4 ms·

I wonder if this means EU users get less creepy specific advertising. I run uBlockOrigin so I don't see many ads, but I've heard cases of Facebook/Adobe/Google

I wonder if this means EU users get less creepy specific advertising. I run uBlockOrigin so I don't see many ads, but I've heard cases of Facebook/Adobe/Google algorithms being so good that people see ads for things they've never looked up online, yet talked about out loud (leading many to believe Facebook/Instagram are capturing microphone data). As a side not, this gets into the whole "Right to be Forgotten" which the EFF is mostly against, since in the EU it can be used by many as a form of censorship.

david-s 9y ago
In what fashion can it be used as a form of censorship?
- bonaldi 9y ago
  News organisations have to remove legitimate journalism as a result. The BBC lists it when it happens to them, eg: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/1d0a67ff-ad97-4cde-b183-95c02337596b http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/1d0a67ff-ad97-4c...
- shakna 9y ago
  I'm not entirely convinced, but the argument I've seen is: Politician does something corrupt. Then they order takedown notices across the web, because it is about them personally. The Right to Forget allows them to obscure their dirty deeds.
- freeflight 9y ago
  I've already seen this happen with commercial spammers in Germany. For a while I got a ton of really annoying spam, advertising for big name brands, but organized by some spam racket with no way to opt out and registered in some foreign country. Some Googling led me to the trial of some German woman who was quite notorious among the anti-scammer community for running several spam rackets. People would spend a lot of time figuring out her connections between different font companies, data brokers, and whatnot. Until one day Googling her name wouldn't give any results at all; Couldn't look up any addresses anymore, couldn't look up company registers with her name anymore, it all just came up blank with a notification on the bottom of the search results, informing me that Google removed some results due to the EU right to be forgotten. It's very likely this woman is still running a very profitable spamming business with a side-business of selling data caches. Sure, one could argue that it's actually government agencies job to handle something like that, but these agencies also depend on search results, especially with something as obscure as the spam industry.
freeflight 9y ago
Not really, as an EU users, also using uBlockOrigin, I still get these creepy "follow you around after reading your mind" ads. I don't think that's something they can easily disable by region without breaking way too many things.
cfelix 9y ago
I do believe they are capturing microphone data because I can't think of any other explanation for the japanese ads (not about japanese stuff but actually written in japanese) I saw when rewatching my old anime DVDs. I was watching anime in a old TV without any internet connection and at the same time browsing reddit on my laptop. Things like this make me feel no guilt for using ad-blocks.
- radicaldreamer 9y ago
  I think it might be one of those situations where the microphone data is being captured using some other app and then shared into a data network as tar-getting data, providing a convenient and plausible deniability to Google and Facebook for shady practices.

david-s 9y ago

In what fashion can it be used as a form of censorship?

bonaldi 9y ago
News organisations have to remove legitimate journalism as a result. The BBC lists it when it happens to them, eg: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/1d0a67ff-ad97-4cde-b183-95c02337596b http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/1d0a67ff-ad97-4c...
shakna 9y ago
I'm not entirely convinced, but the argument I've seen is: Politician does something corrupt. Then they order takedown notices across the web, because it is about them personally. The Right to Forget allows them to obscure their dirty deeds.
freeflight 9y ago
I've already seen this happen with commercial spammers in Germany. For a while I got a ton of really annoying spam, advertising for big name brands, but organized by some spam racket with no way to opt out and registered in some foreign country. Some Googling led me to the trial of some German woman who was quite notorious among the anti-scammer community for running several spam rackets. People would spend a lot of time figuring out her connections between different font companies, data brokers, and whatnot. Until one day Googling her name wouldn't give any results at all; Couldn't look up any addresses anymore, couldn't look up company registers with her name anymore, it all just came up blank with a notification on the bottom of the search results, informing me that Google removed some results due to the EU right to be forgotten. It's very likely this woman is still running a very profitable spamming business with a side-business of selling data caches. Sure, one could argue that it's actually government agencies job to handle something like that, but these agencies also depend on search results, especially with something as obscure as the spam industry.

freeflight 9y ago

Not really, as an EU users, also using uBlockOrigin, I still get these creepy "follow you around after reading your mind" ads. I don't think that's something they can easily disable by region without breaking way too many things.

cfelix 9y ago

I do believe they are capturing microphone data because I can't think of any other explanation for the japanese ads (not about japanese stuff but actually written in japanese) I saw when rewatching my old anime DVDs. I was watching anime in a old TV without any internet connection and at the same time browsing reddit on my laptop. Things like this make me feel no guilt for using ad-blocks.

radicaldreamer 9y ago
I think it might be one of those situations where the microphone data is being captured using some other app and then shared into a data network as tar-getting data, providing a convenient and plausible deniability to Google and Facebook for shady practices.