It's unclear to me, honestly, why targeting ads is bad. Is random useless ads better. To compensate, they'll need even MORE ads.
EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
511–520 of 765 posts
Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sadly, data collection has been completely normalized. I've been thinking about buying a new car, but I'm very aware of how much tracking/telematics they include nowadays... so I decided to search "$manufacturer disable telematics". Every single thread I found was full of people saying variants of "Why do you even want to do that lol" and "Looks like somebody is doing something illegal". Every time I see stuff like t…
I go through this routine with my wife all the time. She either tells me, "I don't care." or ends up pointing out that all the data tracking landed her a sweet sale/coupon/etc. so she's actually happy that she's being tracked.
Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
You and I, and probably a few others here on HN, are slowly being sifted into a parallel "unsocial" world, I fear. It's genuinely disgusting to see the kind of personal data we're expected to pass out by the truckload for every little digital trinket and feature, let alone entire facets of society such as dating apps.
It's a dating site. The whole idea is that you upload all kinds of personal details so they can match you with a life partner. What exactly does a privacy-focused dating site look like?
A very good question.
OKCupid is actually a site some people reported as being the "better kind" of dating site, because they're geared toward successful LTR rather than hookup. The dating space is actually full of different interaction and match models that sometimes people don't seem to understand.
Some of the issues around risk, identity and power asymmetry are covered here [0]
Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
#514Earlier 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…
Reminds of the days when your name, address, and phone number were automatically listed in the phone book. You had to pay the phone company to not list your information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_directory
and cross-referenced with your location at all times, all of your shopping habits, your viewing and reading habits, and every person you communicate with?
In an easily searchable database?
Sooo tempted to go Goodwin here and mention a nice use of computers from the late 1930s...
Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
#515I would love to see a regulation put in place requiring companies to notify their users every time they transfer data about their users to another organization. If the data is "anonymized", the company should have to notify all their users. If the company has contact info for the user, it should send the user a notification via that contact info. Even if that means having to send a physical letter. The company should…
Why would anyone worry about anonymized data? That bit sounds strange. If it’s truly anonymous then how can there be harm in it? E.g would a site telling its owner they had 400 unique users (an anonymous piece of data since it’s an aggregate) have to notify its 400 users they were counted?
Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
#516Earlier 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…
Yep. And when I’m unhappy with my government, I can vote them out or, if I want to, get politically active. I can’t vote out Google. Their customers are advertisers, not me. And I don’t know which apps on my phone send my information to Facebook or what they do with it.
It's much easier to change what company you do business with than what government you're under. I can't believe you're managing to turn this simple fact on its head and imply the exact opposite.
Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
#517Earlier quoted context omitted.
The truth is, there are far more complex reasons behind American kids being fed sugary cereal than "the dumb people got duped by the evil advertisers (but not me of course!)." It turns out kids like sugar, incomes have been stagnant for decades, and food deserts exist. What's the cheapest, shelf stable food item on a per-meal basis that your children will voluntarily eat without a fight before work? Sugary cereal. Co…
You keep including the (not me of course) parenthetical, but at least my experience was that I grew up on sugar cereal. I vaguely remember schools having things like apple jacks on offer in individual packs. I and other kids brought their boxtops to school. Best I could tell, it was normal. It's still in the aisles and the companies haven't gone out of business, so best I can tell it still is. We bought it in the sam…
You realize that it wasn't the ads that convinced people to consume sugary cereals, right? Ads are there to promote a brand, not a food group. Your local store or General Mills will sell you what you want, at a price that you are comfortable with. They literally don't care and have no interest in pushing any specific recipe. I bet that their low sugar alternatives are their most profitable products.
Sugary products are cheap to manufacture, specifically because US government subsidizes corn production for HFCS. It's not because General Mills is evil corporation that wants to hook you on sugar.
As an example from the other side - Cheap dairy products in Europe exist because the governments there subsidize the crap out of dairy industry. And will not stop, no matter how bad production of those are for the environment. They will point the finger at air travel, though...
> The food desert idea is plausible, but the literal definition is useless (poor people can't walk 0.5 miles?),
How sheltered are you? No you can't walk 0.5 miles, when there's an interstate separating you from a grocery store that can financially afford to stock fresh produce. Or maybe you should walk an extra 30-60 minutes after you come back from your second shift of the day?
Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 misse…
More and more people are okay with losing with privacy though, and the more who take that position, the more you lose by not taking it.
Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
#519Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…
But the company can sell your data to the government too. Googles location history can tell a lot about where you've been and when. Social networks can tell who you've been communicating with and what about. Sites like facebook can sell your interests, google can sell them your search topics, etc. Imagine being an evil dictator, who just got to power after years of trying... what's the easiest way to find your strong…
> Googles location history can tell a lot about where you've been and when. Social networks can tell who you've been communicating with and what about.
Notice how those two examples aren't restricted.
> Sites like facebook can sell your interests, google can sell them your search topics, etc.
Governments don't care for that kind of data, that's why they willing to restrict those. Even though the best reason to use Google, is because they know my previous search topics and what I clicked on.
Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram
#520Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…
The companies literally sell this data to governments. Stopping companies from having the data is limiting government access to the data.