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The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising. In the beginning there were rules. No commercial use. When that was lifted we started the descent in

The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising. In the beginning there were rules. No commercial use. When that was lifted we started the descent into where things are now. It began with a lawyer posting an ad about immigration services to Usenet. It has come a long way since then. All the while, the web browser has supported always advertising, making it easier and easier to consume ads, buy and sell via the web. People in the 1990's who wanted "e-commerce" got their wish. Certain companies and individuals have become wealthy beyond imagination. Companies are hording cash. However it is not an equal playing field. Governments have heretofore been unwilling to regulate. Some, those who are proifiting from the status quo, might say this is starting to change. Even if this is true, the change is very slow. In Mozilla Corporation's domicile, there has been no significant change. Mozilla is funded indirectly by advertising. Their funding comes from Google. Google's funding comes from advertisers.

naasking 6y ago
> The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising. Regulation always requires coordination, which is simply not possible at internet scale. Facebook and Twitter can't even regulate the content on their own platforms, and you're talking about regulation at an even larger scale against strong interests with large financial reserves. What's needed is a secure/private by default browser sandbox so these interests have no say in how their content is consumed. Take a look the extremes Gemini has gone to ensure privacy [1]. Some of those can be relaxed without compromising privacy much, but a serious effort along those lines is what's actually needed. [1] https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  HTTP printf "GET /gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/servers/ HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: portal.mozz.us\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n"|socat - ssl:portal.mozz.us:443 Gemini printf "/servers\r\n"|socat - gemini.circumlunar.space:1965 However, he seems to have his server configured such that the full URL is required. printf "gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/servers/\r\n"|socat - ssl:gemini.circumlunar.space:1965 Other gemini servers on the list do not have that restriction.
- jononor 6y ago
  We are somehow able to regulate consumer goods (health and safety standards for example), which also is a global operation involving hundreds of thousands of actors.
  - naasking 6y ago
    > We are somehow able to regulate consumer goods (health and safety standards for example), which also is a global operation involving hundreds of thousands of actors. Because you can enforce it at the point of sale, ie. selling X happens in a limited geographical region which can be enforced. The "point of sale" equivalent on the internet is the browser, which is exactly where I said the privacy properties need to be enforced. Finally, it's frankly absurd to want inefficient and expensive legal controls when cheap and automatic technological controls are perfectly feasible. Why involve the various governments at all?
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >Facebook and Twitter can't even regulate the content on their own platforms, How are we supposed to know this given that they don't have an actual incentive to do so? Look at the allegedly "unworkable" enforcement of hate-speech legislation in say, Germany. What did Facebook do when they were faced with 4% global revenue fines? Hire some moderators and it appears to work reasonbaly well. Same goes for advertising. Get out the hammer and I bet it wouldn't take long until those companies suddenly discover how creative they can be in cleaning their act up.
  - naasking 6y ago
    > What did Facebook do when they were faced with 4% global revenue fines? Hire some moderators and it appears to work reasonbaly well. Same goes for advertising. No it doesn't. Facebook is a highly visibile, monolithic entity. If you only have a few bad actors legislation works fine. This isn't the case here. If you want a more apt analogy, the fight against privacy violations in advertising is much closer to the fight against piracy: it will never go away, no matter how many legal restrictions you put in place, unless there's a technological solution that prevents it from the get-go. There probably isn't for piracy, but there is for privacy.
austincheney 6y ago
That, historically speaking, is not enough. People will find a away to screw up advertising, whether intentionally or not, so long as there is revenue to earn. Perhaps things have gotten better but when I used to dig into that code for work some years ago it was near negligent incompetent. If you are going to recommend regulation the only thing that works, as exemplified by every other profession, is credentials: licensing and certification. There would be less bad software in the world if there were less bad software developers employed writing software and everybody else held to a minimum ethical standard. Right now, at least before COVID, there was no motivation to write good software. Many developers, at least web developers whether front or back end, only goal was employability which often meant tooling to a tech stack and trying not to write original software. Edit: I anticipate this will be downvoted extensively, because regulating minimal developer competence is always heavily down voted. It’s curious though that people claim there is a problem they want fixed only until they realize the fix applies directly to them, at which point the problem is no longer worth the effort.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nine_k 6y ago
  If anything, this is one measure directly at odds with democratizing the Web. You wrote a brilliant app but lack a license? No audience for you. Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires, this is death to all but exceptionally well-funded innovation.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    Software is bigger than just the web. You can be your own lawyer or your own medical doctor without a license, but it’s generally a bad idea. Even lawyers know better than that and hire other lawyers to represent them. > Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires That is not an MVP.
    - 6y ago
kgwxd 6y ago
I think if browsers didn't allow JS calls to other domains without a user prompt it would solve almost all the woes ads/trackers bring. I'm willing to give up whatever optimizations the current silent behavior allows. I'm sure Google would do everything to stop that from ever being standard though.
- zem 6y ago
  this is unfortunately relatively easy to work around. if you want ad revenue you agree to host a third party's script on your own site, with a cron job to pull updates. then you collect tracking data, send it to your own backend, and upload it from there to google/facebook/whoever.
  - kgwxd 6y ago
    That requires the site owner and the tracking network to build a trust relationship, which is how it should be. I don't want my machine to be an intermediary.
- _-david-_ 6y ago
  What would stop people using a CNAME record to point ads.example.com to a third party ad server? I don't think there would be a way to use cookies to track people across different sites, but the ad servers could still use ip addresses and browser fingerprinting to check if its the same user.
  - FridgeSeal 6y ago
    PiHole and uBlock origin support so called “deep CNAME inspection” that defeats approaches like that.
    - blibble 6y ago
      pretty easy to defeat that CNAME inspection: switch to ANAMEs everything will end up pointing at some random AWS IP address, and you can't filter that
_630w 6y ago
Google and Facebook benefitted the most from GDPR and grew in size, fyi. Google helped write GDPR. I am tired of hearing this troupe of putting more and more regulations to stop shit from breaking when exactly this caused monopolies in many traditional sectors that haven't been changed since like forever because the red tape to do anything requires a team of expensive lawyers. If you are for more regulation, please at least come up with a way to regulate that seems practical.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  I am tired of hearing this troupe of there is no perfect solution so therefore no solution is acceptable. Another favourite is "I see unethical behaviour at my job, but if I quit nothing would change, therefore I will keep helping them do what they do." If laws were passed that gave users a cause of action against Google and Facebook for breaking rules, then there would be some motivation for those companies to change their behaviour. It is sad but that is how corporate behaviour is shaped in America. Threat of litigation. Fear. Empowering David to keep Goliath honest. That is one of the ideals America was once known for. Big tech however knows no David. They have little to fear. Alternatively you can support the "system" we have now -- tweet and/or post your complaints to the web, which of course Big Tech is controlling and monitoring. Vent your frustrations till you turn blue. This system is not working. Nothing is changing. These companies are doing things users know is wrong but none of this violates any law or any user's rights in America. I am not for more regulation. I am for change. Giving David the ability to take on Goliath is one way to facilitate change that is known to work in America. Is it perfect? Not even close, but it is effective at changing corporate behaviour. Choosing to shoot down every proposed solution is also choosing to keep things the way they are. Sitting on your hands is not keeping things from getting worse. I never said anything about GDPR and personally I was never a fan. However I do appreciate that it is something. Someone, outisde America, had the balls to take action.
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    You still didn't propose a solution. You just said you want to regulate advertising industry but how will you do that? There is a clear precedent that fining doesn't stop companies and political systems won't overfine. So are you going to fine companies more? Are you going to limit the number of fines and dissolve the company? Are you going to propose another GDPR-eiqsque but for advertising? Because GDPR helped big companies - especially ad networks. What happens when companies become too big (as if they aren't already)? Do you really believe government can always do what it wants with the big companies? No. History has proved it wrong multiple times. Companies used to slave and colonize countries. Today, they probably won't do that. They can just push misinformation and change behavior by manipulating what you see/hear/read. They are going to affect your government officials and policy makers. Those use facebook and google too probably. Your president use twitter, are twitter's algorithm manipulating him? Have you seen his feed? What if his feed is an echo chamber? What is the actual regulation? I am not against change but if you don't specify how, then I am not sure it's a conversation worth having. Everyone wants things to change. Some people would like if everyone moved to fb. But without explaining your position with actual stats, how your solution will likely affect the problems, how am I going to differentiate your proposal from several thousands asking for more consolidation i.e opposite of what you are asking.
monadic2 6y ago
Furthermore, the ads crowded out any investment in a micropayment solution that might provide an alternative to monetizing websites. They have a monopoly on financing the websites we use daily. The internet will continue to get worse until we can bypass the tech giants to pay for our web sites.

naasking 6y ago

> The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising. Regulation always requires coordination, which is simply not possible at internet scale. Facebook and Twitter can't even regulate the content on their own platforms, and you're talking about regulation at an even larger scale against strong interests with large financial reserves. What's needed is a secure/private by default browser sandbox so these interests have no say in how their content is consumed. Take a look the extremes Gemini has gone to ensure privacy [1]. Some of those can be relaxed without compromising privacy much, but a serious effort along those lines is what's actually needed. [1] https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
HTTP printf "GET /gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/servers/ HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: portal.mozz.us\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n"|socat - ssl:portal.mozz.us:443 Gemini printf "/servers\r\n"|socat - gemini.circumlunar.space:1965 However, he seems to have his server configured such that the full URL is required. printf "gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/servers/\r\n"|socat - ssl:gemini.circumlunar.space:1965 Other gemini servers on the list do not have that restriction.
jononor 6y ago
We are somehow able to regulate consumer goods (health and safety standards for example), which also is a global operation involving hundreds of thousands of actors.
- naasking 6y ago
  > We are somehow able to regulate consumer goods (health and safety standards for example), which also is a global operation involving hundreds of thousands of actors. Because you can enforce it at the point of sale, ie. selling X happens in a limited geographical region which can be enforced. The "point of sale" equivalent on the internet is the browser, which is exactly where I said the privacy properties need to be enforced. Finally, it's frankly absurd to want inefficient and expensive legal controls when cheap and automatic technological controls are perfectly feasible. Why involve the various governments at all?
Barrin92 6y ago
>Facebook and Twitter can't even regulate the content on their own platforms, How are we supposed to know this given that they don't have an actual incentive to do so? Look at the allegedly "unworkable" enforcement of hate-speech legislation in say, Germany. What did Facebook do when they were faced with 4% global revenue fines? Hire some moderators and it appears to work reasonbaly well. Same goes for advertising. Get out the hammer and I bet it wouldn't take long until those companies suddenly discover how creative they can be in cleaning their act up.
- naasking 6y ago
  > What did Facebook do when they were faced with 4% global revenue fines? Hire some moderators and it appears to work reasonbaly well. Same goes for advertising. No it doesn't. Facebook is a highly visibile, monolithic entity. If you only have a few bad actors legislation works fine. This isn't the case here. If you want a more apt analogy, the fight against privacy violations in advertising is much closer to the fight against piracy: it will never go away, no matter how many legal restrictions you put in place, unless there's a technological solution that prevents it from the get-go. There probably isn't for piracy, but there is for privacy.

austincheney 6y ago

That, historically speaking, is not enough. People will find a away to screw up advertising, whether intentionally or not, so long as there is revenue to earn. Perhaps things have gotten better but when I used to dig into that code for work some years ago it was near negligent incompetent. If you are going to recommend regulation the only thing that works, as exemplified by every other profession, is credentials: licensing and certification. There would be less bad software in the world if there were less bad software developers employed writing software and everybody else held to a minimum ethical standard. Right now, at least before COVID, there was no motivation to write good software. Many developers, at least web developers whether front or back end, only goal was employability which often meant tooling to a tech stack and trying not to write original software. Edit: I anticipate this will be downvoted extensively, because regulating minimal developer competence is always heavily down voted. It’s curious though that people claim there is a problem they want fixed only until they realize the fix applies directly to them, at which point the problem is no longer worth the effort.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nine_k 6y ago
If anything, this is one measure directly at odds with democratizing the Web. You wrote a brilliant app but lack a license? No audience for you. Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires, this is death to all but exceptionally well-funded innovation.
- austincheney 6y ago
  Software is bigger than just the web. You can be your own lawyer or your own medical doctor without a license, but it’s generally a bad idea. Even lawyers know better than that and hire other lawyers to represent them. > Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires That is not an MVP.
  - 6y ago

kgwxd 6y ago

I think if browsers didn't allow JS calls to other domains without a user prompt it would solve almost all the woes ads/trackers bring. I'm willing to give up whatever optimizations the current silent behavior allows. I'm sure Google would do everything to stop that from ever being standard though.

zem 6y ago
this is unfortunately relatively easy to work around. if you want ad revenue you agree to host a third party's script on your own site, with a cron job to pull updates. then you collect tracking data, send it to your own backend, and upload it from there to google/facebook/whoever.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  That requires the site owner and the tracking network to build a trust relationship, which is how it should be. I don't want my machine to be an intermediary.
_-david-_ 6y ago
What would stop people using a CNAME record to point ads.example.com to a third party ad server? I don't think there would be a way to use cookies to track people across different sites, but the ad servers could still use ip addresses and browser fingerprinting to check if its the same user.
- FridgeSeal 6y ago
  PiHole and uBlock origin support so called “deep CNAME inspection” that defeats approaches like that.
  - blibble 6y ago
    pretty easy to defeat that CNAME inspection: switch to ANAMEs everything will end up pointing at some random AWS IP address, and you can't filter that

_630w 6y ago

Google and Facebook benefitted the most from GDPR and grew in size, fyi. Google helped write GDPR. I am tired of hearing this troupe of putting more and more regulations to stop shit from breaking when exactly this caused monopolies in many traditional sectors that haven't been changed since like forever because the red tape to do anything requires a team of expensive lawyers. If you are for more regulation, please at least come up with a way to regulate that seems practical.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
I am tired of hearing this troupe of there is no perfect solution so therefore no solution is acceptable. Another favourite is "I see unethical behaviour at my job, but if I quit nothing would change, therefore I will keep helping them do what they do." If laws were passed that gave users a cause of action against Google and Facebook for breaking rules, then there would be some motivation for those companies to change their behaviour. It is sad but that is how corporate behaviour is shaped in America. Threat of litigation. Fear. Empowering David to keep Goliath honest. That is one of the ideals America was once known for. Big tech however knows no David. They have little to fear. Alternatively you can support the "system" we have now -- tweet and/or post your complaints to the web, which of course Big Tech is controlling and monitoring. Vent your frustrations till you turn blue. This system is not working. Nothing is changing. These companies are doing things users know is wrong but none of this violates any law or any user's rights in America. I am not for more regulation. I am for change. Giving David the ability to take on Goliath is one way to facilitate change that is known to work in America. Is it perfect? Not even close, but it is effective at changing corporate behaviour. Choosing to shoot down every proposed solution is also choosing to keep things the way they are. Sitting on your hands is not keeping things from getting worse. I never said anything about GDPR and personally I was never a fan. However I do appreciate that it is something. Someone, outisde America, had the balls to take action.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  You still didn't propose a solution. You just said you want to regulate advertising industry but how will you do that? There is a clear precedent that fining doesn't stop companies and political systems won't overfine. So are you going to fine companies more? Are you going to limit the number of fines and dissolve the company? Are you going to propose another GDPR-eiqsque but for advertising? Because GDPR helped big companies - especially ad networks. What happens when companies become too big (as if they aren't already)? Do you really believe government can always do what it wants with the big companies? No. History has proved it wrong multiple times. Companies used to slave and colonize countries. Today, they probably won't do that. They can just push misinformation and change behavior by manipulating what you see/hear/read. They are going to affect your government officials and policy makers. Those use facebook and google too probably. Your president use twitter, are twitter's algorithm manipulating him? Have you seen his feed? What if his feed is an echo chamber? What is the actual regulation? I am not against change but if you don't specify how, then I am not sure it's a conversation worth having. Everyone wants things to change. Some people would like if everyone moved to fb. But without explaining your position with actual stats, how your solution will likely affect the problems, how am I going to differentiate your proposal from several thousands asking for more consolidation i.e opposite of what you are asking.

monadic2 6y ago

Furthermore, the ads crowded out any investment in a micropayment solution that might provide an alternative to monetizing websites. They have a monopoly on financing the websites we use daily. The internet will continue to get worse until we can bypass the tech giants to pay for our web sites.