EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram • Hacker News Board

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

#761

Post by sidlls » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 3:13 AM UTC

gardenhedge wrote: post #709

sidlls wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Even if your scenario were accurate, it's unlikely their data processing algorithms would pin the conversation down to within the hour of it happening, given that the schedules I keep are not fixed or typical in any way. Also, in my case for some of these, it's exceptionally unlikely given the individuals involved (a 20-something guy and a 40-something guy with odd senses of humor and esoteric interests in a romantic relationship).

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

#762

Post by fsflover » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 7:40 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #752

fsflover wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole discussion is about banning the tracking, not ads. Tracking is defined in GDPR as storing personal information without consent or necessity. > is TikTok remembering what videos you wanted for how long and showing you recommendations based on your watch history personalized tracking? Yes, if I did not give consent to create a profile on me.

>The whole discussion is about banning the tracking, not ads. That's not how I interpreted the conversation. The article says: >a ban imposed by non-EU member Norway on "behavioural advertising" on Facebook and Instagram That seems to be banning tracking for ads, but tracking for timeline suggestions and friend suggestions would still be allowed. And the comment I replied to seemed to be about ads: >>But are personal…

The reason for the ban is GDPR. And it's not about ads but consent.

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

#763

Post by JAlexoid » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 6:47 PM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #691

JAlexoid wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing an important point in your example - the reason why high sugar cereals were so successful was because of government interventions (buying up grain supplies, unreasonably propping up certain crops, etc) The utter failures of governments to provide any meaningful guidance, or intentionally boosting certain product consumption. We can have an argument on how effective that propaganda was, but in the end g…

Governments do this on behalf of corporations. Ever heard of lobbying, revolving door effect, regulatory capture and so on? Maybe watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_(2003_film) and it's sequel from 2020 (linked from there) for starters?

They do, but a lot of original sins comes from failed public policy.

Like support for dairy industry came before the dairy industry got enough money to lobby... and sustain itself through lobbying.

Same goes with HFCS, and many others.

It's unfair to argue "evil corporations", when these corporations are made evil specifically by the government intervention in the first place.

I can guarantee you, that should US government pull all financial support for the dairy industry and support plant based products - these corporations will move to plant based alternatives. Because their pure interest is to make money the least cumbersome way.

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

#764

Post by JAlexoid » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

FinnKuhn wrote: post #572

JAlexoid wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Therefore you can't protect your privacy from the government without also protecting it from companies. This is reasonable. Though knowing that the data used to serve ads has very little overlap with the information that governments are interested in, makes this move more pointlessly destructive. Funny enough, the data that governments are interested in isn't getting restricted. There are laws about how to protect…

Well, the EU is telling companies to stop collecting data they themselves are very interested in. For example Google was fined for misleading settings that enabled them to track locations [1]. You can't look at governments, but especially the EU, as a single entity. Some parts of it want to collect all data possible while others want to protect your privacy. Here is a good article on how EU courts and the Irish gover…

Yeah... Location tracking is available via other methods, so your argument on that issue is a little moot.

There are different levels of impact, but generally all EU governments consider the government to be "competent at safeguarding private data". Making any and all data collection justified.

Even Germany collects a lot of private data.

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

#765

Post by JAlexoid » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

masswerk wrote: post #684

JAlexoid wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you presume that these regulations are inherently good? I completely disagree on that premise and will not accept that statement as a forgone conclusion. They used to not build profiles... and we had the most awful ads served... and performing search resulted in pages upon pages of results we're not interested in. Why do we have to nuke everything and sow the ground with salt, just because some paranoid indivi…

Well, it may be that I'm biased against that kind of advertising – and that this may be a mutual affair. At least, it doesn't work for me, like most recommendation algorithms. I do feel locked in, I haven't seen anything relevant for years, and businesses are missing out on me as a customer. It may be that this works for things like SaaS-business, but there are various studies suggesting that it does perform worse th…

Methodology in online advertising exists solely to placate the marketing managers and give them nice graphs.

That doesn't negate the fact that targeted advertising is drastically more cost effective for smaller companies. It's drastically more valuable for sites that provide advertising space. It's a win-win for almost everyone involved.

We're talking about ads, not recommended content here. These are two very different things. You conflated them, to make an argument that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.