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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?
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…
But then there are things that I don't want ad companies to know about. My medical history, my likely voting patterns, my political affiliations, my sexual orientation, the nature of my relationships with other people, etc. These are private, and I don't want ad companies (or anyone) to know these. Depending on the topic and where I live, it may even be dangerous to me for others to know these things.
One thing that has been made apparent by the advancements of ad-tech's excellent ability to find unintuitive patterns in consumer behaviour, is that the benign data can be used to predict the non-benign. So even if data collection is regulated to only collect benign data, or I am extra careful with where my sensitive data goes, I still have a problem.
That's why tracking on this scale is bad. That's why I hope we can build a society where we stop these practices.
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.
Now I do like personalized ads and I get insane ones even though I'm anonymizing my tracks more than most.
For example I do get personalized ads trying to sell me... Private jets!
I mean: I'm maybe upper middle class but there's no way I've got the money to buy a x million private jet.
Yet I get the ads for them Falcons and Gulfstreams.
I do, of course, make sure to click these ads.
> 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.
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…
Before Facebook, if you wanted to find information about a notebook, you would go to an independent forum dedicated to notebooks. These forums would typically have adverts from notebook manufacturers or computer stores - and so the ads would be relevant to what you are looking for.
Now, you wanted to learn about new notebook friends talked to you about, you opened a link and from there everywhere you go you see notebook ads. It's madness and unhelpful.
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.
For me personally it's also the constant pushing pushing pushing to buy crap that you don't need or replace things you already own. I already have a washing machine, I got it last month, you don't need to sell me another (It's actually amazing that we haven't gotten to the point there advertisers can stop push products a consumer already bought).
Google is actually really good as a "I need to buy X,Y,Z" in that case the ads are super helpful and often more relevant than the search results. I will absolutely click those ads, but I'm not going to order that new washing machine while I'm reading the news anyway.
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.
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…
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.
The fact that advertising sometimes actually helps in discovering a product you actually needed is a coincidence. The main point of advertising is to convince people to prefer a product for reasons other than cost/benefit.
Even in your case - did you see the ad and immediately bought the product? Or did you see the ad and then actually went and looked for reviews, competitors, tried it out yourself etc? If you did the former, you almost certainly got scammed at least to some extent. If you did the latter, then it's not the ad that convinced you, it's the reviews/personal trial/price comparison. The ad happened to show you the product existed, but the same could have happened from a mention in a comment or anything else. The ad was not designed to show the product exists, it was designed to convince you it has certain characteristics that the product may or may not actually have.
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.
There's a conspiracy here that people can't see. Free sites will close without targeted advertisement, obviously; they barely can afford to pay salaries now, so with untargeted ads it will be impossible. And the only media sites that will be able to afford to run are those that are subsidised by the state. This is already happening in Europe, where most of the big media are practically bankrupt and their income comes…
We all want roads to allow us to roam freely but don't want to pay the government people that manage everything around those roads.
Everyone wants free content but everyone wants to be paid for their work.
I have a pihole and one of the website I frequently visit has been remade and now everything is empty. I'm currently thinking about paying for this content... or just quit and live without this content.
Oh, yeah! Can’t come soon enough. Kneecap the need to datamine users. I totally want to see this happen even if that means they will have to charge money for their heretofore “free” services. This would be a big win for society, in my view.
This isn't data mining users. It's just tracking an ID against likely preferences detected automatically. I think this topic becomes emotive because there are obviously ways to misuse data, but I struggle to see the actual harm in personalised advertising. If there's a data acquisition route that we all agree is bad, then we should ban that.
And no, saying "Yes, I consent to cookies and terms of use and data collection" doesn't fix this.