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Since that'll never happen without toppling the money printing machines of several of the world's most powerful companies, I'd like to repeat an idea that I onc

by Jgrubb 6y ago

Since that'll never happen without toppling the money printing machines of several of the world's most powerful companies, I'd like to repeat an idea that I once heard - A publicly available clearinghouse of all targeted ads published via a service so that researchers can find out - Every ad published - What targeting parameters were used, other basic data about the ad - How many impressions the ad received - How many clickthroughs, etc It would not include any PII of those who saw the ads, only on the ads themselves. Bonus points if we can also have some kind of GUID "advertiser_id" that would allow researchers to tie the ads back to some kind of probably-anonymized-but-maybe-not entity that published the ad. The API would be defined in the regulation so that vendors can't pull any obfuscatory fuckery. Sunlight is the first step in stopping this.

prox 6y ago
agreed to an extend, I simply feel that any idealistic / political advertiser needs to be in some sort of public ledger. The real blocker is transparency.
cambalache 6y ago
None of that will work. Sure, have some basic regulatory model for your political campaigns to avoid unduly intervention by foreign actors and similar shady stuff,but that is an small deterrent. You cannot avoid targeted advertising, hell, all advertising is in one way or another targeted. Even if you get rid of advertisement period, you will have to deal with stuff like famous academic Op-Eds, celebrities recommending who to vote for, media bias, etc. So you can control the blatant intervention but at the end you have to trust all voting citizens are discerning adults, savvy consumers of information in a complex world, although you know that is not true.
- antris 6y ago
  > You cannot avoid targeted advertising, hell, all advertising is in one way or another targeted But there's a drastic difference in effectiveness. No one would support private ownership of nuclear weapons just because everyone has fists which are weapons also. Hyper-targeted advertising has gone off rails recently and when you can simply buy your way into any specific segment of the population without having to put it under public scrutiny, you are asking for trouble.
  - fsociety 6y ago
    What is the difference between targeted advertisement and targeted content? I’d argue targeted content is more dangerous because the intent of the content is not as clear as for an ad. Btw the ad library on FB allows you to put scrutiny on those ads. In fact (some) journalists love to browse it to find a shocking ad and write a news story about it.
    - antris 6y ago
      The difference is that you can throw unlimited money to guarantee to get eye pairs. The one with the most money will get their message across best. And also the advertising is part is much easier to regulate. We already have loads of regulations and limitations about advertisement, so there would be no problem adding one more. Unless FB is in on the scam, you cannot buy eyepairs on the platform.
- Jgrubb 6y ago
  Please reread what I actually said. I didn't say to stop targeted advertising, but that who is targeting, how they're targeting, and what the ultimate reach of a given ad is should be publicly available. Targeted advertising is too powerful a force to remain completely in the dark as it has so far.

by Jgrubb 6y ago

prox 6y ago

agreed to an extend, I simply feel that any idealistic / political advertiser needs to be in some sort of public ledger. The real blocker is transparency.

cambalache 6y ago

None of that will work. Sure, have some basic regulatory model for your political campaigns to avoid unduly intervention by foreign actors and similar shady stuff,but that is an small deterrent. You cannot avoid targeted advertising, hell, all advertising is in one way or another targeted. Even if you get rid of advertisement period, you will have to deal with stuff like famous academic Op-Eds, celebrities recommending who to vote for, media bias, etc. So you can control the blatant intervention but at the end you have to trust all voting citizens are discerning adults, savvy consumers of information in a complex world, although you know that is not true.

antris 6y ago
> You cannot avoid targeted advertising, hell, all advertising is in one way or another targeted But there's a drastic difference in effectiveness. No one would support private ownership of nuclear weapons just because everyone has fists which are weapons also. Hyper-targeted advertising has gone off rails recently and when you can simply buy your way into any specific segment of the population without having to put it under public scrutiny, you are asking for trouble.
- fsociety 6y ago
  What is the difference between targeted advertisement and targeted content? I’d argue targeted content is more dangerous because the intent of the content is not as clear as for an ad. Btw the ad library on FB allows you to put scrutiny on those ads. In fact (some) journalists love to browse it to find a shocking ad and write a news story about it.
  - antris 6y ago
    The difference is that you can throw unlimited money to guarantee to get eye pairs. The one with the most money will get their message across best. And also the advertising is part is much easier to regulate. We already have loads of regulations and limitations about advertisement, so there would be no problem adding one more. Unless FB is in on the scam, you cannot buy eyepairs on the platform.
Jgrubb 6y ago
Please reread what I actually said. I didn't say to stop targeted advertising, but that who is targeting, how they're targeting, and what the ultimate reach of a given ad is should be publicly available. Targeted advertising is too powerful a force to remain completely in the dark as it has so far.