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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

#51

Post by nerbert »

robertlagrant wrote: post #28
Barrin92 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads pretty easy if you publicly fund it. My vision of Europe is every town, every city putting some money into building out federated and decentralized systems, supported by small and middle-sized business. Effectively the same way radio or public broadcasting is already supported in say Germany or the UK. We should go all the way and just rid ourselves of Meta, Te…

Anything is easy if you can take people's money and assign it to companies deemed worthy by a bureaucrat. But now you have a much bigger problem.

Pretty much already how startup are funded in Europe. Size of the EU tech scene shows how efficient that is.

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

#52

Post by gatinsama »

capableweb wrote: post #36
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 o…

It's not just that someone else will know that you have chlamydia, it's that they have your data and you don't know what they will do with it. We don't know what they can do and there could be more serious stuff.

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

#53

Post by konschubert »

tsimionescu wrote: post #49
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…

Ads are almost universally trying to convince you to do something you shouldn't do. At best, they will convince you to but a subpar product, at worst they'll convince you to buy a product you don't need at all. Personalized ads are better at convincing you personally, so they are worse for you than random ads, or even than content-based ads. Additionally, they depend on building a detailed profile of you, which most…

I saw an ad a while ago for a piece of software that turned out very beneficial for my business.

I did not know that such software existed.

The ad was good for me and for the seller.

Trade is not a zero sum game.

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

#54

Post by GuB-42 »

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 think only a vocal minority hate them so much (it is a majority here).

But that's because it is creepy, if the targeting is too accurate, it feels like you are being watched. Which is true, but a little bit ironic on Facebook and Instagram where people have no problem exposing their entire life to everyone.

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

#55

Post by contravariant »

startages wrote: post #16
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…

Exactly, and I personally don't see anything wrong with this approach. You can't offer a free service if you can't make money from it somehow.

Though it'd be interesting to see what wins out, whether people are really willing to pay Facebook enough to replace the ad funds, or if something else wins out.

To some extent easy ad revenue has given some of these companies a version of Dutch disease, if this revenue falls away for whatever reason they'll need to win out in features or efficiency. Given that I'd be happy if facebook vanished from the face of the earth and that their website is the definition of bloat I'd say they're not doing too well in that regard.

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

#56

Post by gatinsama »

Barrin92 wrote: post #11
thorncorona wrote: post #4

Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads. Lots of websites have marginal utility, but can be paid for with ads. And those websites will disappear when CPM rates go down the drain.

>Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads pretty easy if you publicly fund it. My vision of Europe is every town, every city putting some money into building out federated and decentralized systems, supported by small and middle-sized business. Effectively the same way radio or public broadcasting is already supported in say Germany or the UK. We should go all the way and just rid ourselves of Meta, Te…

It's a very nice vision

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

#57

Post by smeej »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #34
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…

I don't think it would have been this "successful," but remember how long ago Facebook came out. In 2004, if someone had said something on the internet could "magically" surface all the stuff you really might be interested in, just by opting in and clicking a button? And it had worked really well? I think tons of people would have opted in.

Back then, before smartphones, before carrying a device in your pocket that can track your every move, it wouldn't have seemed nearly as creepy.

It's actually kind of amusing to me that Apple is the one acting like it's protecting people's data. Without Apple's invention of the iPhone, which doesn't have to be built to collect as much data about its use as it does, there wouldn't be nearly as much data for these apps to collect!

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

#58

Post by Semaphor »

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.

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

#59

Post by thewaywego »

konschubert wrote: post #50
capableweb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

We have no reason to assume that FB is using message content to target ads.

its facebook....assuming anything but the worst handling of user data is beyond foolish

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

#60

Post by smeej »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #47
mantas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best one I heard was people claiming products will be more expensive if personalized advertising is banned. Because then it’ll cost more to promote them.

Interesting line of reasoning. :-) That would imply, that (globally) we spent significantly [EDIT: remove -less-, insert:] more on advertising before the advent of personalized targeting.

I think it's the other way around. If we go back to the situation in the past, price goes up, not down.
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