Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 765 posts

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

#501

Post by themacguffinman »

mrtksn wrote: post #199
konschubert wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European, this is so embarrassing to read. The US is one of the oldest democracies on earth. "You can give the government infinite power, we will do a revolution, no big deal." Do you have any idea with how much suffering each revolution has been paid for? And remind me again how the revolutionaries overthrew Nazi Germany? The sowjet bloc created decades of suffering and blood but according to you that's fine be…

Who said anything about giving government infinite power? It's just difference of attitudes. Europeans tend to trust the government more than the corporations. No need for ridiculous examples, for every bad politician example there exist a bad corporation example. You say nazis, I say Bhopal disaster. No need for that, at least the Nazis payed dearly for it. Corporations are unaccountable. >And remind me again how th…

Wow, I guess 6MM ethnic genocide and a world war is comparable to a ~600k casualty chemical spill because at least we punished the Nazis more, I suppose that makes all the difference.

What a perfect comparison for how toothless corporations are compared to governments.

Americans don't think politicians are a different breed of people, they treat them differently because their position in government gives them a lot more power and impact than corporations.

> Who said anything about giving government infinite power?

Infinite power is an exaggeration but EU governments are giving themselves broad surveillance powers while directing your attention at behavioral advertising.

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

#503

Post by capableweb »

chipgap98 wrote: post #427
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…

Great so regulate personalization around certain types of products like medication and medical treatment. I don't understand how this scenario explains why we should throw out this whole category of business.

The "category of business" they are going after is businesses that harvest users personal data without their full consent. Is that a category of business you think should still exists?

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

#504

Post by nonrandomstring »

officeplant wrote: post #306
lapphi wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upon logging into okcupid today I received a pop up inviting me to join The League (another dating app), with my phone number already pre-propagated. After accepting, they sent me this email. > We use the combination of your Facebook and LinkedIn data plus your About Me and Photos to ensure we are building a balanced, high-achieving and diverse community. Our screening algorithm looks at indicators like social influe…

As someone that refuses to use Linked In or Facebook it is wild to me that someone would not only use them, but willingly link a dating app to them. It makes me wonder how many more things I'll never get to participate in because I've deleted/avoid social media.

There's a book I found very influential, called "Missing Out" by Adam Phillips. Not something I'd recommend for the casual reader as it's psychologically heavy imho.

But it's the best antidote to FOMO, and so it's central theme "In praise of the unlived life" is worth a mention; There's a lot of shit you'll be glad you missed out on, but felt cheated at the time...

That bullet that whizzed past your head... you missed out on.

That plane you missed... that crashed... you missed out on.

That medication they wouldn't give you ... that turned out to have lethal side effect...

These are silly examples compared to the sumptuous theme Phillips develops about how so much of our whole of lives is a set of misplaced expectations and values that are given to us by others but rarely check out in the long term. It's a very affirming to get beyond confirmation/survivor bias and retrospective rose-tinted goggles.

Being "excluded" from a group of people who are the sort who would give their details to BigTech social networks may turn out to be a blessing in ways you can't see yet.

[edit: moved, sorry I replied to wrong comment]

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

#505

Post by alkonaut »

dspillett wrote: post #455
alkonaut wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dark theme isn't the windows color theming that always existed. It's the actual system setting that instructs apps to use dark mode. It's in UXTheme.dll (an OS lib) and the function app devs use to query it is ShouldSystemUseDarkMode(). This was introduced in Windows 10 1903. Drawing the line between the OS and "not the OS" is really difficult. Direct X is included with the OS and DX12 is not compatible with Windows…

> Dark theme isn't the windows color theming that always existed. Yes, and no. The colour theming that has existed since at leats Windows v2 could be used to implement dark more quite easily if only your apps listened to the relevant settings (some did, many did at least partially due to the framework they were written in doing so, some didn't at all – partially is the worse option as it caused contrast problems betw…

Yes but no apps (more or less) respected those settings. Yet in OSes with a single dark switch, it was seen as impolite for apps to not respect it. So basically Microsoft copied that. That’s the feature. That there is a switch that apps actually tend to respect. Nothing else. Might sound small or even like a regression from before, but it’s not imo.

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

#506

Post by Brystephor »

wussboy wrote: post #374
Brystephor wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We were discussing haircuts in the morning and I showed her some photos online. 15 minutes later she opened Facebook and saw hairdresser commercial with THOSE EXACT haircuts we were discussing. Genuine question but what's the harm here? Or what's the negative consequence? I understand that this is creepy, people find it uncomfortable or odd, but what about it is harmful or so negative?

Replace "haircut" with "cancer" and then go apply for health insurance.

We're not talking about healthcare though. We're talking about advertising. This law doesn't affect the situation you've brought up.

This isn't a ban on companies from collecting personal data. This is a ban for Meta (it's unclear to me if other companies are included) to process user data for the purpose of behavioral advertising.

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

#507

Post by tsimionescu »

Auracle wrote: post #390
tsimionescu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's entirely untrue. I'm a photographer (though I'm largely quitting after this year) and advertise on Facebook/Instagram. If someone was in my area and got newly engaged, they might see my ad. They probably need a wedding photographer, and they're only going to actually go with me if they like the look of my photos better than everyone else and my price is within their budget. Without advertising, they might not…

> They probably need a wedding photographer, and they're only going to actually go with me if they like the look of my photos better than everyone else and my price is within their budget. Without advertising, they might not be exposed to my work and end up with someone that would take worse photos for them.

Because you had the money to advertise, they wound up exposed to your photos; they liked them and they were able to afford you, so they booked you.

However, the cost of your services necessarily accounts for you spending money on advertising. Someone who doesn't advertise may have had the same quality and style of photography and a better price, but because of your advertising, the couple were tricked out of finding the best vendor. You distorted the wedding photography market in your area, and your customers actually got a worse deal than they maybe could have.

Or, perhaps you are actually the best photographer in your area, and no one else would have come close for that couple. You still lost money because you paid for advertising.

Even worse, someone who is worse than you at photography may come along with a huge advertising budget and become the only visible photographer in the area, scamming both you and the couple from a better deal.

If instead there had been some open local directory of wedding photographers, which may charge some fee for services but otherwise present all phtogorpahers neutrally, the couple would have still found the best deal, and you would have been able to either offer lower costs, or made higher profits.

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

#508

Post by henry2023 »

ActorNightly wrote: post #493
MereInterest wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. A company can bar the exits, letting you burn to death [0]. A company can send private militias to force you to work [1] (or because you were sent the wrong set of MtG cards [2]). A company can improperly store pesticide, until the resulting explosion kills thousands [3]. A company can own every house and store in a town, managing your expenses to ensur…

Try again, but keep things relevant within the past 10 years, and applicable to majority of the population.

As corporations get bigger. the issues described get more prevalent. South Korea is going through a birth collapse mostly because their corporations's shaping of civil life. We're going through a huge opioid crisis just because of our corporations.

Systemic > Isolated instances but also harder to point out.

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

#509

Post by alkonaut »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #482
prmoustache wrote: post #161

At the same time EU wants to break SSL and facilitate man of the middle attacks. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/fr/policies/discover-e... https://nce.mpi-sp.org/index.php/s/cG88cptFdaDNyRr

What does this have to do with GDPR?

That both relate to privacy and the EU and one regulation is for more privacy, the other for less privacy. If you were new to the EU you might find that surprising.

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

#510

Post by alkonaut »

cowl wrote: post #297
aloe_falsa wrote: post #61

Does anyone have any specific details on the ban, maybe a link to the legal document? The article seems to use "personalized advertising" and "behavioral advertising" interchangeably, and also mentions that using location for advertising is a breach of privacy - which would prevent any local business from advertising itself to people in the same city, as I see it. Was that the intent here?

geographic location in internet means you are being tracked which is by definition part of what we want to stop. This is nothing like local advertising. Local advertising is contextual advertising not personalised one. The equivalent of that in internet would be for example a Gardening website showing adds for gardening tools or a tech website showin ads for notebooks etc. these are tied to the context and are fine.…

Doing a rough geolocation based on ip and using that to decide what to send back to the client can’t be considered “tracking”?
Post reply on HN