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This is where the scum of the adtech industry lies. While Google and FB collect a lot of user data, they only keep it to themselves and use the data BOTH for be

This is where the scum of the adtech industry lies. While Google and FB collect a lot of user data, they only keep it to themselves and use the data BOTH for better advertiser targeting as well as for customizing user experiences. Oracle BlueKai, which was an acquisition, collects data from various sites users visits (via cookies and their SDK) and explicitly sells that data to other ad networks. Ad networks, outside a few of them, don't have a lot of data to target and thus rely on 3rd party data brokers such as BlueKai to fulfill this need. BlueKai also have tie ups directly with the advertisers, especially brand advertisers such as Unilever etc., where these advertisers require the ad networks who are advertising for them to use BlueKai customer segments (which they created using user data) for targeting purposes. And all of this is completely invisible to the user.

auslander 8y ago
It gets worse: - Personal information that is collected offline and that can directly identify you may include, for example: - name and physical address, email addresses, and telephone numbers; www.oracle.com/legal/privacy/marketing-cloud-data-cloud-privacy-policy.html
pron 8y ago
> they only keep it to themselves and use the data BOTH for better advertiser targeting as well as for customizing user experiences. And for amplifying political misinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories, and occasionally they let some of that data leak. But other than that they're fine. After all, they are mega corporations whose business model is altruism.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
gowld 8y ago
Why specifically is it worse than FB? If all those ad networks merged into BlueKai aka Oracle, so the data was kept "internal", would that be better?
- auslander 8y ago
  Its unclear. I guess his idea was that FB collects only data you put into FB, while BlueKai collects data from many trackers embedded into majority of websites. Unclear because Google and FB have its hand (trackers like Like button and pixels) in many websites as well. In uBlock Origin, enable advanced mode and will see tens of tracking domains on pages like newyorker.com online stores et cetera.
  - bbulkow 8y ago
    Facebook has share buttons on all the world's media. Each one of those views is almost certainly recorded by Facebook, even if you don't have an account. The only way to stop it is put a DNS block ( hosts entry ) on your machines. If you think Facebook records less data than bluekai, I think that is very very unlikely.
- product50 8y ago
  It is worse because BlueKai is a data broker and sells that data to anyone. You can literally buy data from BK for various user segments (and that is their business model). FB, otoh, while collecting the data keeps it only to themselves and shares it with no-one (not even the advertiser).

auslander 8y ago

It gets worse: - Personal information that is collected offline and that can directly identify you may include, for example: - name and physical address, email addresses, and telephone numbers; www.oracle.com/legal/privacy/marketing-cloud-data-cloud-privacy-policy.html

pron 8y ago

> they only keep it to themselves and use the data BOTH for better advertiser targeting as well as for customizing user experiences. And for amplifying political misinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories, and occasionally they let some of that data leak. But other than that they're fine. After all, they are mega corporations whose business model is altruism.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

gowld 8y ago

Why specifically is it worse than FB? If all those ad networks merged into BlueKai aka Oracle, so the data was kept "internal", would that be better?

auslander 8y ago
Its unclear. I guess his idea was that FB collects only data you put into FB, while BlueKai collects data from many trackers embedded into majority of websites. Unclear because Google and FB have its hand (trackers like Like button and pixels) in many websites as well. In uBlock Origin, enable advanced mode and will see tens of tracking domains on pages like newyorker.com online stores et cetera.
- bbulkow 8y ago
  Facebook has share buttons on all the world's media. Each one of those views is almost certainly recorded by Facebook, even if you don't have an account. The only way to stop it is put a DNS block ( hosts entry ) on your machines. If you think Facebook records less data than bluekai, I think that is very very unlikely.
product50 8y ago
It is worse because BlueKai is a data broker and sells that data to anyone. You can literally buy data from BK for various user segments (and that is their business model). FB, otoh, while collecting the data keeps it only to themselves and shares it with no-one (not even the advertiser).