7 ms·

Dear internet: We must ban targeted advertising immediately

102 points by JackWritesCode 6y ago

behnamoh 6y ago
Knee-jerk decision IMO. Advertising will always be at the core of businesses, and they all compete with each other on lowering the costs of advertising. Why would they agree on non-targeted ads if at least one of them has incentive to target their own ads? People began using ad blockers exactly because ads were not targeted.
- lecarore 6y ago
  I'm using an adblocker because most ads are deceptively trying to push garbage products. And I feel like I've never been offered some valuable information by an ad. Having them push stuffs we want (good and relevant products) it's different from having them push targeted trash. I believe that selling trash anonymously on the internet (think drop shipping, malware and bloatware) is so lucrative that genuine products and companies have a hard time competing.
gentleman11 6y ago
What would the text of the law say? All in-person sales activities are personalized. Would it simply forbid the use of automation for this in a list of specific ways? What would it say about YouTube video recommendations?
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  There's an easier solution: drop the word "targeted", and ban all unsolicited advertising. You have to define "advertising" either way, and this way you don't have to define what "targeted" means.
12xo 6y ago
Yes. This would be good but it is impossible. Washington is moved by profits, not people. Could there be a better example of this than what's happening right now?
olegious 6y ago
What this ignores is that non targeted advertising means less money for publishers. As advertisers are willing to spend more when they have more info about a user. According to a Google study [1] the impact can be as high as 50%. I prefer targeted advertising that's relevant to me. Especially because the advertiser doesn't actually know anything about me as an individual, I'm just an id, one of billions. [1] https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa...
- MereInterest 6y ago
  Why does it matter whether it is the advertiser themselves who know about me? The wrong is that I am being stalked in the first place. Why does it matter that advertisers pay more for targeted advertising? The wrong is that it is an option for them to choose in the first place.
  - olegious 6y ago
    "Wrong" in your opinion, not in the opinion of others. Choice is a beautiful thing- that's why with things like GDPR you can opt out from tracking, personalized advertising and be worth less as a user to the publisher. Ad tech needs to do a better job in making these choices easier to make and persist. edit- as the commenter below correctly states, GDPR is "Opt-in" not "Opt-out"
    - gpderetta 6y ago
      No GPDR allows for opting-in into tracking. Of course most websites conveniently seem to forget that.
      - olegious 6y ago
        You're right, I don't live in the EU and forgot the distinction. But the point stands- users should get a choice, there shouldn't be a blanket ban.
  - 6y ago
downvoteme1 6y ago
Interesting article. Then I dug in more about the author and no wonder he runs a competing user tracking service that competes directly with google analytics. Sure it does less targeting - but then also provides less data points.
- JackWritesCode 6y ago
  Yeah - privacy is important to the author. Less data points but protecting users' privacy.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
megavolcano 6y ago
More laws, less justice. This can only backfire.
renewiltord 6y ago
We have almost all the technology. What we don't have is verifiability in most cases. i.e. the real problem is that the publisher cannot determine that the User Agent is telling the truth. Everyone has a different value on the value of their data. For instance, I find great targeted advertising to be practically like a recommendation engine. Instagram's ads are great! And few of them relate to things I've done on Instagram or Facebook. They're clearly 3rd party. If we can find a way to ensure that the User Agent isn't lying (this may not be easy), then I could trade my data for a discount on the WSJ instead of paying full price and you could pay for the WSJ at full price and share nothing about yourself. I think the truth is that most people will pick the discount, but that's because I would. I think that's a fair exchange and very open and clear. You can opt-in.
- JackWritesCode 6y ago
  This is the kind of thing we need to be thinking about. A clear opt-in.
- anon73044 6y ago
  I'd say that ads on Instagram are garbage. 99 out of 100 are not even tangentially related to my interest or who I follow.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  Once upon a time, cable didn't have ads, because theoretically it got money from cable subscribers. Then they realized they could have subscribers and ads and make even more money. The vast majority of sites don't treat "paying subscriber" and "sell information" as an either-or. They treat paying subscribers as people they get money and more information from. Also, there's a third option: keep improving ad-blocker-blockers, so that they don't just block ads, they also block "we see you're using an ad blocker" messages.
  - lonelappde 6y ago
    When was once upon a time? Over 40 years ago. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by-commercials.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...
mikeg8 6y ago
While I agree with the overall sentiment in regards to supporting end-user privacy, this article’s title is a bit sensational and the body fails to provide enough substance to support such a dramatic claim. It’s an overly idealistic solution to the problem and therefore is not of much use.
avalys 6y ago
I dislike these articles that try to manufacture outrage by using emotionally-charged terms from the physical world - like “stalking” - in the context of targeted advertising, to make things seem more threatening than they really are. Someone stalking you in real life is pretty damn scary, and not at all comparable to an automated Facebook algorithm showing you ads for mountain bikes because you joined a mountain biking club. EDIT: I realize now that it was actually a HN commenter who used the word stalking, not the article, which is slightly more circumspect, though still uses manipulative language in my view.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  It's stalking in the sense that it is unwanted, creepy, and follows you around persistently.
  - solveit 6y ago
    And it's nothing like stalking in the sense that there's no chance it'll do you grievous physical harm or ruin your career and relationships.
    - solstice 6y ago
      I'm not saying they're completely equivalent but as a result of this whole tracking there are rather complete profiles about millions of people in some companies' DB, including hyper sensitive data such as sexual and political orientation which is just one The Purge scenario away from being abused on a massive scale. But even at a smaller scale, this data can be extremely (incl physically) harmful to individuals when leaked or when it falls into the wrong hands (Eg gay person in Uganda. EDIT: or a completely normal person in a future McCarthy-style witch hunt).
    - lonelappde 6y ago
      What of the data is leaked? What if an inappropriate targeted ad is displayed when someone looks at my screen?
    - MereInterest 6y ago
draw_down 6y ago
This is a bad situation that is nowhere near as urgent as TFA makes it out to be. Especially that we are, and let me check my notes here, currently dealing with an unprecedented global pandemic.
mgreg 6y ago
Wired published a well researched article a short while ago laying out the arguments in a little more persuasive manner. https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-advertising/ https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-ad...
Animats 6y ago
Tax it. Advertising, in general, is under-taxed. Should it even be tax-deductible as a business expense? Overall, in the US, most people are maxed out on spending. The savings rate is low. Advertising does not stimulate demand, it just moves it around, while adding cost. Think of a tax on advertising as mutual disarmament for manufacturers. Less spent on fighting with competitors, more price cutting.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  It can draw people to buy on credit, thus stimulating demand. And fundamentally businesses are taxed on profit, and advertising is an expense, so if you start saying advertising isn't tax deductible, you start fundamentally changing the way corporate taxation works and opening up a whole can of worms. Adding a tax on advertising spend like a sales tax would be far less messy - but it would benefit brands with large existing recognition at the expense of smaller/emerging companies. Without advertising, warby parker would never have been able to grow, leaving luxottica unchallenged as the largest frame maker. You'd just cement current market leaders.
  - Animats 6y ago
    Only short term. Someday, the credit card bills have to be paid.
repsilat 6y ago
To play devil's advocate, advertising is a social good, and better advertising is even more of a social good. How many times have you heard someone complain, "I just bought a desk lamp, and now I'm getting loads of ads for desk lamps. Don't they know I don't want another desk lamp?" And surveys back it up -- people would largely rather the ads they see reflect the things they're interested in. Because a well-targeted ad is good for the viewer. Sometimes they want the thing, and they buy it, and their life is improved. If I'm statistically more likely to buy a particular item because of some demographic I belong to, and you have my demographic information, by all means use it to decide which ads to show me. Maybe you having that information is a breach of my privacy, but if you do have it you should at least use it for something that'll benefit me.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  This shouldn't even be a devil's advocate point of view. Targeted advertisements have been just about the greatest value-add in the world of business in maybe the last twenty years. Imagine if you couldnt target advertisements. Imagine the waste. European baby formula manufacturers advertising to middle aged single men in Wyoming shouldn't happen, and it's because targeted advertising that we prevent that waste. We are all better off for it.
  - austinjp 6y ago
    Can't tell if sarcastic.... squints How about this: everyone already knows what they need and where to get it. That really reduces the infernal waste of advertising completely.
    - Jagat 6y ago
      >> everyone already knows what they need and where to get it. You're overestimating people ability to know what they want, and moreso where to get it.
      - erentz 6y ago
        If they didn’t know they wanted it before an advertisement played on their psychology to make them feel they needed it, then they didn’t really want it. And if they did know they wanted before the advertisement, then they’d go look for it at a store, online or otherwise, or in a catalogue, or so on.
kasey_junk 6y ago
The idea that it is ok for Amazon to show you targeted advertising on their properties but its not ok for third parties to do so seems like a pretty easy way to entrench Google and Amazon. In fact, targeted advertising is _already_ extremely low margin outside of Facebook and Google. The big dollar ad campaigns follow context (Ford doesn’t want to follow you around the internet, they want to show you every ad on ESPN.com and their other properties). This is a proposal that would a) make Google/Amazon/Facebook even more powerful on the internet and b) kill small publishers.
causality0 6y ago
Here's an idea: let people have a public advertising profile they have personal access to. I'd do a lot less adblocking if I knew advertisers were picking off a defined list of my interests. New iphone? No. Android flagship with a headphone jack and a telephoto camera? Oh yeah I'm interested. Allow people to make it known they're interested in classic computers or new rifle accessories or LEGO videogames or books from John Scalzi. It would be nice if advertisers knew enough about me I could cancel all my Google Alerts.
lonelappde 6y ago
AsGuard DNS. Works on ant device and unsucks the Internet.
anovikov 6y ago
It will effectively put vast majority of the Internet behind a paywall. Just turn it into a sort of a cable TV of today. With almost all small publishers closing and the rest just charging for what you see, and turning it into a largely unidirectional, top-to-bottom source of information... Because there is no way in the world non-targeted advertisements are going to pay for things, remember those mid-1990s sites all flashing with banners - and yet never making enough.
ksec 6y ago
This may be unpopular on HN. But I dont mind ads, I dont mind target ads either, in many cases I like them. What I do mind is creepy, personal ads. "Your Friends Joe just bought a wallet, you might like this too." I am OK with recommending me a wallet, since in real life I would have sales coming around me if I was in the Wallet counter and interested in one. I am absolutely NOT OK with being told my friend Joe bought a wallet. How did they know Joe was my friend, why are they telling me he bought a new wallet? Amazon are allowed to collected data when I am in their store, but those Data should not be sold to any other company. Right now there is a whole market for personal Data, and to me, that should be illegal.
- lowdose 6y ago
  Names follow a power law distribution, there are millions of guys named Joe and everyone has a friend with that name. Half of the men in the US have only 100 different names. Do you think it was just a coincidence in Amazons serie "The man in the high castle" the main character is named John Smith?
  - ksec 6y ago
    I think it was more specific like Joe Smith, which was indeed my friend with his Facebook Profile pic, it was many years before there was any backslash against Facebook. It was that time I decided to drop Facebook.

Knee-jerk decision IMO. Advertising will always be at the core of businesses, and they all compete with each other on lowering the costs of advertising. Why would they agree on non-targeted ads if at least one of them has incentive to target their own ads? People began using ad blockers exactly because ads were not targeted.

lecarore 6y ago
I'm using an adblocker because most ads are deceptively trying to push garbage products. And I feel like I've never been offered some valuable information by an ad. Having them push stuffs we want (good and relevant products) it's different from having them push targeted trash. I believe that selling trash anonymously on the internet (think drop shipping, malware and bloatware) is so lucrative that genuine products and companies have a hard time competing.

gentleman11 6y ago

What would the text of the law say? All in-person sales activities are personalized. Would it simply forbid the use of automation for this in a list of specific ways? What would it say about YouTube video recommendations?

JoshTriplett 6y ago
There's an easier solution: drop the word "targeted", and ban all unsolicited advertising. You have to define "advertising" either way, and this way you don't have to define what "targeted" means.

12xo 6y ago

Yes. This would be good but it is impossible. Washington is moved by profits, not people. Could there be a better example of this than what's happening right now?

olegious 6y ago

What this ignores is that non targeted advertising means less money for publishers. As advertisers are willing to spend more when they have more info about a user. According to a Google study [1] the impact can be as high as 50%. I prefer targeted advertising that's relevant to me. Especially because the advertiser doesn't actually know anything about me as an individual, I'm just an id, one of billions. [1] https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa...

MereInterest 6y ago
Why does it matter whether it is the advertiser themselves who know about me? The wrong is that I am being stalked in the first place. Why does it matter that advertisers pay more for targeted advertising? The wrong is that it is an option for them to choose in the first place.
- olegious 6y ago
  "Wrong" in your opinion, not in the opinion of others. Choice is a beautiful thing- that's why with things like GDPR you can opt out from tracking, personalized advertising and be worth less as a user to the publisher. Ad tech needs to do a better job in making these choices easier to make and persist. edit- as the commenter below correctly states, GDPR is "Opt-in" not "Opt-out"
  - gpderetta 6y ago
    No GPDR allows for opting-in into tracking. Of course most websites conveniently seem to forget that.
    - olegious 6y ago
      You're right, I don't live in the EU and forgot the distinction. But the point stands- users should get a choice, there shouldn't be a blanket ban.
- 6y ago

downvoteme1 6y ago

Interesting article. Then I dug in more about the author and no wonder he runs a competing user tracking service that competes directly with google analytics. Sure it does less targeting - but then also provides less data points.

JackWritesCode 6y ago
Yeah - privacy is important to the author. Less data points but protecting users' privacy.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

megavolcano 6y ago

More laws, less justice. This can only backfire.

renewiltord 6y ago

We have almost all the technology. What we don't have is verifiability in most cases. i.e. the real problem is that the publisher cannot determine that the User Agent is telling the truth. Everyone has a different value on the value of their data. For instance, I find great targeted advertising to be practically like a recommendation engine. Instagram's ads are great! And few of them relate to things I've done on Instagram or Facebook. They're clearly 3rd party. If we can find a way to ensure that the User Agent isn't lying (this may not be easy), then I could trade my data for a discount on the WSJ instead of paying full price and you could pay for the WSJ at full price and share nothing about yourself. I think the truth is that most people will pick the discount, but that's because I would. I think that's a fair exchange and very open and clear. You can opt-in.

JackWritesCode 6y ago
This is the kind of thing we need to be thinking about. A clear opt-in.
anon73044 6y ago
I'd say that ads on Instagram are garbage. 99 out of 100 are not even tangentially related to my interest or who I follow.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
Once upon a time, cable didn't have ads, because theoretically it got money from cable subscribers. Then they realized they could have subscribers and ads and make even more money. The vast majority of sites don't treat "paying subscriber" and "sell information" as an either-or. They treat paying subscribers as people they get money and more information from. Also, there's a third option: keep improving ad-blocker-blockers, so that they don't just block ads, they also block "we see you're using an ad blocker" messages.
- lonelappde 6y ago
  When was once upon a time? Over 40 years ago. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by-commercials.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

mikeg8 6y ago

While I agree with the overall sentiment in regards to supporting end-user privacy, this article’s title is a bit sensational and the body fails to provide enough substance to support such a dramatic claim. It’s an overly idealistic solution to the problem and therefore is not of much use.

avalys 6y ago

I dislike these articles that try to manufacture outrage by using emotionally-charged terms from the physical world - like “stalking” - in the context of targeted advertising, to make things seem more threatening than they really are. Someone stalking you in real life is pretty damn scary, and not at all comparable to an automated Facebook algorithm showing you ads for mountain bikes because you joined a mountain biking club. EDIT: I realize now that it was actually a HN commenter who used the word stalking, not the article, which is slightly more circumspect, though still uses manipulative language in my view.

tomc1985 6y ago
It's stalking in the sense that it is unwanted, creepy, and follows you around persistently.
- solveit 6y ago
  And it's nothing like stalking in the sense that there's no chance it'll do you grievous physical harm or ruin your career and relationships.
  - solstice 6y ago
    I'm not saying they're completely equivalent but as a result of this whole tracking there are rather complete profiles about millions of people in some companies' DB, including hyper sensitive data such as sexual and political orientation which is just one The Purge scenario away from being abused on a massive scale. But even at a smaller scale, this data can be extremely (incl physically) harmful to individuals when leaked or when it falls into the wrong hands (Eg gay person in Uganda. EDIT: or a completely normal person in a future McCarthy-style witch hunt).
  - lonelappde 6y ago
    What of the data is leaked? What if an inappropriate targeted ad is displayed when someone looks at my screen?
  - MereInterest 6y ago

draw_down 6y ago

This is a bad situation that is nowhere near as urgent as TFA makes it out to be. Especially that we are, and let me check my notes here, currently dealing with an unprecedented global pandemic.

mgreg 6y ago

Wired published a well researched article a short while ago laying out the arguments in a little more persuasive manner. https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-advertising/ https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-ad...

Animats 6y ago

Tax it. Advertising, in general, is under-taxed. Should it even be tax-deductible as a business expense? Overall, in the US, most people are maxed out on spending. The savings rate is low. Advertising does not stimulate demand, it just moves it around, while adding cost. Think of a tax on advertising as mutual disarmament for manufacturers. Less spent on fighting with competitors, more price cutting.

vikramkr 6y ago
It can draw people to buy on credit, thus stimulating demand. And fundamentally businesses are taxed on profit, and advertising is an expense, so if you start saying advertising isn't tax deductible, you start fundamentally changing the way corporate taxation works and opening up a whole can of worms. Adding a tax on advertising spend like a sales tax would be far less messy - but it would benefit brands with large existing recognition at the expense of smaller/emerging companies. Without advertising, warby parker would never have been able to grow, leaving luxottica unchallenged as the largest frame maker. You'd just cement current market leaders.
- Animats 6y ago
  Only short term. Someday, the credit card bills have to be paid.

repsilat 6y ago

To play devil's advocate, advertising is a social good, and better advertising is even more of a social good. How many times have you heard someone complain, "I just bought a desk lamp, and now I'm getting loads of ads for desk lamps. Don't they know I don't want another desk lamp?" And surveys back it up -- people would largely rather the ads they see reflect the things they're interested in. Because a well-targeted ad is good for the viewer. Sometimes they want the thing, and they buy it, and their life is improved. If I'm statistically more likely to buy a particular item because of some demographic I belong to, and you have my demographic information, by all means use it to decide which ads to show me. Maybe you having that information is a breach of my privacy, but if you do have it you should at least use it for something that'll benefit me.

missedthecue 6y ago
This shouldn't even be a devil's advocate point of view. Targeted advertisements have been just about the greatest value-add in the world of business in maybe the last twenty years. Imagine if you couldnt target advertisements. Imagine the waste. European baby formula manufacturers advertising to middle aged single men in Wyoming shouldn't happen, and it's because targeted advertising that we prevent that waste. We are all better off for it.
- austinjp 6y ago
  Can't tell if sarcastic.... squints How about this: everyone already knows what they need and where to get it. That really reduces the infernal waste of advertising completely.
  - Jagat 6y ago
    >> everyone already knows what they need and where to get it. You're overestimating people ability to know what they want, and moreso where to get it.
    - erentz 6y ago
      If they didn’t know they wanted it before an advertisement played on their psychology to make them feel they needed it, then they didn’t really want it. And if they did know they wanted before the advertisement, then they’d go look for it at a store, online or otherwise, or in a catalogue, or so on.

kasey_junk 6y ago

The idea that it is ok for Amazon to show you targeted advertising on their properties but its not ok for third parties to do so seems like a pretty easy way to entrench Google and Amazon. In fact, targeted advertising is _already_ extremely low margin outside of Facebook and Google. The big dollar ad campaigns follow context (Ford doesn’t want to follow you around the internet, they want to show you every ad on ESPN.com and their other properties). This is a proposal that would a) make Google/Amazon/Facebook even more powerful on the internet and b) kill small publishers.

causality0 6y ago

Here's an idea: let people have a public advertising profile they have personal access to. I'd do a lot less adblocking if I knew advertisers were picking off a defined list of my interests. New iphone? No. Android flagship with a headphone jack and a telephoto camera? Oh yeah I'm interested. Allow people to make it known they're interested in classic computers or new rifle accessories or LEGO videogames or books from John Scalzi. It would be nice if advertisers knew enough about me I could cancel all my Google Alerts.

lonelappde 6y ago

AsGuard DNS. Works on ant device and unsucks the Internet.

anovikov 6y ago

It will effectively put vast majority of the Internet behind a paywall. Just turn it into a sort of a cable TV of today. With almost all small publishers closing and the rest just charging for what you see, and turning it into a largely unidirectional, top-to-bottom source of information... Because there is no way in the world non-targeted advertisements are going to pay for things, remember those mid-1990s sites all flashing with banners - and yet never making enough.

ksec 6y ago

This may be unpopular on HN. But I dont mind ads, I dont mind target ads either, in many cases I like them. What I do mind is creepy, personal ads. "Your Friends Joe just bought a wallet, you might like this too." I am OK with recommending me a wallet, since in real life I would have sales coming around me if I was in the Wallet counter and interested in one. I am absolutely NOT OK with being told my friend Joe bought a wallet. How did they know Joe was my friend, why are they telling me he bought a new wallet? Amazon are allowed to collected data when I am in their store, but those Data should not be sold to any other company. Right now there is a whole market for personal Data, and to me, that should be illegal.

lowdose 6y ago
Names follow a power law distribution, there are millions of guys named Joe and everyone has a friend with that name. Half of the men in the US have only 100 different names. Do you think it was just a coincidence in Amazons serie "The man in the high castle" the main character is named John Smith?
- ksec 6y ago
  I think it was more specific like Joe Smith, which was indeed my friend with his Facebook Profile pic, it was many years before there was any backslash against Facebook. It was that time I decided to drop Facebook.