fascinating called privacy preserving advertising.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving... https://crypto.stanford.edu/adnostic/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/privad-... https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6234417/

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#207

Post by Dylan16807 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #107
jordigh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done. Yeah, find some other way to make money than ads. Whenever you tell me that I have to watch ads for the good of capitalism, I feel a horrible contradiction in my gut. I don't want ads at all. It's like everyone has wasps and needs their wasps to get into my car and some businesses promise me that their wasps aren't so bad, so can I please roll dow…

Let's say bees. "I see the problem is bees in your car. We would like to solve this by filling your car with different, quieter bees. In exchange for this, we are willing to give you some of the honey."

The new bees also never sting anyone, which is pretty good.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#208

Post by humbledrone »

jonathansampson wrote: post #120
1qaz2wsx wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Brave using the blink engine from Chrome - which was funded by Google based on the ad revenues? The BAT grant is just Brave burning VC money to get some market share and eventually some pie of the Adtech eco-system? Also, not sure how ad fraud is relevant here or how Brave will prevent it?

Yes, Brave is using the Blink engine (via Chromium). Chromium is an open source project with many contributors (including Google). Google uses this as part of their larger strategy involving ads and trackers, no doubt. But at the end of the day, it's a tool for displaying websites. To what ends you use it is dependent upon your end goal. Google used to tell everybody "Don't be evil" was at the core of their being; Br…

I actually think that pushing ad matching to the browser will make ad fraud substantially easier, since you will collect less of the data that you could use to detect and block it. It also opens you up to entirely new forms of abuse, such as giving the end user the power to e.g. choose only the highest CPM ads to maximize their revenue share. Should be fascinating to see how you deal with these factors.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#209

Post by harryh »

andirk wrote: post #197

Via advertising networks, I have been able to send messages to my friends via vanilla advertising campaigns. If you are not aware, understand that your internet activity can pinpoint you exact via simple ad networks and nothing else. I like Brave.

I would love to read more about how you did this. I bet it would be illuminating for many HN readers.
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