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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

#81

Post by failuser »

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.

Too much private information collected for that ads will be catastrophic sooner or later. I don’t think that people got the real wake-up call yet. For example imagine someone getting addresses of all the Jews in town and doing something nasty. Before that you needed a lot of people to gather info for such an operation, now the information part will be trivial, but there is still an IRL part. Or getting the names of all people with severe peanut allergy and adverting them something with undisclosed peanut consents. I think there just have not been a sufficiently motivated actor to cause hard beyond making you buy more, selling scams, paying more through individualized pricing or discriminate based on some parameters.

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

#82

Post by gpderetta »

Semaphor wrote: post #58
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…

Unless I’m completely misunderstanding things, they’ll do what many news sites in Germany already do: Option A: Continue for free with ads (and tracking and profiling etc.) Option B: Pay for a subscription without ads or tracking (most seem to use a service called "Pur" (pure)) This does not mesh with some people’s understanding of the GDPR, but at least several German courts said it’s okay.

This is common in Italy as well. Do you have any (English) links to court reports?

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

#83

Post by blululu »

tsimionescu wrote: post #49
kwanbix wrote: post #6

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…

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…

This is just plain false. At best ads will inform you about the existence of valuable products, services and opportunities that can make your life better. Every business must communicate with potential customers. Personalized ads are much more likely to be something you might want than the generic billboard on the side of the road.

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

#84

Post by Broken_Hippo »

thfuran wrote: post #27
kwanbix wrote: post #6

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…

>Also, it is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads Good. A well-functioning market might emerge instead.

Somehow, by excluding poorer folks, you get a well-functioning market? I doubt it.

Regulation is the best chance for well-functioning markets. I highly doubt we are going to be without advertisements.

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

#85

Post by gpderetta »

vasdae wrote: post #18
thorncorona wrote: post #4

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…

I don't understand. We were able to run with untargeted ads for decades. Why now, suddenly only targeted ads are viable?

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

#86

Post by SonicScrub »

pembrook wrote: post #75

Ok, 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…

I would not assume that there is no data pipeline connection between big-data collectors and government. Now, and especially not in the future. And that data you create now is forever.

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

#87

Post by A_non_e-moose »

kwanbix wrote: post #6

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…

> 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.

I would rather have rather than . That's not an equal comparison, neither does it represent a common scenario.

> It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads. So on one side, people want everything free, on the other side, we don't want ads, so there is a clear problem here.

People do want ads to subsidize free internet usage, as it has been since the Internet's inception. People accept random ads or even contextual ads, but people flat out refuse targeted ads. This refusal comes out of many reasons, many of which you'll find in other comments around here.

Mine are self-determinism and privacy. I don't want someone, regardless of how well intentioned or competent they believe they are, to collect sensitive data on my habits, preferences and choices to then attempt to influence me. I like to make my own mistakes and own up to them.

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

#89

Post by squigz »

pembrook wrote: post #75

Ok, 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…

Can you elaborate on how a government can 'ruin your life', while a company can't?

This might be hard to grok, but we can actually be aware of both threats without minimizing the seriousness of either.

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

#90

Post by mjburgess »

Comments here so far focus on personalised ads as the issue -- but that's a symptom of what's being banned, which is the mass collection of personal data.

Personalised ads are beside the point. The issue is how they are personalised, namely by building a rich profile of user behaviour based on non-consensual tracking.

It isnt even clear that there's a meaningful sense of 'consent' to what modern ad companies (ie., google, facebook, amazon, increasingly microsoft, etc.) do. There is both an individual harm, but a massive collective arm, to the infrastructure of behavioural tracking that has been built by these companies.

This infrastructure should be, largely, illegal. The technology to end any form of privacy is presently deployed only for ads, but should not be deployed anywhere at all.

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