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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

#701

Post by avarun »

cush wrote: post #697
avarun wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are significantly more useful with tracking. Non-personalized ads are effectively spam and we would be better off without those entirely. Personalized ads can often be as good as the content you're looking for in the first place, if not even better.

Let's clarify - 3rd party tracking is the issue. Tracking me on your site is fine... it's expected. Spotify should build a profile of my musical tastes. But my profile on your site should be relegated to your site. Facebook not only tracks you off their site, they sell your information to literally anyone willing to pay. It's ludicrous that we've allowed this, and the EU is finally stepping in.

> Facebook not only tracks you off their site, they sell your information to literally anyone willing to pay.

This is just blatantly incorrect. Please inform yourself about topics before choosing to comment on them. https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583

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

#702

Post by sidlls »

gardenhedge wrote: post #378
sidlls wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least TikTok definitely uses data somehow from microphones, without any (explicit) consent.

So they've hacked the permissions on the phone?

I don’t know how, I haven’t looked at or reverse engineered the code. What I do know is that topics I discuss with friends and family suddenly appear in the form of ads and user generated content in my FYP, when none of us has done a search or engaged in other online activity associated with them. Sometimes literally while we’re talking.

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

#703

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

arbuge wrote: post #631

I might be in the minority here but I personally find personalized ads useful, and am far more annoyed by ads recommending products and services completely irrelevant to my interests and/or needs. (The latter still account for the ads I see most of the time, unfortunately.)

Which is fine. The sites can show non-personalized ads, and occasionally replace an ad with an ad for turning on ad personalization. You can then opt in, and get personalized ads. Everyone else can have their privacy respected. That's what GDPR intended.

However, personalized ads are more profitable, and so every single platform subverted the rights of the users. And instead of banning Facebook from continuing to do so until they present a plan that is reviewed and approved, which would be appropriate after years of violations, all the authorities now did is explicitly telling Facebook that they can't continue to break the law.

The headline is incredibly misleading. If you take a closer look at what is actually forbidden, emphasis mine: "On 27 October, the EDPB adopted an urgent binding decision ... to impose a ban on the processing of personal data for behavioural advertising on the legal bases of contract and legitimate interest across the entire European Economic Area"

They can still do behavior ads on the basis of consent. And because some DPAs decided that "pay or consent" is OK and there is no binding Europe-wide decision about it yet, that's what Facebook is trying next. If it gets decided that that wasn't ok, Facebook will be fined a fraction (possibly a significant fraction, but still a fraction) of the additional revenue they made by breaking the law, in a couple of years, and then, over a decade after GDPR went into force, they might actually follow it.

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

#704

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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…

They will give you two choices: pay, or consent. The decision just tells them that now, over 5 years after GDPR went into force, they have to stop breaking the law by not even asking for consent and claiming "legitimate interest" or "we need this to fulfill a contract with the user".

Even if they get fined the 4% of annual revenue, that'll be a tiny bit of the extra money they illegally made over those 5 years. And now they'll do the pay-or-consent (which may or may not be legal), and if it's illegal, they'll happily argue for another 1-2 years then pay the fine...

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

#705

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

avarun wrote: post #671
deutschepost wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are not the discussion. It’s tracking. Some will say that ads hijack your attention and therefore should be blocked by default. This is a different question. But since ad companies wanted to track ROI it became a problem, because it’s pretty easy for them to do that on the internet. That’s why more people are opposed to ads on the internet but not on a busstop. If the busstop ads start taking retina scans to show…

Ads are significantly more useful with tracking. Non-personalized ads are effectively spam and we would be better off without those entirely. Personalized ads can often be as good as the content you're looking for in the first place, if not even better.

Even without pervasive tracking, ads can still be targeted based on the content you are looking at. That's probably still quite useful in most cases.

And if you want more, you can opt in to one of the many schemes that would have popped up if the entire ad industry didn't just decide to ignore GDPR and the DPAs didn't decide to ignore those violations.

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

#706

Post by vladisov »

papichulo2023 wrote: post #653
gatinsama wrote: post #45

I have mixed feelings about this. I hate that Europe leads in regulation and lags so much in innovation. At the same time, this is a step in the right direction. True, people don't care about privacy, but it's mostly because they don't understand the extent and implications of letting companies control your data.

Mostly agree but it is not like adtech is a innovation-pushing industry.

I'd disagree on this. Ads are the main income for Meta & Google and they're likely one of the most innovative companies in the last two decades.

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

#707

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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.

The entire point is that you can't opt out. The sites are legally required to let you, but they don't. For example, by claiming that the tracking is OK under "legitimate interest" and doesn't require your consent, which is what Facebook has done so far.

Or by giving you the "choice" of paying an absurd amount of money or "freely" consenting to them harvesting all your data, which is what Facebook has already announced is the next step they'll take. Whether this is legal or not under GDPR is hotly debated. While that debate is running, Facebook will happily continue (if you pay to "opt out" they'll make even more money off you, so win-win for them). If the debate concludes that it was illegal, they'll either get away with it because "it was unclear so we can't punish them", or they won't, and they'll pay a fine that at that point will represent a small tax on the additional profits they made through this practice.

Either way, they win, consumers lose, because GDPR enforcement takes 5 years per round and multiple rounds...

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

#708

Post by cm2012 »

hotnfresh wrote: post #557
cm2012 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They has grown enormously as Apple used its monopoly power to make every other advertiser less effective. Apple still uses the same user targeting they banned for every other advertiser, of course.

Do they track your activity in non-Apple apps in order to feed their ad selection algos? I really don't know, but I would guess not, and that's the thing they banned for others. (FWIW I find their move into ads alarming because it threatens to ruin everything I like about them)

Yes. They have conversion optimization which means non apple tracking.

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

#709

Post by gardenhedge »

sidlls wrote: post #702
gardenhedge wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they've hacked the permissions on the phone?

I don’t know how, I haven’t looked at or reverse engineered the code. What I do know is that topics I discuss with friends and family suddenly appear in the form of ads and user generated content in my FYP, when none of us has done a search or engaged in other online activity associated with them. Sometimes literally while we’re talking.

Isn't this just because they have so much data on you already?

e.g. what are 3 30 year olds in Toronto talking about this saturday? likely the drake concert, winter tires and xmas related things..

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

#710

Post by bmicraft »

beejiu wrote: post #269
startages wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is the network effect dissolves. There's no point being on Facebook if 80% of your friends leave because they don't want to pay for it.

Facebook doesn't have an inherent right to be profitable in Europe. If the people have decided that through their vote (even if indirectly), then it is what it is and facebook can pull out of that market.
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