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Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

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Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#81

Post by nokcha »

Nextgrid wrote: post #60
hardikgupta wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. Think from the perspective of an advertiser. Earlier, an advertiser could pay for any ad anonymously. Now any ad you want to show can be traced back to you. This is a meaningful difference. Even if you as a viewer can't pinpoint the specific person behind an ad, they are not completely…

Ad targeting still allows you to fly under the radar of someone who could investigate by only targeting the ad to the idiots that would swallow it whole and not ask questions while everyone else is completely oblivious to the ad's existence. In fact I'm pretty sure this is happening already regardless of these changes. I recently saw on Reddit that YouTube is promoting ads for very obvious gift card scams, even thoug…

> (besides banning the cancer that is advertising)

Not all advertising (especially in the broad sense of the word) is bad. There is one ad in particular in the last year that I'm very glad I saw, because it alerted me to the existence of a product that has provided a lot of value to me. Of course, most advertising nowadays is trash and the web is barely usable without an ad-blocker, but in principle, I think having unobtrusive ads for vetted products isn't such a bad thing.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#82

Post by eli »

keiferski wrote: post #20

Prepare yourself for ads from amorphous organizations with names like The Committee to Re-Establish Democracy or The Project for a New American Freedom. (No idea if these are real, I just made them up.) I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. The only long-term solution is education: foster a sense of skepticism towards all adv…

Obviously if you are fundamentally against the concept of advertising then no version of AdWords will make you happy but.... isn't this change a good thing? Not perfect, but definitely good.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#83

Post by TeMPOraL »

nokcha wrote: post #81
Nextgrid wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad targeting still allows you to fly under the radar of someone who could investigate by only targeting the ad to the idiots that would swallow it whole and not ask questions while everyone else is completely oblivious to the ad's existence. In fact I'm pretty sure this is happening already regardless of these changes. I recently saw on Reddit that YouTube is promoting ads for very obvious gift card scams, even thoug…

> (besides banning the cancer that is advertising) Not all advertising (especially in the broad sense of the word) is bad. There is one ad in particular in the last year that I'm very glad I saw, because it alerted me to the existence of a product that has provided a lot of value to me. Of course, most advertising nowadays is trash and the web is barely usable without an ad-blocker, but in principle, I think having u…

Not all advertising, especially in the broad sense of the word, is bad. Arguably, most of it is.

http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#84

Post by Animats »

Interesting. That's what I've been doing with SiteTruth for a decade. Unlike Google, I can't make advertisers give me documents, so I have to dig into public records.

I look forward to seeing what info Google provides to users. The demo is useless. Name and "Location: United States" isn't much. I doubt Google will really provide much info about their advertisers; they're paying customers. Search users are the product.

I'd want to see the actual name and address of the business (as required in CA and the EU), business license info (required in the UK), incorporation state and serial number (required for an EV certificate), and have an option to buy a business credit report from D&B. At various times I've put all of those on SiteTruth.com.

It's become harder to get the data needed. A decade ago, an online-only business with no clear ownership or street address was almost always a scam. Now, it's not uncommon, although the scam percentage is still high. Businesses are also allowed more anonymity now, this being considered "privacy". There are "low-doc" states, such as Nevada. Owners of postal mail boxes used to be public record; now they're anonymous. D&B used to encourage companies to publicize DUNS numbers; now they consider that proprietary. It's a great time to be an online scammer.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#85

Post by javajosh »

dang wrote: post #77
dsl wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made absolutely no counter argument, and used way too many words to express your core point: "I'm a jerk."

Whoa, even when a comment is bad, please don't respond with a worse one. That just takes the thread further in the wrong direction. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . I don't read the GP comment as being a jerk so much as trying to at least avoid the most unproductive kinds of argument. Maybe it was a doomed experiment.

Yes, it was something of an experiment. I knew that ignoring it was best but I had a lot of other reactions, and I'd never seen a comment like that before, so I gave it a shot. Live and learn!

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#86

Post by noizejoy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #83
nokcha wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (besides banning the cancer that is advertising) Not all advertising (especially in the broad sense of the word) is bad. There is one ad in particular in the last year that I'm very glad I saw, because it alerted me to the existence of a product that has provided a lot of value to me. Of course, most advertising nowadays is trash and the web is barely usable without an ad-blocker, but in principle, I think having u…

Not all advertising, especially in the broad sense of the word, is bad. Arguably, most of it is. http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html

Guitar ads are always welcome in my browser :-)

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#87

Post by lonelappde »

ipython wrote: post #49
hardikgupta wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. Think from the perspective of an advertiser. Earlier, an advertiser could pay for any ad anonymously. Now any ad you want to show can be traced back to you. This is a meaningful difference. Even if you as a viewer can't pinpoint the specific person behind an ad, they are not completely…

Unless there is a government identification with photo of a real person associated with the ad, there is no transparency. Shell corporations and complex ownership structures will obscure any attempt at tracking the source otherwise.

That could be defeatable by crowdsourced research into a common database non blockchain of course ;-) ) and a chrome extension to ad an info UI to every ad, and a Google feature to show you a restorspective look at id info of all ads they've served you recently.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#88

Post by lonelappde »

clairity wrote: post #67
hardikgupta wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose it helps to see precisely who is paying for an advertisement, but I don’t think this is actually useful in a real sense. Think from the perspective of an advertiser. Earlier, an advertiser could pay for any ad anonymously. Now any ad you want to show can be traced back to you. This is a meaningful difference. Even if you as a viewer can't pinpoint the specific person behind an ad, they are not completely…

yes, there's tension between transparency for businesses and privacy for individuals (which is the stance i support). on one hand, you want transparency to elucidate crime and even neglect and aggression. on the other, the people behind companies have the right to privacy as well, lest those people be unfairly attacked (e.g., planned parenthood workers). the best tradeoff is not obvious here.

My real estate isn't private. Your public ads have no reason to be.

Workers aren't management/owners.

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#89

Post by lonelappde »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #55
tantalor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If you filter the paid speech then it follows you should also filter out the actual art, cinema, theater, etc. it paid for. Now you are left with what?

People actually cook lunch for each other all the time without making a sales pitch, this idea that nothing happens if Google isn't cutting checks is an extremely dim view of humanity.

How do you cook lunch over the Internet?

Why are you hanging out on ad supported website right now?

Re: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

#90

Post by lonelappde »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #42
javajosh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> foster a sense of skepticism towards all advertising Here, here. I would go further and say that human society needs a universal convention that flags paid speech as such, and gives people a clear protocol to filter any (or all) paid communication.

We already have laws saying that advertising must be marked as such. And the advertising companies are trying to make the marks as invisible as possible. How little font size can you use? Maybe a size that a person with perfect eyesight can read, but older people cannot, and even the person with perfect eyesight would easily miss it, that is technically legal, isn't it? What if the font color is hard to distinguish f…

The answer to all your questions is the same as it has been for centuries: common law.
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