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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

#31

Post by autoexec »

kackiel wrote: post #8

Why do people hate personalized ads so much? I understand hating ads in general, but why something personalized is worse than just random spam? EDIT --- Ok, I get it now. Personalized ads = surveillance. Fair enough. Doesn't the whole GDPR already cover it though? You can opt out of the surveillance.

Because they depend on constant and ever expanding surveillance, and the use of all that data is never limited to just advertising.

Facebook can still show relevant ads without showing personalized ones. For example, if there is a facebook group about car restoration it doesn't take a genius to guess what kinds of ads members might be interested in.

Personalized ads mean they make a ton of assumptions about you using incomplete and inaccurate data. If you actually value advertising as a means of discovery, why would you want your exposure to new things limited to only what marketers think you should be interested in based on stereotypes, or flawed assumptions?

Relevant ads are better because there are fewer assumptions being made. Whatever content you're engaging in dictates what you see, not market research and guesses about who you are.

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

#32

Post by linuxandrew »

kackiel wrote: post #8

Why do people hate personalized ads so much? I understand hating ads in general, but why something personalized is worse than just random spam? EDIT --- Ok, I get it now. Personalized ads = surveillance. Fair enough. Doesn't the whole GDPR already cover it though? You can opt out of the surveillance.

I don't like companies collecting hundreds or thousands of data points on me.

It's not just advertising, but trashy and addictive suggested content and potential for abuse by actors like Cambridge Analytica.

> I understand hating ads in general

Also this

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

#33

Post by vextea »

thorncorona wrote: post #13
buro9 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but yet, when we pay for services (Google Suite) and websites... we still get adverts we're not incentivised to pay as our data is mined and sold anyway, our attention still fought for

For larger companies I think that’s a fair assessment, but there’s a lot of small websites that I only use one or twice a year which are very useful, like camerasize.com, which otherwise I wouldn’t pay for.

Sites like camerasize could feasibly target based on the niche they fill rather than showing generic "personalized" ads. There are ad networks out there that do this, e.g. Carbon.

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

#34

Post by repelsteeltje »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

Personalized advertising should never have been allowed without a specific opt-in. I know lots of advertisers think they can't live without it --- because promoters have told them so.

> Personalized advertising should never have been allowed without a specific opt-in.

As a thought experiment, let's go back to the time when the internet existed, adds existed, but targeted adds were in their infancy. Now let's imagine they were launched as some sort of op-in Google BETA this in early 0s fashion.

Assuming, for a moment that the targeting quality was on part — would that have been a success? Ie. would the user adoption have been significantly higher Apple's Tracking Transparancy Policy? (Considering that consent was involved before distrust accumulated in the following decades as result of forcefully surveiling, fingerprinting, third-party cookiea, facebook shenanigans, appstore malware, supercookies, etc.)

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

#35

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

kwanbix wrote: post #6

I know in HN there is a big "personalized advertising" is bad sentiment, but I don't get what the problem is. I mean, if I am looking for a notebook, I rather have FB/IG (or Google or whatever), show me adds of a notebook that I might end up buying, instead of the generic poker/porn adds that we had on the beginning of the internet. It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads. So on one side, people w…

Try https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica

Personal data used to create highly personalised and targeted political ads.

It's not just about whether you get a nice notebook.

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

#36

Post by capableweb »

kwanbix wrote: post #6

I know in HN there is a big "personalized advertising" is bad sentiment, but I don't get what the problem is. I mean, if I am looking for a notebook, I rather have FB/IG (or Google or whatever), show me adds of a notebook that I might end up buying, instead of the generic poker/porn adds that we had on the beginning of the internet. It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads. So on one side, people w…

> I mean, if I am looking for a notebook, I rather have FB/IG (or Google or whatever), show me adds of a notebook that I might end up buying, instead of the generic poker/porn adds that we had on the beginning of the internet.

That's all fine and dandy, I think. The problem starts to become a bit bigger when suddenly everyone in your household starts to see "chlamydia medication" ads everywhere they go online based on some message you sent a month ago to a friend.

> It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads. So on one side, people want everything free, on the other side, we don't want ads, so there is a clear problem here.

I'm not sure that's so obvious as you make it seem. There are lots of long running websites that don't survive on personalized ads created based on behavioural profiles created by data harvesters.

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

#37

Post by estel »

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…

From the Independent (and presumably elsewhere):

> Meta said it has cooperated with regulators and pointed to its announced plans to give Europeans the opportunity to consent to data collection and, later this month, to offer an ad-free subscription service in Europe that will cost 9.99 euros ($10.59) a month for access to all its products

> Tobias Judin, head of the international section at the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, said Meta's proposed steps likely won't meet European legal standards. For instance, he said, consent would have to be freely given, which wouldn't be the case if existing users had to choose between giving up their privacy rights or paying a financial penalty in the form of a subscription.

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

#38

Post by meindnoch »

kackiel wrote: post #8

Why do people hate personalized ads so much? I understand hating ads in general, but why something personalized is worse than just random spam? EDIT --- Ok, I get it now. Personalized ads = surveillance. Fair enough. Doesn't the whole GDPR already cover it though? You can opt out of the surveillance.

The default position should be that advertising is bad for you. Therefore more effective advertising is worse for you. Personalized ads are more effective, thus they are worse for you.

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

#39

Post by ta1243 »

kwanbix wrote: post #6

I know in HN there is a big "personalized advertising" is bad sentiment, but I don't get what the problem is. I mean, if I am looking for a notebook, I rather have FB/IG (or Google or whatever), show me adds of a notebook that I might end up buying, instead of the generic poker/porn adds that we had on the beginning of the internet. It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads. So on one side, people w…

If I go to a BMX page then show me an advert for a new helmet or whatever

That's not how adverts work. Instead I get an advert for a new TV because I bought a new TV last week.

> It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads.

Adverts aren't free. The service still costs the same to provide, but on top of that you have to pay for the advert infrastructure too

Companies paying for the adverts fund the, but they only do that because they will get more money from you than the money they spend to acquire you as a customer (if they don't they go bust)

Therefore you looking at www.bmxsite.com are paying more than you would in a world without adverts

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

#40

Post by logophobia »

kackiel wrote: post #8

Why do people hate personalized ads so much? I understand hating ads in general, but why something personalized is worse than just random spam? EDIT --- Ok, I get it now. Personalized ads = surveillance. Fair enough. Doesn't the whole GDPR already cover it though? You can opt out of the surveillance.

Because it means that a business (as in, facebook) knows too much about you. It's extremely invasive privacy-wise. Things that could happen:

* Micro-targeting for political advertisements (pretty bad for democracy)

* Dynamic pricing based on demographics (you can afford it, so you pay more)

* Insurance knowing too much about you (rejections based on your health, ensuring parts of the population won't be able to get good insurance)

* And just the fact that too much information being public can be harmful (blackmail, scams, etc)

* etc..

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