7 ms·

It's a shame an otherwise interesting article is plastered with the author repeatedly trying to promote and self-congratulate himself, and take credit for somet

by yeppie 7y ago

It's a shame an otherwise interesting article is plastered with the author repeatedly trying to promote and self-congratulate himself, and take credit for something which has undoubtedly been reported by hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Anyhow, I sincerely hope Google gets slapped with a huge fine, and that one day individual-user-targeted-ads will become illegal.

Tade0 7y ago
There's a huge incentive for both EU and Google to have the latter just pay a fine every now and then and remain in business. I see this as an indirect way to solve the problem of tax havens, because little known fact: the money that goes to pay the fines effectively reduces the pool of EU member contributions, because it's distributed using the same method.
- anoncake 7y ago
  > There's a huge incentive for both EU and Google to have the latter just pay a fine every now and then and remain in business. For the EU, making a decision frequently means getting the consensus of 28 governments with sometimes very different ideologies. I don't think it's capable of plotting.
  - Tade0 7y ago
    Individual governments on the other hand are, and in this case their interests align.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      Sure. You have twenty-eight governments, each with multiple ministers. A mix of socialists, liberals, christian democrats and fascists. None of them value markets and low taxes (the difference between liberals and socialists is that the latter like red). They somehow trust each other to keep their conspiracy secret. Oh, and half the European Parliament is part of the plot as well. At the same time, they have serious problems agreeing on tax reform. Because somehow, their interests are only aligned when it comes to secretly taxing Google. Please take off your tinfoil hat. When the EU properly taxes Google, it will do so openly.
      - Tade0 7y ago
        They somehow trust each other to keep their conspiracy secret. That's not what I said. What I said was that each government individually decided that it was in their interest to fine Google. No EU-level plotting - just incentives.
        anoncake 7y ago
        The heads of government and ministers don't get to keep the fines for themselves. It's in their self-interest to get themselves bribed by Google, not to fine them. Secretly taxing Google by making a privacy law, giving businesses years to prepare for it and hoping Google violates it anyway doesn't even make sense. Taxing them using, well, taxes is easier, quicker and more likely to work.
        Tade0 7y ago
        Taxing them using, well, taxes is easier, quicker and more likely to work. Is it really? To date Google et consortes managed to dogdge just about any tax law thrown at them. Meanwhile the fines are incurred and paid.
        anoncake 7y ago
        You're right. But that isn't because it's impossible to write a working tax law, but because the EU hasn't managed to agree on passing one without someone insisting on loopholes. (The people who decided to expand the EU to 28 members without overhauling its decision-making processes, which were designed for a community of 5 members with a much more limited scope, must have been on drugs.) You wrote that all countries are interested in money. To an extent that is of course true, and it also applies to Ireland.
- craigsmansion 7y ago
  You're implying this huge incentive is money. The EU is not short on money, and its existence and effectiveness do not hinge on how much money it "makes". Google is pretty big, but not that big if compared to 27 sovereign countries and their combined GDPs. The biggest problem the EU has is credibility with its populations. Taking on online privacy for their citizens was a huge win. It made a lot of people aware that the EU can be more than boring fish-quota and agricultural subsidies. The chance of Google getting away with paying a fine every now and then is pretty much non-existent.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    To illustrate: Google has a yearly revenue of ~90 Billion Euros. The maximum penalty for violating the GDPR is 4% of that = 3.6 Billion Euros. The EU has ~450 Million citizens without the UK. If the EU fined Google for the maximum amount (which is rare) every year, it would raise 8 Euros per citizen. Our politicians have better things to do.
    - jolfdb 7y ago
      That seems wrong. For only 4% revenue tax a company could just completely ignore the laws and just pay the fine as a cost of business.
      - anoncake 7y ago
        It doesn't just get fined, it also gets ordered to stop. If it refuses, I guess the usual mechanism the state uses to make them comply apply.
      - jeltz 7y ago
        There is no cap of 4% per year. If you just continue your violations the EU can continue levying fines and go past the 4% until you comply with the lawful order. I am not sure what the cap is in practice, because as far as I know no company has continued to just ignore EU for more than a few months.
        7y ago
jplayer01 7y ago
Huh? There are two places where he talks about himself. One spot in the beginning where he mentions how the investigation was triggered. > The probe was triggered by a formal complaint from Dr Johnny Ryan, Chief Policy Officer at Brave, the private web browser. Which seems fair to me. And another where he's mentioned amongst others who've put in complaints. > Duplicate complaints were also submitted to the UK Information Commissioner by Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group and Dr Michael Veale of University College London. Dr Ryan, Dr Veale and Mr Kilock are represented by Mr Ravi Naik of ITN Solicitors in London.
- fastball 7y ago
  In total, he mentions himself in the 3rd person five times in the article. And at one point, he even quotes himself: > “Surveillance capitalism is about to become obsolete,” said Dr Ryan of Brave.
kmlx 7y ago
> and that one day individual-user-targeted-ads will become illegal i don't understand this. why would anyone prefer generic ads over targeted?
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Because targeted apps need information about you that some people do not want to provide. And don't care about ads..
  - kmlx 7y ago
    as long as that information is anonymised (and impossible to de-anonymise), i don't see the problem...
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      I don't think ad-networks would mind much that much if you shared your info with them.
    - jolfdb 7y ago
      It's impossible to anonymize; that's the point.
- janpot 7y ago
  I want no ads, but apparently it's impossible to build a business these days without also trying to manipulate me into buying random other stuff. If I can't go around them, I'd still prefer to ignore generic ads rather than targeted ones. It's easier to do and less creepy from their side.
  - kmlx 7y ago
    the industry hasn't managed to solve this situation for decades now. the best solution has been ads. otherwise there's the subscription model, which reduces access to information.
  - psandersen 7y ago
otabdeveloper2 7y ago
I've worked in advertising for 15 years, in different parts of the industry and in different roles. The thing is: ad tech doesn't want your personal data. Ad tech doesn't even want 'individually-targeted' ads. Advertising is applied sociology and works with statistics and its laws of large numbers. What ad tech really wants is to assign you to broad classes of sociological groups. ('Gamer', 'parent', 'hobbyist', 'instagram user', etc.) The insane spree of personal data collection by Google and Facebook isn't driven by advertising needs. It's a deeper and more insidious strategy for things in the future that aren't advertising-related. (I think the strategy bosses in these FAANG companies imagine a future with something like China's social credit system, except on steroids. But this is just my hunch.)
- krageon 7y ago
  I think it needs to be considered that you are an outlier within the advertising business. To wit, every advertiser I have worked with (especially ones that are high up in a company) believes that they need as much data on their customers as they can get their hands on.

by yeppie 7y ago

Tade0 7y ago

There's a huge incentive for both EU and Google to have the latter just pay a fine every now and then and remain in business. I see this as an indirect way to solve the problem of tax havens, because little known fact: the money that goes to pay the fines effectively reduces the pool of EU member contributions, because it's distributed using the same method.

anoncake 7y ago
> There's a huge incentive for both EU and Google to have the latter just pay a fine every now and then and remain in business. For the EU, making a decision frequently means getting the consensus of 28 governments with sometimes very different ideologies. I don't think it's capable of plotting.
- Tade0 7y ago
  Individual governments on the other hand are, and in this case their interests align.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    Sure. You have twenty-eight governments, each with multiple ministers. A mix of socialists, liberals, christian democrats and fascists. None of them value markets and low taxes (the difference between liberals and socialists is that the latter like red). They somehow trust each other to keep their conspiracy secret. Oh, and half the European Parliament is part of the plot as well. At the same time, they have serious problems agreeing on tax reform. Because somehow, their interests are only aligned when it comes to secretly taxing Google. Please take off your tinfoil hat. When the EU properly taxes Google, it will do so openly.
    - Tade0 7y ago
      They somehow trust each other to keep their conspiracy secret. That's not what I said. What I said was that each government individually decided that it was in their interest to fine Google. No EU-level plotting - just incentives.
      - anoncake 7y ago
        The heads of government and ministers don't get to keep the fines for themselves. It's in their self-interest to get themselves bribed by Google, not to fine them. Secretly taxing Google by making a privacy law, giving businesses years to prepare for it and hoping Google violates it anyway doesn't even make sense. Taxing them using, well, taxes is easier, quicker and more likely to work.
        Tade0 7y ago
        Taxing them using, well, taxes is easier, quicker and more likely to work. Is it really? To date Google et consortes managed to dogdge just about any tax law thrown at them. Meanwhile the fines are incurred and paid.
        anoncake 7y ago
        You're right. But that isn't because it's impossible to write a working tax law, but because the EU hasn't managed to agree on passing one without someone insisting on loopholes. (The people who decided to expand the EU to 28 members without overhauling its decision-making processes, which were designed for a community of 5 members with a much more limited scope, must have been on drugs.) You wrote that all countries are interested in money. To an extent that is of course true, and it also applies to Ireland.
craigsmansion 7y ago
You're implying this huge incentive is money. The EU is not short on money, and its existence and effectiveness do not hinge on how much money it "makes". Google is pretty big, but not that big if compared to 27 sovereign countries and their combined GDPs. The biggest problem the EU has is credibility with its populations. Taking on online privacy for their citizens was a huge win. It made a lot of people aware that the EU can be more than boring fish-quota and agricultural subsidies. The chance of Google getting away with paying a fine every now and then is pretty much non-existent.
- anoncake 7y ago
  To illustrate: Google has a yearly revenue of ~90 Billion Euros. The maximum penalty for violating the GDPR is 4% of that = 3.6 Billion Euros. The EU has ~450 Million citizens without the UK. If the EU fined Google for the maximum amount (which is rare) every year, it would raise 8 Euros per citizen. Our politicians have better things to do.
  - jolfdb 7y ago
    That seems wrong. For only 4% revenue tax a company could just completely ignore the laws and just pay the fine as a cost of business.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      It doesn't just get fined, it also gets ordered to stop. If it refuses, I guess the usual mechanism the state uses to make them comply apply.
    - jeltz 7y ago
      There is no cap of 4% per year. If you just continue your violations the EU can continue levying fines and go past the 4% until you comply with the lawful order. I am not sure what the cap is in practice, because as far as I know no company has continued to just ignore EU for more than a few months.
      - 7y ago

jplayer01 7y ago

Huh? There are two places where he talks about himself. One spot in the beginning where he mentions how the investigation was triggered. > The probe was triggered by a formal complaint from Dr Johnny Ryan, Chief Policy Officer at Brave, the private web browser. Which seems fair to me. And another where he's mentioned amongst others who've put in complaints. > Duplicate complaints were also submitted to the UK Information Commissioner by Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group and Dr Michael Veale of University College London. Dr Ryan, Dr Veale and Mr Kilock are represented by Mr Ravi Naik of ITN Solicitors in London.

fastball 7y ago
In total, he mentions himself in the 3rd person five times in the article. And at one point, he even quotes himself: > “Surveillance capitalism is about to become obsolete,” said Dr Ryan of Brave.

kmlx 7y ago

> and that one day individual-user-targeted-ads will become illegal i don't understand this. why would anyone prefer generic ads over targeted?

raxxorrax 7y ago
Because targeted apps need information about you that some people do not want to provide. And don't care about ads..
- kmlx 7y ago
  as long as that information is anonymised (and impossible to de-anonymise), i don't see the problem...
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    I don't think ad-networks would mind much that much if you shared your info with them.
  - jolfdb 7y ago
    It's impossible to anonymize; that's the point.
janpot 7y ago
I want no ads, but apparently it's impossible to build a business these days without also trying to manipulate me into buying random other stuff. If I can't go around them, I'd still prefer to ignore generic ads rather than targeted ones. It's easier to do and less creepy from their side.
- kmlx 7y ago
  the industry hasn't managed to solve this situation for decades now. the best solution has been ads. otherwise there's the subscription model, which reduces access to information.
- psandersen 7y ago

otabdeveloper2 7y ago

I've worked in advertising for 15 years, in different parts of the industry and in different roles. The thing is: ad tech doesn't want your personal data. Ad tech doesn't even want 'individually-targeted' ads. Advertising is applied sociology and works with statistics and its laws of large numbers. What ad tech really wants is to assign you to broad classes of sociological groups. ('Gamer', 'parent', 'hobbyist', 'instagram user', etc.) The insane spree of personal data collection by Google and Facebook isn't driven by advertising needs. It's a deeper and more insidious strategy for things in the future that aren't advertising-related. (I think the strategy bosses in these FAANG companies imagine a future with something like China's social credit system, except on steroids. But this is just my hunch.)

krageon 7y ago
I think it needs to be considered that you are an outlier within the advertising business. To wit, every advertiser I have worked with (especially ones that are high up in a company) believes that they need as much data on their customers as they can get their hands on.