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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

#231

Post by dotnet00 »

pb7 wrote: post #227
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should it be illegal? I don’t understand the moral threat Okay, then it should be legal for me to use Facebooks/Google's 'Intellectual Property' however I want. Why should it be legal for them to steal my data, but illegal for me to use their's?

They’re not stealing it, you’re giving it to them in exchange for using the products for free.

This is not true, as can be seen from Facebook maintaining 'shadow profiles' on people who don't have actual Facebook accounts but can in any way be connected to them (eg through third party data).

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

#232

Post by gumballindie »

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…

> governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs

In some countries the separation is unclear. Take ai for instance - regulation demands come from corporations to governments rather than the other way around. And thats happening in basically everything we do. Like in communism, the masses are employed in these massive enterprises that benefit from government money and friendly regulation, but regulation flows from corporations to governments while money flow the other way around (see bailouts and friendly policies). Furthermore politicians use corporations to influence our daily lives and to monitor our behaviour such that they know how to exploit our fears in order to gain and maintain power (see Cambridge analytica).

As such corporations are a tool of oppression, anti capitalism and anti freedom. Therefore you have to squeeze them out in order to be able to return to democratic capitalism.

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

#233

Post by gardenhedge »

renegat0x0 wrote: post #212
lefstathiou wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I am all for privacy, which companies enable the microphone next to your bed and collect personal data with it?

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

#234

Post by shadowgovt »

crtasm wrote: post #222
shadowgovt wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cambridge Analytica basically didn't work. For all the data it collected, it amounted to trying to build political influence by reading tea leaves. The strongest decider in the outcome of the 2016 election is that the Trump campaign spent something like a factor of three more on advertising across the board than the Clinton campaign. Cambridge Analytica was more representative of the notion that the Republicans were…

What's your view on their effect on elections in other countries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Elections

I don't have nearly enough visibility on the political process of other countries to comment. I can only extrapolate by observing that Cambridge Analytica's core business value (harvesting personal data, using it to build a political profile, and microtargeting ads based on that profile) was functionally no better than just "spending more on advertising" in the American 2016 race. So I put burden of proof on those who claim otherwise to show that CA had meaningful influence in any other race.

It would be more surprising to me if they were uniquely unable to build a working psychological profile of an American voter versus any other voter then the simpler scenario that their entire concept was technological snake oil.

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

#235

Post by falsaberN1 »

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.”

You assume people stealing your private details for using it against you, are going to use it unaltered and in context. With enough bad faith and some manipulation, or just a bit of a twist, anything can be weaponized against you.

If private data is stored, there's already a chance of it getting out. You may get lucky, you may not, but for someone that hates you enough, any random detail can be a weapon. Even stuff that doesn't depend on your actions, like religion, country of origin or even medical details. People you associate with, even at a superficial level, can make you guilty by association. And let's not get into stuff like porn habits...

Political manipulation can be made real easy if they got dirt on you, too.

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

#236

Post by lapphi »

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…

Upon logging into okcupid today I received a pop up inviting me to join The League (another dating app), with my phone number already pre-propagated. After accepting, they sent me this email.

> We use the combination of your Facebook and LinkedIn data plus your About Me and Photos to ensure we are building a balanced, high-achieving and diverse community. Our screening algorithm looks at indicators like social influence, education, profession, industry, friends in The League, number of referrals you've made to your network, as well as supplemental data like what groups you belong to, events you've attended, interests you list, and preferences.

Absolutely terrifying.

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

#237

Post by dotnet00 »

konschubert wrote: post #177
LightHugger wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you realize that large enough corporations are a form of government, your way of thinking really starts falling to bits... But, the government is the solution to when business gets too much power. You can't convince a profit motivated corporation to stop doing something evil as long as it's profitable, so it's the government's job to protect people from corporate governance.

[flagged]

Large corporations are an extension of the government, in that governments can and do outsource the actions that are illegal or questionable for the government to do but legal for corporations to do to the corporations, and the corporation is incentivized to follow along so the government doesn't regulate them or so the government passes regulation beneficial to the corporation.

As such, large corporations do effectively form their own government.

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

#238

Post by pb7 »

josephg wrote: post #165
MereInterest wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. A company can bar the exits, letting you burn to death [0]. A company can send private militias to force you to work [1] (or because you were sent the wrong set of MtG cards [2]). A company can improperly store pesticide, until the resulting explosion kills thousands [3]. A company can own every house and store in a town, managing your expenses to ensur…

Yep. And when I’m unhappy with my government, I can vote them out or, if I want to, get politically active. I can’t vote out Google. Their customers are advertisers, not me. And I don’t know which apps on my phone send my information to Facebook or what they do with it.

It’s infinitely easier to avoid the companies you don’t like than it is to vote out any part of government. You have near zero power to remove someone you don’t like because your vote is worth next to nothing. However, you have full power to avoid the products and services of a company.

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

#239

Post by AndersSandvik »

cornedor wrote: post #230
renegat0x0 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and not necessarily know where you drive and how often. They do tough. They know where you refueled/charged your car, hotels you've booked. Not only that, but they also know if you donate money to your local mosque/synagogue, spend just a bit too much at a liquor store, etc.

You can still opt for taking money out of an ATM and and pay by cash to not be tracked by the card company. Meta does not offer the same option

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

#240

Post by hef19898 »

crtasm wrote: post #222
shadowgovt wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cambridge Analytica basically didn't work. For all the data it collected, it amounted to trying to build political influence by reading tea leaves. The strongest decider in the outcome of the 2016 election is that the Trump campaign spent something like a factor of three more on advertising across the board than the Clinton campaign. Cambridge Analytica was more representative of the notion that the Republicans were…

What's your view on their effect on elections in other countries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Elections

There are other countries? /s
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