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The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

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Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#41

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

customguy wrote: post #38
skybrian wrote: post #18

> Don’t look for a section on permissions or consent in that document, by the way. There isn’t one. And nothing about nerd lawyer stuff like “opt out of sale” or “objections to processing” in there, either. The Big Tech companies want a two-track system, where other companies’ ad features are required to do all the privacy regulation hassles, but the browser’s own built-in tracking feature is something that people ha…

You don't need cookie banners unless you want to track the user before they opted in on their own (maybe in the "website settings"). That's why countless websites have none. The browser would only have to ask once, and then it would still just be "one browser setting", except you'd be notified it exists, as soon as it exits. So what's the point here, other than trotting out the same old stuff nut about cookie banners…

Is it the case that "countless websites have none"? Some websites, especially small ones operated outside of the EU, simply don't care about their obligations under European law. But in my experience it's extremely rare for European websites not to feature a cookie banner. It's not like it's just corporations: the official websites of the European Commission (https://commission.europa.eu/), the presidency of France (https://www.elysee.fr/), the chancellorship of Germany (https://www.bundeskanzler.de/bk-de/), etc. all have one.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#42

Post by [deleted] »

rho138 wrote: post #24
skybrian wrote: post #18

> Don’t look for a section on permissions or consent in that document, by the way. There isn’t one. And nothing about nerd lawyer stuff like “opt out of sale” or “objections to processing” in there, either. The Big Tech companies want a two-track system, where other companies’ ad features are required to do all the privacy regulation hassles, but the browser’s own built-in tracking feature is something that people ha…

That’s what the Do Not Track signal was for, but tech bros still don’t get consent sooooooooo…

[deleted]

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#43

Post by [deleted] »

nemomarx wrote: post #17
Ajedi32 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a debate I've seen many times now on HN. I sympathize with what you're saying, but the flip side is that many users seem to prefer a free ad-supported funding model over a paid, ad-free model. If a site is going to be serving me ads anyway, then all else being equal I'd rather them make as much money off each impression as possible to incentivize them to keep providing me with free services. The privacy and r…

Do you want to click through and spend money on the ads? If not you aren't really working towards them paying a lot for ads, right?

[deleted]

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#44

Post by ddxv »

I've been wanting to build something like this for mobile advertising attribution. Mobile attribution is much worse since it by nature needs to on a device / fingerprinting level track across apps, and since there is not HTTP direct connection between the apps, the tracking is much more broad. Companies like AppsFlyer are in 20% of apps and track everything that happens in those apps.

I'd like to see AppsFlyer work on this as well. Moving mobile attribution to device based would be a huge privacy benefit. But it might be quite difficult for a company like AppsFlyer to do this, so it might need to end up being pushed by Apple and Google, but as both advertising companies, they might be even less incentivized for this kind of local tracking.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#45

Post by customguy »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #41
customguy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need cookie banners unless you want to track the user before they opted in on their own (maybe in the "website settings"). That's why countless websites have none. The browser would only have to ask once, and then it would still just be "one browser setting", except you'd be notified it exists, as soon as it exits. So what's the point here, other than trotting out the same old stuff nut about cookie banners…

Is it the case that "countless websites have none"? Some websites, especially small ones operated outside of the EU, simply don't care about their obligations under European law. But in my experience it's extremely rare for European websites not to feature a cookie banner. It's not like it's just corporations: the official websites of the European Commission ( https://commission.europa.eu/ ), the presidency of France…

> Some websites, especially small ones operated outside of the EU, simply don't care about their obligations under European law. What about lobster.rs?

Such as HN? Honest question, for all I know they're breaking EU law and nobody cares. Or maybe they don't.

Anyway, pouet.net doesn't have one. It links to a ton of group sites, many European, try to count the ones that don't have a cookie banner.

For fun, I did a quick and dirty test on the HN front page at the time of this comment, out of 30 links, I counted 11 cookie banners. Let's say I missed a few (a bunch of the ones I counted were a small bar at the top or the bottom, easy to miss, not even sure if they blocked the page), let's say it's 20 out of 30. One third of all websites is still a huuuuuuge amount of websites.

I took privacy seriously before I "had to". So for me, nothing changed. Why would it? You can have a link in the footer to opt into tracking. If actually "value consent" and all that. It's a complete non-issue for most sites that have banners, they could just stop being creeps and it'd be fine. But they don't want to stop, they want to annoy users as much as legally possible and then funnel the annoyance at the laws protecting those users against them.

"Have you heard about this new thing, you have to wear something around your ankle and can't be a school teacher and stuff like that? Yeah it's really insane, how will children learn anything, ever again?"

"Wait, what are you even talking about? Have you done something?"

Of course there's corner cases, of course this can also be a hassle for sites that aren't "creeps". But generally? The same generic false claims, over and over? Just no.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#46

Post by jsrozner »

Following the overturning of Roe v Wade, it is clear that the US needs privacy enshrined in the Constitution. For example, it is absurd to imagine a state government trying to distinguish between an abortion and a miscarriage in order to potentially prosecute; this distinction is something that no one beyond the woman should have any right to know.

It's my view that the Founders did not think to directly mention privacy since they had no capacity to imagine technology as powerful as that which enables today's surveillance capitalists. But the sort of law that would establish a general right to privacy (or the kind of values that would lead us to establish one) would likely also hinder companies from aggregating user data for any purpose other than directly serving users. (And it would also hinder the government from surveilling its citizens.)

If such an amendment were considered, we'd all fast find that most techies aren't actually liberals. Oh wait, we saw that when they all turned to support Trump. Surprise, surprise.

I promise you that when consumer and enterprise funds dry up, every one of these AI companies will be placing ads and selling surveillance and drone tech to the government. Anthropic already dropped the part of its constitution that forbid collaboration of any kind with the military. The pressure to profitability is immense.

Today, purported morality is mostly (temporary) sophistry. Most folks will work for Zsuck or Palantir if the money is good enough.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#47

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

customguy wrote: post #45
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the case that "countless websites have none"? Some websites, especially small ones operated outside of the EU, simply don't care about their obligations under European law. But in my experience it's extremely rare for European websites not to feature a cookie banner. It's not like it's just corporations: the official websites of the European Commission ( https://commission.europa.eu/ ), the presidency of France…

> Some websites, especially small ones operated outside of the EU, simply don't care about their obligations under European law. What about lobster.rs? Such as HN? Honest question, for all I know they're breaking EU law and nobody cares. Or maybe they don't. Anyway, pouet.net doesn't have one. It links to a ton of group sites, many European, try to count the ones that don't have a cookie banner. For fun, I did a quic…

HN used to be non-compliant, but does seem to have fixed it, I'm not seeing any cookies in a browser where I'm not logged in.

pouet.net is tracking me. On my first visit they deposited a cookie named POUETSESS4 with a 1 year expiry and a persistent hash identifier in my browser.

I checked a few outbound links from that site to European domains, and it does seem to be about 50/50 on whether they have similar problems, which is much better than any rate I've seen elsewhere. Good on this community for having a lot of folks who care about privacy and roll their own web frameworks. But I doubt it's the case that the other 50% or the parent site intended to secretly track me; they just ended up with a dependency on some tracking framework by accident, and they're too small to get in trouble for it.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#48

Post by shostack »

xmcp123 wrote: post #35
Ajedi32 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. Cookies track you as an individual with a unique identifier. The conversion report only tracks anonymized aggregate statistics that can't be used to identify you as an individual.

This sounds a lot like “you’re getting analyzed by AI/ML, tied to a specific bucket of similar users, then your continued data expands the bucket, splitting off into different adhoc buckets of similar users” If so, you can’t be tied to a specific purchase but you can be so tightly grouped it’s basically the same.

Look up differential privacy. Done right, it is impossible to do what you said.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#49

Post by theamk »

fao_ wrote: post #31
theamk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people (and orgs) do things that benefit themselves. The question as a user, who is likely to be more aligned with you? - Mozilla, Meta, Google, Facebook - VP of "monetization technology" company, "Marketing data expert"

Meta and Google are entirely advertising-focused companies, with their main revenue coming from being able to put together accurate profiles of people to spam them with campaigning attempts to get them to buy things.

Author of the OP is the VP of the adtech company, with their main revenue coming from being able to put together accurate profiles of people to spam them with campaigning attempts to get them to buy things.

He is not mad because Google can kinda-track users under new system. He is mad because Google can kinda-track users under new system, but his company _won't be able to any more_. Hence all the "cartel" talk.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#50

Post by avaer »

skybrian wrote: post #18

> Don’t look for a section on permissions or consent in that document, by the way. There isn’t one. And nothing about nerd lawyer stuff like “opt out of sale” or “objections to processing” in there, either. The Big Tech companies want a two-track system, where other companies’ ad features are required to do all the privacy regulation hassles, but the browser’s own built-in tracking feature is something that people ha…

Except this didn't need to be a thing at all. Nobody wants ads.

You could have no interruptions, no consent popups, and no tracking, just don't have ads.

Trying to find logic or middle ground on this issue will never make sense, because the ad cartel is based on absurd fiction: that ads are good for people, rather than just being stochastic predation on the fraction who are not successfully able to turn off the malware.

So we arrive at the absurdity that the onus is on the users to defend themselves against the product, and how to present the options to them, so that a sufficient proportion of the prey doesn't do it.

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