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Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?
- MulliMulli 7y agoI'm all for it. Remember that days when a fishing website hat a ad banner for a fishing related website - that's still targetet enough on my watch.
- coldpie 7y agoYeah our societies functioned for centuries without targeted ads, and we can do it again. It's only the past decade or two that we've had targeted ads. I think you could compare targeted ads to selling drugs: there's clearly a market for it and it will sustain many peoples' livelihoods, but as a society we've seen the ill effects of letting them run rampant and decided we're better off highly regulating them. It's time to reign in this massively detrimental business model. The businesses will adapt just fine.
- jstanley 7y agoWe also functioned for centuries without electricity, hot and cold running water, or good sanitation. The fact that we functioned without something doesn't imply that we're better off without it.
- throwaway5466 7y agoWe would be certainly better off without advertising. We don't need people to tell us to buy things to function in society.
- Razengan 7y agoThe fact that we functioned without something doesn't imply that we're better off with it.
- jstanley 7y agoAgreed. The fact that we functioned without it before is of zero information content when deciding whether we should function without it again.
- Razengan 7y agoNo, the fact that we functioned without it is a fact that we can function without it. And literally billions of people do function without targeted advertising, right now.
- jstanley 7y agoNobody is saying we can't function without advertising! But we can function without lots of things. The fact that we can function without something isn't a strong argument in favour of getting rid of it. I don't even like advertising. I'm not trying to support advertising. I'm just addressing the logical fallacy.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 7y agoWe've had targeting for at least as long as we've had publications with different subscriber bases. Do you think there are the same ads in Wired magazine, Sports Illustrated, and the Wall Street Journal? And even just traditional local newspapers targeted based on locale and readership. The New York Post is going to have different advertising than The New York Times.
- coldpie 7y agoWhen people say "targeted ads" these days, that's not what they're talking about. Perhaps it's a poor term. "Targeted ads" means ads that are targeted to a specific user, as opposed to a publication.
- ghaff 7y agoYes, the tools are different and (very much in theory) more precisely targeted. But, at the end of the day, you're still mostly targeting populations based on their propensity to spend money with you. So you now target me with sports gear ads not just because I subscribe to Sports Illustrated but because I've bought sports gear and I'm in the Male 18-25 demographic. I agree that attempts to target at an individual level feels different than just targeting a magazine's subscription base, but it's still targeting. So if someone wants to ban "targeting" they need to be more precise about what they're proposing to ban.
- woodrowbarlow 7y agolet me make a point about why i see one type of targeting as benign and the other (which i suppose could be called 'collaborative targeted marketing', because it involves sharing or aggregating data from multiple sources) as dangerous. if i subscribe to a magazine about fishing and it includes an advertisement about some new fishing lure, well... it's obvious why the fishing magazine might think i'm into fishing. but if i just bought a pack of diapers at walmart and then start seeing mailers for baby monitors from jc penny, that's when i start to get nervous. my fear is of a world where i call up a health insurance provider, ask for a quote, and they say "according to facebook market research, your hobbies include BASE jumping based on the videos you watch on youtube. therefore your premium rate will be [$xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.00].".
- onion2k 7y agoWould banning the ads change much? Ads are the just visible forefront of surveillance capitalism. They're not the problem in themselves. In fact, nor is the 'targeted' bit. If I like a page about 'cars' on Facebook there's no reason whatsoever why Facebook should be stopped from showing me more adverts for cars. That makes sense. If anything, I've deliberately informed Facebook that I want more content about cars, and that includes adverts. The problem is when Facebook goes further than the information I've directly given to them for the purpose of them targeting content and start using everything else I upload in order to target ads at me, like object recognition in photos I upload, or background conversations while I have the app open (allegedly). More than that though, the problem I have is when Facebook share the data the have about me with companies I didn't choose to share it with. That's what needs to be controlled. To stop invasions of privacy it makes a lot more sense to ban invading people's privacy.
- brandonbryant12 7y agoImagine having to serve tampon ads to men just because some silly rule made in Washington says you cannot target ads.
- hrstjrjmrt6smw 7y agoI'm a believe in "advertising leads to deadweight economic loss" theory but admittedly I've benefited greatly in my career working for ad tech companies...
- coldpie 7y agoI'm a believer in "heroine leads to economic loss" theory, but admittedly I've benefited greatly in my career by selling heroine.
- ddevault 7y agoWhy don't we just ban advertising?
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoI don't see how that would be possible.
- PeterStuer 7y agoThere are effective bans on advertising for certain products, e.g. cigarettes, in large parts of the globe.
- ghaff 7y agoWhich are acceptable because people generally (in many places), are fine with discouraging, or certainly not promoting, the use of tobacco products (and some other product categories) even though they're legal. This is not true with the usage and purchase of most other legal products.
- mLuby 7y agoThe irony is that, as with anti-smoking, massive ad campaigns would be necessary to convince the citizenry to favor a ban on ads. Time for "the ad to end all ads?"
- throwaway5466 7y agoIt's very simple actually. No more sponsors, no more covering every square meter of public space with brands, no more commercials on TV, no more ads on websites. People will have to find other ways to make money, no one's entitled to a business model.
- avalys 7y agoMost (in fact, almost all) advertisements are not on “public space”, they’re on private properties.
- JumpCrisscross 7y agoHow would such a law define targeted advertising? (Serious question.)
- antris 7y agoAny advertisement that is displayed/not displayed based on personal information of the potential viewer perhaps?
- jasonlotito 7y agoAnd here is the rabbit hole. What is the personal information? That you personally visited this site? Or is that not personal enough because we don't know who actually visited this site? Only that a browser visited this site. And if that's the case, couldn't any profile built out of a browser browsing many sites fall into the same bucket? What is personal information?
- antris 7y agoYeah I could see that the knowledge that you have visited the site before and showing an ad based on that is a form of targeted ad. Personal information doesn't have to be accurate or complete to fit that definition. I think any information that falls into the bucket of profiling (answering "who is watching this ad?"), despite whether an actual real person can be identified just with that information could still be considered personal information. To put it in shorter terms, showing ads based on personal information should be banned, no matter if the information is identifying or not.
- ytch 7y agoAdvertisement that not related to the page you are browsing?
- RandomTisk 7y agoThat's a little too broad, it's fine to let tech sites run tech industry ads and hobby sites could still run hobby ads, etc.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoThe argument for massive Pigouvian taxes on advertising seems much clearer. Advertising imposes massive costs on society and the viewers. These costs aren't borne by the advertiser, so they should be captured through massive taxes and put to good use. And many brands wouldn't feel much of an impact: what matters to Coke is that it spends more than Pepsi. If their $6B on advertising only buys 1/10th as many ads as it used to it still has the same impact because they still have twice as many ads as Pepsi does.
- growlist 7y agoAnd it's a shame really - I find most budget colas have a far richer cola flavour than either Coke or Pepsi. Coke especially is very bland.
- clarry 7y agoIdk about budget colas but Fentimans Curiosity Cola is pretty nice, and you don't need billboards on streets to get me to buy some. (I don't think I've ever seen an ad for Fentimans'.)
- avalys 7y agoWhat’s the cost that advertising imposes exactly?
- abdullahkhalids 7y agoPeople have finite attention tokens to spend per day. Attention tokens are consumed when you make a conscious and deliberate decision to invest time in something, but they are also consumed when someone approaches you and talks to you. Of course, people close to us usually are mindful of not consuming too many of our attention tokens. And some interruptions are useful to you, so they are welcome. Advertisements, on the other hand, consume the attention tokens of everyone who views them, and because they are optimizing for the revenue to the company, and not the benefit to the person, the expected benefit of each advertisement to the person is extremely low, if not downright negative.
- spodek 7y agoThe images of Sao Paolo before and after banning billboards https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret... illustrate the difference in a different space. Personally, I found the difference greater and more lovely than I expected and support reducing advertising. Other cities are doing it. The parties that would suffer most are shareholders of companies that advertise products most people probably wouldn't want without all the advertising -- Coca-Cola, Gatorade, McDonald's, fast fashion, etc, generally multinationals. I imagine ones that would benefit: local businesses, vegetable and fruit farmers, manufacturers of lasting goods instead of fast fashion.
- helsinkiandrew 7y agoOnline, without personalization it's the other way around Local and niche businesses can only advertise on Facebook/Google Ads because their clientele can be defined and targeted. Without targeting we'll be watching ads for Coca-Cola and McDonalds and other brands that have 'mass' appeal.
- vthriller 7y agoWhy can't they target content instead of visitors? i.e. articles and videos about X instead of people that showed even minimal interest in X in the past month or so.
- moomin 7y agoWe can’t even get Mickey Mouse out of copyright...
- throwaway4787 7y agoWhy don't we just ban advertising?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- eivarv 7y agoI think this is another example of wanting to ban a concrete outcome of problematic behavior. It's the tracking and targeting that should be illegal, in my opinion. I've always found it weird that we don't explicitly recognize information about / profiles on people as property of the subject.
- Doctor_Fegg 7y agoI'd add nuance to this: Ban _involuntarily_ targeted advertising. I am 100% ok with Google, Facebook etc. knowing that I live in Oxfordshire, UK; that I love cycling; that I play the church organ. That's who I am. If they want to target cycling, classical music, and local ads at me based on this information, that's great. I would happily log onto these sites and click checkboxes based on this (or do it via browser settings). I am not ok with them building up a detailed personal profile of my anxieties, day-to-day worries and preoccupations. Nor with them selling my information to other sites to which I haven't explicitly volunteered the information.
- woodrowbarlow 7y agothese questions are in earnest, not meant as a put-down of your position. how would you draw a line between what's okay to collect and what isn't? do you think a line could be drawn that would work for most people? would sites offer different levels of invasive tracking, and the user opts-in as far as they want? what incentive would users have to opt-in at all?
- rcxdude 7y agoI think the line drawn would be easy: they cannot collect the data themselves, they can only use what you fill in on a form they present. Then the line is basically whatever you feel comfortable telling them, knowing it will be used for advertising. The incentive would be the standard reason ad companies give for targeted ads: given there are going to be ads, people would generally prefer they be relevant.
- woodrowbarlow 7y agoi like that, and i like using the advertising industry's standard PR line to justify it.
- nkoren 7y agoThis is fine on the surface, but still has the potential for problems. Eg., if I were Muslim, I might be quite happy to declare that I'm interested in Halal food and would like to see advertising relevant to my interests. Win/win, right? Now, let's say I own an apartment block and want to advertise for tenants, but I don't want any of them dirty muslims in my building. I can target my advertising to exclude people whose interests include Halal food. Or, let's say I'm the propaganda department of an adversarial nation state, and I want to stir up communal tension. All I have to do is find people with an interest in Halal food, and target them with ads exhorting them to join other Christians in the next Crusade against the Moors. Or whatever. This was actually a common technique in the 2016 election: identify voters who, via their social connections and profile interests, are likely on the fence about Clinton vs. Trump, and also are a bit homophobic -- then target them with "Queers for Hillary" advertisments. It's shocking how easy it is to weaponize this stuff.
- icedchai 7y agoI'd argue that targeted advertising is actually a benefit to consumers and businesses a like. Consumers get ads for things they might actually buy, businesses waste less advertising spend.
- Retric 7y agoConsumers don’t magically get more money to spend so as long as everyone has access it’s equally effective at scale. The only real difference is it’s ability to shift where advertising dollars are spent.
- Mirioron 7y agoBut consumers could get better services and products, because they'll know that there's a choice to be had. I always go to the same place to have my hair cut, because it's the only one I know. Maybe there are better options for me -cheaper, closer, faster, better. But I don't know about them and I'll probably never know about them as I don't really care enough about it to go out of my way to look into it. If someone threw alternatives in my face then I might consider them.
- mLuby 7y ago> consumers could get better services and products Those services and products are not necessarily better, they're just better advertised. (In fact, they're likely worse.)
- Mirioron 7y agoI'm saying better because the consumer now knows of more alternatives. They have to obviously make their own choice on the matter.
- gridlockd 7y agoThe real difference is that only targeted ads pay so much better that they can sustain a wealth of free products. That effectively puts advertising dollars into the pockets of consumers who get services for free that they otherwise would have to pay for. The only companies that are going to be pissing away money on untargeted ads have multinational brands that barely need advertising in the first place.
- marban 7y agoAnyone remember ad networks like The Deck? I still find the idea appealing to try and relaunch on their original premise & values.
- trelonid 7y agoI think the answer is simple: the Advertising Business has very deep pocket and can interfere with such laws.
- helsinkiandrew 7y agoA few years ago I created an online business for serious cyclists and runners. Targeted Facebook ads enabled me to find customers for a few pennies each - I don't think I could have found customers any other way (apart from the trying to get 'free' ads via blogs/news/viral tweets etc). Targeted ads are the only way that small, new, local, or just poor companies can do advertising. It's a bit scary seeing what sites show facebook you've been to: https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ But if this is the price to pay to see quality ads within FB then so be it. What I think is wrong, is then for facebook (or other apps) to sell, or leak that data in enough detail to match to our identity where it can be used for other purposes.
- stoev 7y agoYou don’t need targeted advertising to achieve that. You don’t need FB, Google, and a thousand other lesser-known companies tracking every step you make in order to know that you might be interested in cycling. Instead you, as a small advertiser, would target the right context and would only show your ads in articles specifically-dedicated to cycling or whatever other niche you are after.
- helsinkiandrew 7y agoBut there aren't sites/publications that are niche enough. Female runners over 50? Interested in Italian food in Denver? Targeted ads are a response to the poor results from site/content specific ads
- stoev 7y agoSure, there are niche categories that would be hard to get. But for your two specific examples you could use those simple sets of criteria: 1. Target specific articles with advice for older runners in running publications. 2. Target Italian recipes in cooking websites only for users located in Denver. You don’t need to do those things manually, it can be automated. Sure, it might not deliver the scale that FB and Google are promising, but to say that it’s impossible to do contextually is not accurate. Use Google Search ads to capture all direct intent.
- captainmuon 7y agoSmall distinction, but I wouldn't ban targeted advertising, but profiling instead. So a site could absolutely show you ads according to the content you view or create, and companies can go to a site and ask them to show an ad to certain users. But it would be banned to pass on any kind of usage data that is not explicitly destined as public (profile page data, posts), and it would be forbidden for third parties to create profiles on you. I think tracking is also not bad per se, I still want to be able to identify recurring visiters to my site uniquely. It's the centralized advertising brokerage and profiling that should go away.
- IanSanders 7y agoIt's fairly easy to forbid, but very challenging to regulate. Yes, it would be better to do it properly, rather than ban altogether, however chances of that succeeding are not great. For the end user it's not worth the effort and resources (and that's who would end up paying for any introduced processes around this).
- libertine 7y agoI'm a suspect because I worked in digital media in a media agency some time ago, and let me tell you that this is quite a broad request. Why? Let's start by asking: what is targeted advertising? Is it based on interests? Behavior? Demographic? Psychographic? Contextual? Placement? Geolocation? Search queries? The list goes on. Even if they want to narrow it down to collected data from users, this still has a lot of broad aspects to it. What about what Kantar and GFK, and many other market research companies do, where they track people who consent to be tracked and share their opinions and behavior, to generate statistical inferences? Because that's one of the ways you target on TV for example. So, I understand where they are coming from, but this is such a broad request that's naive. A company that sells vegan supplements that places advertising in the POS (Point of Sale) is targeted advertising - why should we ban something that has the consent of everyone involved? Or the solution is to randomize ad placement? The amount of wastage and the play field would destroy anyone who tried to compete with companies who could afford mass media platforms with budgets in the orders of millions+.
- jka 7y agoWhat is targeted advertising needed for?
- dx034 7y agoTo get information to those that are interested in it. While some dislike any kind of advertisment, many (me included) don't mind having ads, as long as they're not too intrusive and actually useful.
- jka 7y agoThere are other ways that users can fulfill their information needs which don't require targeted advertising. You mention you don't mind ads; would you also prefer to be subject to targeted advertising rather than to have software running on your own device which displays equally-relevant reference material without sharing your personal data?
- dfxm12 7y ago
- monadic2 7y agoWhy stop there, why not ban commercial ads?
- stoev 7y agoThere is a very important point made in this article that is unfortunately lost in-between all the other arguments: “Meanwhile, the ability to track users wherever they go tends to shift ad revenue from higher quality sites to less reputable ones. “The way the adtech system works is, it follows the reader from Wired.com all the way down to the cheapest possible place, the basement bottom-feeders on the internet, and will serve you the ads there.”” Many people don’t like seeing ads. But they do like receiving the free content that those ads pay for. And would find it far more annoying if all the content was locked behind paywalls. Whether we like it or not, digital advertising is a powerful equaliser that gave free access to vast amounts of information to anyone from any country and from any income bracket. But the shift towards audience targeting has stripped high-quality content creators of their share of the value they create and has instead spread it out to countless click-baity websites and apps designed entirely to profit of off targeted advertising. So diminishing our reliance on targeted advertising is not only great for the user, it would be truly game-changing for high-quality content providers as well. For some reason, this mutually beneficial outcome is often forgotten and I’m glad that Wired pointed it out.
- Nasrudith 7y agoThe claim about quality sounds incredibly dubious and really gives away the game is about felony interference with a business model. "High quality" is downright narcissistic witg delusions of grandeur. High production value can and is absolute shit. Gell-Mann amnesia effect says hi. The problem isn't the competition but that the old guard sucked at their job. I am no fan of targetted advertising but I despise attempts to control the internet for the sake of dinosaur propagandists. They need to just die already and stop crapping out bullshit.
- jkingsbery 7y agoAs I read the article, these are some ads that I see: * Cascade - Useful * Some IBM Power and Storage Webinar - not so useful * Used Cars - not so useful (I anticipate doing less driving than normal the next few weeks) * Constant Contact - not so useful * Nike - not so useful * Auto insurance - not so useful There is something funny about an article arguing against targeted advertising surrounded by ads that do a pretty bad job of targeting.
- oxymoran 7y agoI wish we could ban all advertising, it all puts money over people no matter how benign it appears. It’s never going to happen but I can dream.
- jccalhoun 7y agoI hate obtrusive ads but targeted ads? They are terrible at targeting me. For every story about Target knowing a woman was pregnant before her family did there are a ton of stories about irrelevant ads. Lost of people have talked about getting ads for things they have already bought. Last fall Facebook suggested I join a group for liberal Asian Christians. I am not Asian or Christian.
- otabdeveloper2 7y ago> Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising? Because then only untargeted advertising will be left, and that's definitely not what you want.
- lioeters 7y agoObligatory Banksy quote: People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
- morgengold 7y agoTargeted advertising should be banned. There is absolutely no NEED for it. The advertisement industry will tell you that you want to be targeted so that you get the products you need/want. It's a twisted argument. I rarely/never got targeted with something useful. If consumers could freely choose, they always want ad-free stuff. Massive societal costs come with targeted advertising. Especially psychological, political and social costs. I see no reason why we should take these risks collectively for the profit of few. If "they" want it, they should show the evidence that it has no harmful effects. The burden of evidence should be on them.
- Nasrudith 7y agoHaving no need for something is a very dangerous mentality or rationale for banning anything. You have no need to speak. Likewise keep in mind the risks of a permission culture and burden of proof. The Tautology of Schedule 1 drugs set back research over half a century and indirectly killed many people. Prompted by cynically manipulated hysteria no less.