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Please Sell My Personal Information

taylor.town

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Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#41

Post by manicennui »

OneLeggedCat wrote: post #37
chadd wrote: post #4

in all seriousness, i'll take the contrary opinion, i love targeted ads. saves me time, and there's no way to keep my data private anyway, so i might as well get some value out of it. i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies" which would just get rid of the friction, and as a downstream fringe benefit, show me better ads.

I can't wait for insurance companies to start charging higher or lower rates based on the personality traits they've gleaned.

If they had the data and found them to be significant predictors of future behavior, I'm sure they would. One must be very careful when doing this in industries like insurance and lending though, as they can be proxies for protected classes.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#42

Post by vasco »

garganzol wrote: post #32

I am one of those few who loves ads. Some banners catch my attention to the point that I start analyzing the design and marketing choices made by their creators. I save the most outstanding banners to my hard drive to enjoy them later. Is this a full-blown pathology or just an eccentric kink? Who knows, but the presented sarcastic article resonates with me. Needless to say, I watch hours of YouTube videos full of ads…

I don't love them by themselves as much as you but definitely get lots of value from ads in terms of finding and buying cool things. Interestingly the internet has only learned to properly advertise to me as an individual. I have way more purchasing power from buying decisions I make in behalf of my company and in terms of corporate advertising for B2B SaaS products google and friends are leaving a lot of money on the table. Most ads I see for B2B things are for tools my company already uses.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#43

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

pbreit wrote: post #15

I cannot believe we are still in this ridiculous situation with these dreadful cookie approvals on Every. Single. Page. How did we let Europe do this to us?

Why are you upset about web pages asking if they can track you, and not upset about the fact that web sites WANT to track you?

I mean, ostensibly, it really is the latter that upsets you, but then I question why you're blaming Europe.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#44

Post by manicennui »

chadd wrote: post #4

in all seriousness, i'll take the contrary opinion, i love targeted ads. saves me time, and there's no way to keep my data private anyway, so i might as well get some value out of it. i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies" which would just get rid of the friction, and as a downstream fringe benefit, show me better ads.

I also wanted to mention that I allow Google to have as much of my activity history as they want, and I don't find their ads to be any more relevant.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#45

Post by xigoi »

garganzol wrote: post #33
pbreit wrote: post #15

I cannot believe we are still in this ridiculous situation with these dreadful cookie approvals on Every. Single. Page. How did we let Europe do this to us?

Yep. Annoying as hell, this should have been a browser setting. Global/per site/etc. But we should not blame EU here, we should blame predatory advertising tactics.

There already was a browser setting for that — Do Not Track. And sites just ignored it.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#46

Post by kwhitefoot »

Baader-Meinhof wrote: post #28
imiric wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that your personal information doesn't just subject you to targeted ads. It also makes you vulnerable to propaganda, behavioral modification, and all sorts of psychological manipulation. Advertisers have known this for decades, and the internet has given them the perfect delivery method. While you can't be entirely invisible online, you can certainly make things more difficult for adtech by changing some…

Isn't the root issue here "propaganda" in ads? If so, should we focus on banning that? Otherwise, if an ad is straight facts, even if it's making a specific argument based on your personality, is that intrinsically bad? Is it bad that we are exposed to convincing counter-arguments? Shouldn't we occasionally re-exam our beliefs, especially in light of new information? More philosophically, should we, as free-willed pe…

If they were just straight facts ads would be just bullet lists of features, the price, together with delivery costs and methods.

No colour, no pictures that are not strictly informative, no reviews, stars, celebrity endorsements, etc.

Perhaps someone in the AI/ML field should create a tool that distils ads down to such a bare-bones representation. I won't say down to their essence because the essence of most ads is the high octane sell not the informative part. Then instead of blocking ads uBlock and friends could fetch the distilled version.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#47

Post by manicennui »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #43
pbreit wrote: post #15

I cannot believe we are still in this ridiculous situation with these dreadful cookie approvals on Every. Single. Page. How did we let Europe do this to us?

Why are you upset about web pages asking if they can track you, and not upset about the fact that web sites WANT to track you? I mean, ostensibly, it really is the latter that upsets you, but then I question why you're blaming Europe.

I think the problem is implementation. Every site does it slightly differently, so you have to read the overlay, usually after dismissing the overlays to sign up for their mailing list and live chat, and then decide what to do. At which point you are probably more likely to just accept and move on.

It should probably work more like the permissions in iOS for tracking. I should be able to set it once, my browser should send a header to the site, and I shouldn't have to think about it. We all know why they won't do this: the majority of people would opt out.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#48

Post by remram »

Zak wrote: post #26
chadd wrote: post #4

in all seriousness, i'll take the contrary opinion, i love targeted ads. saves me time, and there's no way to keep my data private anyway, so i might as well get some value out of it. i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies" which would just get rid of the friction, and as a downstream fringe benefit, show me better ads.

> i wish there were a browser plugin called "please accept all cookies" There's almost that. It doesn't always accept all cookies but it does hide the warnings: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

Could there be a standard between browsers and websites to avoid those banners? Similar to the Do Not Track header, a Accept Cookies header?

Contrary to ad-blocking where the website very much wants you to see ads, and is not going to help you in blocking them, this is a situation where they might be interested to help.

Re: Please Sell My Personal Information

#49

Post by kwhitefoot »

sneak wrote: post #31
mindslight wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obtaining "consent" via nagwalls and other dark patterns doesn't seem like its actually legal per the GDPR. Rather the enforcement is just so slow moving that it appears that way. So your complaint seems akin to saying that the laws against physical assault are pointless, because you were attacked and the police didn't find your assailant.

GDPR has had a huge cost. If it doesn't yield any benefit because it's not being enforced, then it is a bad law, because it has costs without benefit, unlike the prohibition on physical assault, which is "free".

How is it free? London in Victorian and worse in earlier times was a much less safe place than London now and a lot of the credit goes to having an organized police force that takes action to find and apprehend those who commit assault and battery. That police force cost money to create and costs money continuously to maintain.
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