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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

#51

Post by customguy »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47
customguy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> they just ended up with a dependency on some tracking framework by accident, and they're too small to get in trouble for it.

I'd say it's simply not in the spirit of the law. I.e. that cookie could be used to track you, but isn't. Sure, they could be secretly selling your info, but they could also be secretly storing your IP and anything else to fingerprint you. That would also be illegal, and no way you could know from the outside. So why are there not constant raids all over Europe, all the time?

As I said, I do think it's because that law isn't enforced to just waste time on BS. If I walk across a red light in the middle of the night [0], where there's a car every 5 minutes, and do it carefully after looking left, right, left again, and you run up to cops parked nearby who saw that, and insist they do something, they'll laugh at you. If you insist and freak out, you have a bigger chance to get in trouble than I do. But that's not some sinister law that everyone breaks and that is enforced selectively, it really is for what it says on the tin, what a reasonable person would abide by it for.

[0] Or put a session cookie I never use except for logged in users, and without any PII, because the site was written in 2000 and it's fine.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#52

Post by _ZeD_ »

theamk wrote: post #16
SirFatty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you think that they team up for your benefit?

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"

neither?

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#53

Post by cwillu »

avaer wrote: post #50
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 malwa…

Hell, you can have the damn ad without any tracking, and you still wouldn't need the popup.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#55

Post by hdgvhicv »

customguy wrote: post #51
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> they just ended up with a dependency on some tracking framework by accident, and they're too small to get in trouble for it. I'd say it's simply not in the spirit of the law. I.e. that cookie could be used to track you, but isn't. Sure, they could be secretly selling your info, but they could also be secretly storing your IP and anything else to fingerprint you. That would also be illegal, and no way you could know…

> If I walk across a red light in the middle of the night [0], where there's a car every 5 minutes, and do it carefully after looking left, right, left again, and you run up to cops parked nearby who saw that, and insist they do something, they'll laugh at you

What country is that illegal in?

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#56

Post by hdgvhicv »

cwillu wrote: post #53
avaer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 malwa…

Hell, you can have the damn ad without any tracking, and you still wouldn't need the popup.

Ronseal’s quick drying woodstain. Does exactly what it says on tin. Ronseal didn’t track me when they advertised it to me in the 90s, but the advert still existed and worked. Same with richer smoother Nescafé gold blend. the ambassador constantly spoils use with Ferraro Roche, and I can always get a great deal on car insurance if I compare the meerkat.

These adverts worked, and had no tracking.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#57

Post by hdgvhicv »

cm2012 wrote: post #32

"The average person in the USA has about $1200/year spent on advertising intended to reach them. Where do you want “your” $1200 spent?" Interestingly $1,200 is roughly 3.5% of what the average American spends per year (roughly $78k), and $1200 is roughly 15% of the average American's discretionary spending. That doesn't seem too crazy to me as a cost for the main driver of the matching and branding system of the capi…

That’s $3.30 a day.

In the days this was mainly spent on tv advertising the average American would watch an hour of adverts for this $3.30 (3 hours of tv)

That’s a massive drain on the economy, think what could be produced if that hour is spent on even minimum wage output.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#58

Post by customguy »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #55
customguy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they just ended up with a dependency on some tracking framework by accident, and they're too small to get in trouble for it. I'd say it's simply not in the spirit of the law. I.e. that cookie could be used to track you, but isn't. Sure, they could be secretly selling your info, but they could also be secretly storing your IP and anything else to fingerprint you. That would also be illegal, and no way you could know…

> If I walk across a red light in the middle of the night [0], where there's a car every 5 minutes, and do it carefully after looking left, right, left again, and you run up to cops parked nearby who saw that, and insist they do something, they'll laugh at you What country is that illegal in?

The US, and that's also besides the point. Why does stuff like this get bickered about, instead of simply showing the vast damages caused by this terrible law? I read FUD about it all the time, I don't know a single case of an actual problem it caused.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#59

Post by mrweasel »

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…

The issue might be that a lot of websites are run by marketing and communications teams, that all have KPIs and metrics, which they need to track (sometimes for no good reason). Some of this could be done without cookies, but that requires an active operations team which can support it, but because these sites a managed solely by non-technical people they don't know what to ask for, they just know that if you slap on the snippet og JavaScript, they get the metrics they "need".

Github is probably the largest site that does not have a cookie banner, because they don't need on. If Github doesn't need a cookie banner, then maybe the EU commission could work on removing theirs as well.

Re: The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

#60

Post by mrweasel »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #56
cwillu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, you can have the damn ad without any tracking, and you still wouldn't need the popup.

Ronseal’s quick drying woodstain. Does exactly what it says on tin. Ronseal didn’t track me when they advertised it to me in the 90s, but the advert still existed and worked. Same with richer smoother Nescafé gold blend. the ambassador constantly spoils use with Ferraro Roche, and I can always get a great deal on car insurance if I compare the meerkat. These adverts worked, and had no tracking.

Exactly, I really question how much value personalized ads provide over contextual ones.

It's very hard to track or provide an experiment for, but right now companies seems to be accepting the "Trust me bro" from the large advertising companies.

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