7 ms·

Because many of the people developing apps for their platform rely on advertising revenue to pay the bills?

by avalys 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
manishsharan 6y ago
If the app makers were merely showing an ad , even an intrusive one without selling out my information -- I will be able to tolerate that. However when app developers include libraries from foursquare or facebook, what they are doing is violating the users' privacy and selling their information to third party aggregators who will apply data analytics to build a full predictive model of your behavior and then they will sell it to anybody who wants to spy on you. Do you remember Cambridge Analytica ?
- actuator 6y ago
  FB has done plenty wrong but you can make the point without upping the hyperbole as well. There is a danger of FB manipulating things on its own but they didn't sell the data to any third party including Cambridge Analytica, it was harvested because of poor API policy(your friend auth giving access to some of your details) which was fixed in the future. The behavioral profiles were built by Cambridge Analytica on its own by the data it stole. Why would FB in any instance even sell your data? I would argue it is in FB's interest to keep the data for itself, not letting anyone have it and be the gatekeeper. The right thing to argue is, whether you want FB/Tiktok itself to have the treasure trove of data or not, and whether you want to allow them to use that to do precise targeting.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    > it was harvested because of poor API policy which was fixed in the future Is there any evidence that it was actually fixed?
    - actuator 6y ago
      They had a bunch of blog posts about restricting APIs like this[1]. I think someone can look at the current APIs and see what related friends information they allow. The last time I used FB APIs was in 2012 and the last time I used FB was in 2014, so not up to date with them. [1] https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/
    - _jal 6y ago
      I believe they made modifications after that, yes. But if you believe they don't still provide access via substantially similar APIs to "trusted partners", I have a bridge that may interest you...
  - netik 6y ago
    I suppose in a way they are monetizing/selling the use of your data because they're collecting it and selling the aggregation of that data back to advertisers. Sure, it's not a selling of the raw data record but with advertising and targeting an advertiser can get pretty close.
    - actuator 6y ago
      Yeah, that targeting bit is fine to argue and I tried to infer that with my comment as well. I just have an issue with hyperboles like "sold individual user's behavioral profile to Cambridge Analytica" being thrown around in articles related to tech when in HN of all places, you can argue without resorting to that.
      - jooize 6y ago
        Yes, I imagine saying things that aren't quite true may at scale cause people to disbelieve the real arguments.
G4E 6y ago
It won't prevent them to show ads. It will prevent them to show targeted ads. So your point is either invalid or rather "they won't be able to be datamining their potentials users to pay the bills" ?
- room500 6y ago
  Advertisers are willing to pay way more for targeted ads. If an app is relying on advertising revenue, the inability to target ads will directly cause the app to generate less revenue.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    The solution here is to outlaw targeted advertising, so that marketing budgets can realign to appropriately pay for normal advertising again. As it is, the efficacy of targeted advertising is a myth. Google claimed in a blog post that their own internal study showed over a 50% benefit in targeted advertising for publishers... but an independent, academic study showed a difference of about 4%. https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/31/targeted-ads-offer-little-extra-value-for-online-publishers-study-suggests/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/31/targeted-ads-offer-little-... https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa... (Google has suggested, of course, that their wildly different outcomes are because you know, Google has data nobody else has, and obviously Google would never manipulate it's exclusive access to all that data to make studies look like what is best for their business.) Adtech giants need advertisers to believe they need targeted advertising, because targeted advertising relies on mass data collection only they are capable of getting. If people realized the necessity of using Google and Facebook's mass user data was... a complete lie... any old ad firm could compete with their businesses.
    - bostik 6y ago
      > outlaw targeted advertising You're thinking too small. Targeted advertising deserves to die in a grease fire, but a proper solution is to universally make an individual's personal data their property and require companies to cough up compensation every time it is used in commercial form. Any attempt to sidestep the compensation must account as fraud. Holding on to user data needs to be a painful liability. The cost of such micro-accounting alone should incentivise companies to keep hold of as little information as possible, so as not to incur excess processing costs. The aggregated cost of payment processing on top of that will provide a secondary cost vector and further discourage using such data. Combine with GDPR and CCPA like power to demand companies to divulge their full accounting details of your data, and all of a sudden the pain becomes real. Not to mention very expensive.
Joeri 6y ago
Do newspapers need to know what websites every subscriber visits in order to put ads in the paper? The idea that privacy needs to be conceded in order for a healthy ad market to exist is false.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  Not sure about "healthy", but un-targeted advertising is a total waste of money, unless you're some big generic brand. High-value advertising revenue generally comes from very specific brands targeting very specific users. Of course you can do certain kinds of targeted advertising without user profiles, but I don't see how that would work on Facebook.
  - criddell 6y ago
    On Facebook, information that users voluntarily and explicitly provide is fair game for targeting IMHO. The rest should come from the content of the page.
    - dhimes 6y ago
      If by "explicitly" you subsume "knowingly" then I agree.
      - criddell 6y ago
        I prefer explicitly. Facebook has a pretty good idea where I am by looking at the data associated with my connection. I know they have that, but if I don't want them to use that for advertising, they shouldn't.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    In this case how does real-world advertising in magazines, public transport, TV, etc manages to have such a high price despite the targeting capabilities being orders of magnitude lower than online? Maybe the problem with online ads isn't the targeting or lack thereof but that the well has been poisoned by allowing even the worst possible scum and the users reached their breaking point and learned to ignore them, while the higher quality in real-world advertising is enough to even keep people paying for advertising (in the form of buying magazines)?
ogre_codes 6y ago
It's my phone, not the developer's. I should absolutely have the right to disable this kind of tracking on my phone. If the advertisers/ developers want to track people, maybe they should start buying people phones or do what Google did and build an OS and give it away.
- actuator 6y ago
  TBF, not all Android phones are created equal. There are Android phones sold in the developing world at low price points where ads appear on home screen, notification bar etc. with tracking deep within OS. Then, there are phones like Pixel where with recent versions you have control of what is shared and you need to authorize access(single/multiple use) for things like location. Like iOS, not much can be collected unless you give Google/app permission to.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    Fair enough. I probably shouldn't have mentioned Android at all because it's not about phone brand so much as it is my right to tell advertisers no.

Because many of the people developing apps for their platform rely on advertising revenue to pay the bills?

by avalys 6y ago

Because many of the people developing apps for their platform rely on advertising revenue to pay the bills?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

manishsharan 6y ago

If the app makers were merely showing an ad , even an intrusive one without selling out my information -- I will be able to tolerate that. However when app developers include libraries from foursquare or facebook, what they are doing is violating the users' privacy and selling their information to third party aggregators who will apply data analytics to build a full predictive model of your behavior and then they will sell it to anybody who wants to spy on you. Do you remember Cambridge Analytica ?

actuator 6y ago
FB has done plenty wrong but you can make the point without upping the hyperbole as well. There is a danger of FB manipulating things on its own but they didn't sell the data to any third party including Cambridge Analytica, it was harvested because of poor API policy(your friend auth giving access to some of your details) which was fixed in the future. The behavioral profiles were built by Cambridge Analytica on its own by the data it stole. Why would FB in any instance even sell your data? I would argue it is in FB's interest to keep the data for itself, not letting anyone have it and be the gatekeeper. The right thing to argue is, whether you want FB/Tiktok itself to have the treasure trove of data or not, and whether you want to allow them to use that to do precise targeting.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > it was harvested because of poor API policy which was fixed in the future Is there any evidence that it was actually fixed?
  - actuator 6y ago
    They had a bunch of blog posts about restricting APIs like this[1]. I think someone can look at the current APIs and see what related friends information they allow. The last time I used FB APIs was in 2012 and the last time I used FB was in 2014, so not up to date with them. [1] https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/
  - _jal 6y ago
    I believe they made modifications after that, yes. But if you believe they don't still provide access via substantially similar APIs to "trusted partners", I have a bridge that may interest you...
- netik 6y ago
  I suppose in a way they are monetizing/selling the use of your data because they're collecting it and selling the aggregation of that data back to advertisers. Sure, it's not a selling of the raw data record but with advertising and targeting an advertiser can get pretty close.
  - actuator 6y ago
    Yeah, that targeting bit is fine to argue and I tried to infer that with my comment as well. I just have an issue with hyperboles like "sold individual user's behavioral profile to Cambridge Analytica" being thrown around in articles related to tech when in HN of all places, you can argue without resorting to that.
    - jooize 6y ago
      Yes, I imagine saying things that aren't quite true may at scale cause people to disbelieve the real arguments.

G4E 6y ago

It won't prevent them to show ads. It will prevent them to show targeted ads. So your point is either invalid or rather "they won't be able to be datamining their potentials users to pay the bills" ?

room500 6y ago
Advertisers are willing to pay way more for targeted ads. If an app is relying on advertising revenue, the inability to target ads will directly cause the app to generate less revenue.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  The solution here is to outlaw targeted advertising, so that marketing budgets can realign to appropriately pay for normal advertising again. As it is, the efficacy of targeted advertising is a myth. Google claimed in a blog post that their own internal study showed over a 50% benefit in targeted advertising for publishers... but an independent, academic study showed a difference of about 4%. https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/31/targeted-ads-offer-little-extra-value-for-online-publishers-study-suggests/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/31/targeted-ads-offer-little-... https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa... (Google has suggested, of course, that their wildly different outcomes are because you know, Google has data nobody else has, and obviously Google would never manipulate it's exclusive access to all that data to make studies look like what is best for their business.) Adtech giants need advertisers to believe they need targeted advertising, because targeted advertising relies on mass data collection only they are capable of getting. If people realized the necessity of using Google and Facebook's mass user data was... a complete lie... any old ad firm could compete with their businesses.
  - bostik 6y ago
    > outlaw targeted advertising You're thinking too small. Targeted advertising deserves to die in a grease fire, but a proper solution is to universally make an individual's personal data their property and require companies to cough up compensation every time it is used in commercial form. Any attempt to sidestep the compensation must account as fraud. Holding on to user data needs to be a painful liability. The cost of such micro-accounting alone should incentivise companies to keep hold of as little information as possible, so as not to incur excess processing costs. The aggregated cost of payment processing on top of that will provide a secondary cost vector and further discourage using such data. Combine with GDPR and CCPA like power to demand companies to divulge their full accounting details of your data, and all of a sudden the pain becomes real. Not to mention very expensive.

Joeri 6y ago

Do newspapers need to know what websites every subscriber visits in order to put ads in the paper? The idea that privacy needs to be conceded in order for a healthy ad market to exist is false.

gridlockd 6y ago
Not sure about "healthy", but un-targeted advertising is a total waste of money, unless you're some big generic brand. High-value advertising revenue generally comes from very specific brands targeting very specific users. Of course you can do certain kinds of targeted advertising without user profiles, but I don't see how that would work on Facebook.
- criddell 6y ago
  On Facebook, information that users voluntarily and explicitly provide is fair game for targeting IMHO. The rest should come from the content of the page.
  - dhimes 6y ago
    If by "explicitly" you subsume "knowingly" then I agree.
    - criddell 6y ago
      I prefer explicitly. Facebook has a pretty good idea where I am by looking at the data associated with my connection. I know they have that, but if I don't want them to use that for advertising, they shouldn't.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  In this case how does real-world advertising in magazines, public transport, TV, etc manages to have such a high price despite the targeting capabilities being orders of magnitude lower than online? Maybe the problem with online ads isn't the targeting or lack thereof but that the well has been poisoned by allowing even the worst possible scum and the users reached their breaking point and learned to ignore them, while the higher quality in real-world advertising is enough to even keep people paying for advertising (in the form of buying magazines)?

ogre_codes 6y ago

It's my phone, not the developer's. I should absolutely have the right to disable this kind of tracking on my phone. If the advertisers/ developers want to track people, maybe they should start buying people phones or do what Google did and build an OS and give it away.

actuator 6y ago
TBF, not all Android phones are created equal. There are Android phones sold in the developing world at low price points where ads appear on home screen, notification bar etc. with tracking deep within OS. Then, there are phones like Pixel where with recent versions you have control of what is shared and you need to authorize access(single/multiple use) for things like location. Like iOS, not much can be collected unless you give Google/app permission to.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Fair enough. I probably shouldn't have mentioned Android at all because it's not about phone brand so much as it is my right to tell advertisers no.