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EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

reuters.com

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Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#211

Post by tzs »

Semaphor wrote: post #58
leksak wrote: post #5

> Meta has stated that it had already announced plans to provide users in the EU and EEA with an opportunity to provide consent and will introduce a subscription model in November to comply with regulatory requirements This effectively means then that if you are in the EU and you'd want to use either Facebook or Instagram you'd have to pay for a subscription then because they presumably won't offer the free-service w…

Unless I’m completely misunderstanding things, they’ll do what many news sites in Germany already do: Option A: Continue for free with ads (and tracking and profiling etc.) Option B: Pay for a subscription without ads or tracking (most seem to use a service called "Pur" (pure)) This does not mesh with some people’s understanding of the GDPR, but at least several German courts said it’s okay.

My recollection is that at least some country's regulators have said that if you offer option A you must also offer option A': continue for free without tracking and profiling.

Their reasoning was that GDPR says that consent must be freely given. If the site provides more service if you consent than the consent is not freely given according to those regulators.

(It seemed kind of goofy to me. In every other context I can think of consenting to something that you do not like in exchange for getting something that you want is usually considered to be freely given consent unless that something you want is something that is necessary).

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#212

Post by renegat0x0 »

lefstathiou wrote: post #168
mjburgess wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to aggregate personal information of large numbers of people is a form of political power. Facebook can, if it so wishes, provide a list of all gay people in an area; all supporters of gaza or of israel; all people who have recently commented on an article about drugs. The very ability to provide that list previously required an expensive secret police; today it does not. This is an extremely dangerous ab…

Yes, as can Apple, Google, every cable company, every telecom, the credit card companies, Grindr, health clinics

Credit company does not have microphone near your bed, they do not know which posts you like, or not, they do not have all your mails, and not necessarily know where you drive and how often.

Keeping all of the data under one company umbrella is vulnerable, target for hackers, and easy target for governments.

Your post is not correct.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#213

Post by drcongo »

kwanbix wrote: post #160
mcv wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sell it. Health insurance companies are always interested in more details about your health so they can adjust your premium accordingly. Or use it for excuses to deny coverage.

So what you need to do is regulate what they can do with the data, not forbid personalized ads. By the way, here in Europe we have universal healthcare, maybe is something the US should consider?

We don't have universal life insurance in Europe though, maybe think things through a bit. Your arguments are so thin and bad faith that I'm convinced you're just trolling now.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#214

Post by robertlagrant »

gatinsama wrote: post #70
robertlagrant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't data mining users. It's just tracking an ID against likely preferences detected automatically. I think this topic becomes emotive because there are obviously ways to misuse data, but I struggle to see the actual harm in personalised advertising. If there's a data acquisition route that we all agree is bad, then we should ban that.

Personalized advertising is based on data, and there shouldn't be hard to see some ways in which misuse it, even with user consent. And no, saying "Yes, I consent to cookies and terms of use and data collection" doesn't fix this.

Would you also ban store loyalty cards for the same reason?

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#215

Post by n_ary »

Disclaimer: Individual EU opinion not reflective of whole continent.

I am very very happy to look at all the ads and even personalised ones, as long as those are not overly obnoxious and mostly (obviously-)scammy.

If I have to scroll through endless ocean of ad with my actual priority(friends and family posting something) drowned out at the very bottom of my feed, I will naturally stop clicking any ads.

All we need is a balance, overwhelming and making my feeds/timeline flooded w/ random ads is not really helpful and as a sane person, I am very happy to text my freinds and family and create whatsapp group to keep in contact.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#216

Post by yason »

Paper ads in magazines of interests were highly interesting, often useful and in sometimes better than the actual content in the magazine itself.

I remember early, search keywords-based textual Google ads still being somewhat interesting, and if not necessarily useful at least comprehensibly relevant.

Whatever slips past my adblocker these days is absolute junk. Internet doesn't effectively exist without an adblocker.

It seems we reached a high-peak in the 90's on so many things.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#217

Post by irusensei »

mrtksn wrote: post #164
pembrook wrote: post #75

Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…

This very American point of view, for some reason the Americans believe that politicians are some other kind of breed of people coming from somewhere else and they don't have control over them. The more European point of view is that companies are run by greedy people on who we have no control and we need the government to keep those in check. We have control over the governments and it's O.K. to take them down by fo…

> The more European point of view is that companies are run by greedy people on who we have no control and we need the government to keep those in check.

I don’t remember electing you to represent the point of view of “we the European people”.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#218

Post by mrtksn »

irusensei wrote: post #217
mrtksn wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This very American point of view, for some reason the Americans believe that politicians are some other kind of breed of people coming from somewhere else and they don't have control over them. The more European point of view is that companies are run by greedy people on who we have no control and we need the government to keep those in check. We have control over the governments and it's O.K. to take them down by fo…

> The more European point of view is that companies are run by greedy people on who we have no control and we need the government to keep those in check. I don’t remember electing you to represent the point of view of “we the European people”.

That’s because you didn’t. You are free to write counter opinions and make an observation of your own, no need of holding an official title.

I hope I was able to demystify this situation. You are welcome.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#219

Post by amelius »

n_ary wrote: post #215

Disclaimer: Individual EU opinion not reflective of whole continent. I am very very happy to look at all the ads and even personalised ones, as long as those are not overly obnoxious and mostly (obviously-)scammy. If I have to scroll through endless ocean of ad with my actual priority(friends and family posting something) drowned out at the very bottom of my feed, I will naturally stop clicking any ads. All we need i…

Perhaps you can install a browser extension that will send all your data to any ad companies that you want to receive personalized ads from? And then login on their website to view said ads?

This sounds like the best solution since it will not bother the rest of us who don't want to be tracked.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#220

Post by nunez »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #122
mjburgess wrote: post #90

Comments here so far focus on personalised ads as the issue -- but that's a symptom of what's being banned, which is the mass collection of personal data. Personalised ads are beside the point. The issue is how they are personalised, namely by building a rich profile of user behaviour based on non-consensual tracking. It isnt even clear that there's a meaningful sense of 'consent' to what modern ad companies (ie., go…

Why should it be illegal? I don’t understand the moral threat. Personally I feel that privacy gets too much airtime as a value — I see lots of other more direct issues (like political manipulation) that will remain an issue even with “strong privacy.”

Because i don't want some private entity using my habits and preferences (which I didn't ask them to collect, btw, and, no, throwing a five page manifesto typed in 8-pt don't and making me agree to it or else doesn't count) against me and manipulating how I think

it's more than the ads. imagine if hacker news used ML to determine what articles you see on the front page based on whatever ad campaigns they think will result in a click from you. that would suck, right?

that's what these platforms do though, and that's not okay

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