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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

#91

Post by gatinsama »

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…

*Insert "both" meme*

Both can ruin your life, that's the issue.

> "The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap."

This only works for small companies.

We should also care about government surveillance. But, in this case, we are allies.

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

#92

Post by rapind »

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.

> Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads.

But that's not the issue here is it? *Personalized* ads is the issue. Can the free internet survive without personalized ads? Of course it can. Will a ton of companies disappear? Yes, and so what? Business fail all the time, and new businesses based on different models will fill the void. We might even see a ton of innovation beyond figuring out how to harvest and profile people's data when our biggest brains are directed towards different problems.

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

#93

Post by autoexec »

erremerre wrote: post #15
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.

If you are on your phone showing something to some person, and you get an ad for a new pressure cooking. Well, there it is a nice pressure cooking. Now if you have been looking for something else that you want to keep private (gay clubs, abortion clinics, or anything embarrassing) then your phone has betrayed you. There is also a point that if the ad is more useless, the quantity of ads should decrease because advert…

Worse, say a gay club near you was attacked by someone who made an explosive device using a pressure cooker. Your interest in those things (actual or as determined by advertisers) could cause you to be a suspect and/or arrested.

The problem with accepting being under constant surveillance to make advertisers money is that the data is never just used for ads and even if you never show your phone to another living soul that data never goes away and can end up in the hands of just about anybody.

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

#94

Post by tsimionescu »

blululu wrote: post #83
tsimionescu wrote: post #49

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…

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.

Businesses can communicate in ways that are not advertising.

Ads are not trying to inform. They virtually universally make claims that are pushed as far as possible without breaking false advertising laws. Ads never ever state limitations, for example - even though any honest information would.

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

#95

Post by squigz »

A_non_e-moose wrote: post #87
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, peo…

Thanks for this comment. I am getting sick of this implication that it's one way or another - we either accept the gross invasion of the privacy of billions of people and let companies do whatever they want with that data... or we're freeloading assholes who just want everything for free and clearly we don't understand how business and the world works.

Unfortunately many people seem to ignore the fact that it isn't one or the other, and we can reach a balance here.

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

#96

Post by CyanBird »

konschubert wrote: post #50
capableweb wrote: post #36

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.

Op said "sent a message to a friend", it made no reference to facebook

Gmail famously scans the user emails to sell the info to third parties and sell adds

Ought be noted that while WhatsApp to my knowledgeable doesn't carry such a clause. It would be idiotic beyond belief to be led to believe that Facebook doesn't do the exact same thing

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

#97

Post by xlii »

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…

A scenario from today, context: I don't have Meta/Facebook/Instagram account, my spouse has.

We were discussing haircuts in the morning and I showed her some photos online. 15 minutes later she opened Facebook and saw hairdresser commercial with THOSE EXACT haircuts we were discussing.

I was using iOS with no-track and adblocker on top of that. My guess is that link was made using IP address. Meta/Facebook was processing MY data to which I didn't agreed at any point. Most likely some website (which didn't ask for my permission, as I'm very anal about making sure I disagree to everything) shared this data with Facebook, Facebook linked the dots and voila.

That's my problem.

P.S. We did similar experiment 2 times, once with jewellery and once with specific types of shoes. One using Firefox Focus using home WiFi, second using 5G network. I disagreed to all cookie processing at any point.

WiFi connection was linked, 5G wasn't.

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

#98

Post by bluesign »

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…

Problem is not the "personalized advertising" alone, it is more dangerous when also combined with "bidding". When those two combined, you are most likely to see ads with bigger profit margins than small profit margins.

Let's say you are looking for a notebook, you are assigned to "notebook seeking" cohort. You will see "notebook ads". But the ads you will see will be the ones most profitable for your cohort.

For simplicity, let's say cohort is 100 people; if there is a one person in this cohort that is the target of an overpriced, low quality, drop shipped product, with huge margin, rest of the 99 people will be bombarded with that ad.

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

#99

Post by spacebanana7 »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #47
mantas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best one I heard was people claiming products will be more expensive if personalized advertising is banned. Because then it’ll cost more to promote them.

Interesting line of reasoning. :-) That would imply, that (globally) we spent significantly [EDIT: remove -less-, insert:] more on advertising before the advent of personalized targeting.

Not necessarily, cost reductions can increase, decrease or have no effect the total expenditure on goods. The total effect is quite ambiguous depending on the income and substitution effects.

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

#100

Post by LightHugger »

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…

When you realize that large enough corporations are a form of government, your way of thinking really starts falling to bits...

But, the government is the solution to when business gets too much power. You can't convince a profit motivated corporation to stop doing something evil as long as it's profitable, so it's the government's job to protect people from corporate governance.

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