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And how can be a business sustainable in this way?
by tzfld 8y ago
And how can be a business sustainable in this way?
- geerlingguy 8y agoPeople will actually visit the site... so they get traffic. They could then advertise to through more creative, less user-unfriendly ways (besides having giant ad networks that store tons of user data on each person, along with 20 different vendors’ trackers to make sure each department gets the same data about each user in a very slightly different way).
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoOne way to think of it is that “a business” is not “a user tracking, ad targeting website.” Whatever the business is, it’s not equal to the website, which is just one means of distribution of information or content. If the business was so predicated on user tracking and selling that data or using it to target ads, I think GDPR (in spirit) is saying “that’s not a business” and requiring a greater form of transparency and informed consent before a website can inflict that on a (possibly unwitting) user. I’m not trying to say this point of view is right or wrong, just that I think there is a spirit here in the intention of GDPR to say “that’s not something we’ll allow to be called a business model.” (Obviously it doesn’t fully go that far, but it’s the idea.) It’s not that different in spirit than regulating usury or payday loan businesses. If your business model profitably works only because it preys on people, the spirit of the regulation is to say, “that’s not a business model,” and regulate or disallow it. Usury laws in the case of excessive short-term interest rates; GDPR in the case of excessive user tracking and data privacy concerns. So when you ask, “how can be a business sustainable in this way?” it sort of has the wrong premise. Instead, if the business could not be profitable without this then it wasn’t actually ever a business— rather it was some other data exploitation entity, and the lack of an alternate way to be profitable in compliance with GDPR is a signal that the entity was unable to determine a way to exist without causing the kinds of harm that GDPR aims to prevent. Again, I’m just trying to represent what I think the spirit is behind the GDPR choices— not saying they were right or wrong.
- qz3 8y agoAnd how can be a business sustainable in this way? By not building their entire business around ads and tracking.
- paganel 8y agoPeople have tried lots of other stuff in the last 10-15 years, it was not sustainable (micro-transactions never took off, subscription-based newspapers are the exception rather than the norm etc). I'm personally fine with newspapers like the LA Times collecting and selling my personal data as long as I can read articles for "free" on their website, I think it's a pretty fair deal.
- kazagistar 8y agoPart of the reason for the failure of those other models is their need to compete with an exploitative ad driven model. When you remove the lowest common denominator, you make it is easier for the market to accomplish something better.
- fixermark 8y agoi.e. "It's easier for horses to compete with cars if you set the speed limit everywhere to 5 miles per hour."
- qwerftgzh 8y agoi.e "It's easier for car manufacturers to build cars if your remove regulations on safety or pollution" i.e "It's easier for employers to produce cheaper products by exploiting their employees if your protection of labour is on the level it was 1850"
- kinsomo 8y ago> i.e. "It's easier for horses to compete with cars if you set the speed limit everywhere to 5 miles per hour." I think that elides pretty important aspects from the equation. In reality, it's more like: "It's easier for Bill-brand horses to compete with John-brand horses; if you ban the steroids, amphetamines, and cruel practices John uses to get his results."
- flohofwoe 8y agoEverything's fine if they add generic, non-targeted ads that are completely under control of the news publisher, hosted on their servers, don't track users, don't use cookies. Just like print media and TV does since forever.
- repolfx 8y agoThe problem is that those ads could not be pay-per-click because you need cookies, javascripts and other tricks to combat clickfraud and impression spam. If that USA Today site sticks around and adds advertising, it will presumably be low quality inventory like the internet used to be flooded with - casinos, punch the monkey etc.
- openIce 8y agoOhh I didn't know the EU just outlawed internet ads, TIL I guess. /s I can't stop laughing at the stupidity among americans
- derrikcurran 8y agoIs it reasonable to attribute ignorance of laws on another continent with stupidity? Is nobody outside of America ignorant of these laws? Also, how much of the internet technology and content you use and consume was created by Americans? Probably quite a lot. Why so rude?
- olivierduval 8y agoCookie & javascript aren't forbidden... You can have sensible context-sensitive advertising without problem with GDPR. You just can't target a specific reader using its behaviour
- codedokode 8y agoAs I understand, you still can use cookies and IP addresses, but you should not keep them for long time and should not give those data to Google and Facebook. Do you really need to track user across all the Internet (like Google and Facebook do) and keep that data forever, buy and sell them to data brokers? Definitely not. I don't want data about me to be someone's asset. I want an Internet shop to delete data about me as soon as possible after I made a purchase. That's why I want GDPR in my coutry too.
- tannhaeuser 8y agoI have no answer to this, but the targetted ad business has driven traditional news outlets/traditional ads out of the market almost completely, so I think it has no good standing to ask for protection. In fact, I think GDPR proponents will welcome the collateral damage to targetted advertising.
- jonbarker 8y agoMedia businesses can introduce or grow subscription revenue, reducing reliance on ads.
- JeanMarcS 8y agoYou can still have ads under GDPR. You can even continue to track people, you just have to ask consent and not doing it behind user’s back.
- PuffinBlue 8y agoAnd as I understand it you can't punitively restrict access to the service for not consenting to that tracking.
- RugnirViking 8y agoAnd then you can still have ads, just not track them.
- tobltobs 8y agoReplace ads with sponsored content. They still will get money for ads, but they even will save money because they get free content. /s
- elorant 8y agoBy hosting non-tracking ads. Like they used to be before Google started this whole profiling menace.
- tormeh 8y agoThey can even be dynamic. Filter on location, uplink/computer speed, screen size, browser etc. None of it requires storing data. Adtech might move to correlating all these things + the website visited to target particular demographics.
- krisdol 8y agoThey can also be quite smart. What was your referrer, what's your user flow through the site, what do similar users do when arriving from the same pages and searches? What time of day is it for the visitor? ie: figure out why they are doing what they're doing and direct them to ads that capture that intent.
- jimmaswell 8y agoI'm not certain but much of that sounds like the kind of information GDPR doesn't let you use like that.
- Angostura 8y agoThe only reason that IP address logging is a problem is that ISPs could theoretically cross reference with subscribers leases and identify them. I think this much vaguer stuff will be fine.
- tormeh 8y agoWhy? None of it requires saving info on an individual server-side. As long as you don't do that the GDPR doesn't even apply to you.
- repolfx 8y agoDid you use the internet back then? Do you remember what online ads were like before AdSense? My god. They sucked so hard! AdSense was a revolution.
- alkonaut 8y agoHopefully what will happen is that it will be more expensive to advertise and publishers will earn more on dumber ads Obviously if ads are less targeted then they may be less effective so advertisers will make less on ads that cost more. This will hurt their bottom line, which in turn will make the products we buy more expensive. But that's exactly the end goal. I want to pay for things (information, products) with more money rather than with slightly less money and all my integrity.
- kenjackson 8y agoIt would be nice to give people the option. I personally would love everything to be free, and show me ads instead. I don't see how my integrity has anything to do with it.
- fixermark 8y agoThat's a sad outcome. I remember the tedium of non-targeted advertising---it's what ultimately pushed me away from most traditional print and broadcast media and online. Targeted advertising occasionally brings me information I actually want; non-targeted advertising feels like such a waste of everybody's time. I hope someone takes on the experiment of opt-in GDPR compliant ads.
- pishpash 8y agoTargeted advertisement can be done if the user is entirely in control of the data and the consent process. No one would be against that. This is a technical problem that can be solved, there was just no incentive to do it. Now perhaps there is.
- lajhsdfkl 8y ago>Obviously if ads are less targeted then they may be less effective so advertisers will make less on ads that cost more. This will hurt their bottom line, which in turn will make the products we buy more expensive. But that's exactly the end goal. I want to pay for things (information, products) with more money rather than with slightly less money and all my integrity. I'm sure you considered all the poor people across the world that are subsidized by the ad driven model we use today. What we truly need on the internet is data gated behind pay walls to protect important information such as which facebook groups you clicked like on.
- mc32 8y agoProbably not sustainable as an ad supported business. We may see a bigger push to a subscription based model—-one many people have come to hate, but was one twenty years ago people paid $10-30, mo. for the subs to their favorite daily. Now sure those prices were subsidized by ads. But they can still use utargeted ads, in addition, cost of the “medium” and distribution is much lower.
- reaperducer 8y ago> And how can be a business sustainable in this way? There are millions of businesses around the world that don't give a fig about European customers or the E.U. Hurts to hear it, but it's true. They manage to survive an thrive without any interaction with anyone in the E.E.A. It's a very European thing to think of the E.U. as the indispensable center of the world.
- rad_gruchalski 8y agoIt works both ways.
- reaperducer 8y agoYou are correct. That's what makes visiting another country/region fun for many people. They like to explore and encounter things they don't have available to them where they live. Otherwise, why leave home?
- rad_gruchalski 8y agoDecide if you talk about not giving a flying toss doing business or visiting for fun and leisure.
- joepie91_ 8y ago> It's a very European thing to think of the E.U. as the indispensable center of the world. Huh? Culturally, that has absolutely not been my experience - quite the contrary. In the case of the GDPR, it's simply a matter of "if you can't respect our citizen's basic rights, then we don't want to be doing business with you". That has nothing to do with considering the EU to be the 'center of the world', and everything with setting the conditions for trading with it. You can either take or leave those.
- tripzilch 8y agoThere is no fundamental right for a business to be "sustainable" if it hinges on being able to sell off my personal data to 3rd parties. That is almost literally what this law is about. You sound like the other people complaining "you know how much money I have to spend on lawyers to ignore this law??".