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Euro privacy watchdog calls for end of targeted advertising
- mrcartmenez 6y agoI want this so much. If your business model relies on invading people’s privacy. Then screw your business model.
- danbruc 6y agoAs far as I am concerned, we can prohibit advertising altogether and replace it with independent reviews.
- junippor 6y agoNot sure if you're trolling or genuinely don't know how this works.
- danbruc 6y agoI am serious. A bit exaggerated but essentially you pay someone to lie to you. And that does not sound like something I would want to support.
- endymi0n 6y agoPlease, no. Advertising is like drugs: There‘s always a demand, and if it‘s not satisfied legally and transparently, it will find a way through other means. I already can’t trust most influencers or any other "independent" reviewers. Pushing ad dollars into prohibition will make the problem much worse than it already is.
- danbruc 6y agoThere‘s always a demand [...] Maybe I am out of touch with reality but it seems to me that there is mostly a demand, or maybe better a desire, to advertise something while I do not think that there is the same demand or desire to consume those advertisements. But all kind of media will happily take some of those advertising dollars and force the ads onto us, whether online, on paper, on TV, or billboards. And people don't complain because they get stuff cheaper or even for free, or so they think.
- tremon 6y agoAdvertising is like drugs: There‘s always a demand, and if it‘s not satisfied legally and transparently, it will find a way through other means If by that you mean that we should incarcerate influencers like we do drug traffickers, I'm all for it!
- dekken_ 6y agoAmen to that
- dekken_ 6y agoNo, Advertising is propaganda. Period.
- TuringTest 6y agoI wouldn't mind some targeted advertising. If it were contained in a single place, to visit whenever I wanted to. Double gain if it would eliminate tracked advertising on the rest of the internet.
- jfk13 6y agoI wonder who'd fund that, and how we'd ensure independence?
- danbruc 6y agoHere in Germany we have Stiftung Warentest [1] and it is financed by selling their reports as magazines and online. They also receive some government support from the consumer protection ministry. Not sure if there are any competitors, Stiftung Warentest is certainly by far the most well known one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest
- jakub_g 6y agoThere's a similar thing in France called "60 Millions de consommateurs": https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Millions_de_consommateurs https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=https:/... which is great, but I think DE and FR are way ahead compared to other countries in that area. Edit: also in UK there's "Which?": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Which%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Which%3F
- jfk13 6y agoYes, I'm aware of Which? -- my parents used to get it when I was growing up. It was only ever able to cover a tiny part of the market for a few selected things, though. (And of course only a small minority of people would ever see it.) I'm not sure how well that would scale.
- shin_lao 6y agoYou will have a very hard time to define what is advertising and what's not. How can a business tell you about its existence?
- matheusmoreira 6y agoThat would be an utopia indeed. Advertising suffers from a massive conflict of interest. People would be much better served by independent third parties evaluating products and publishing the results. We just gotta make sure they aren't corrupted.
- mdpopescu 6y agoAfter that, we can also make sure politicians are honest and children are well-behaved.
- drak0n1c 6y agoSmall restaurants rely on postcards sent to targeted addresses in the neighborhood to get off the ground. I can appreciate those. Is that targeted?
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoAnonymously targeting neighboorhoods is OK, no one's name is involved in that, just a list of addresses. This is different than surveilling people's private and intimate communications, building a profile from those, then targeting against those built profiles.
- pb7 6y agoHow do you feel about grocery stores inflating prices and then offering discounts across the board when using their loyalty programs for which you have to give up your information? This is then used to mail you targeted flyers for products they think you will want to buy based on your purchase history.
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoIt's a good indicator of the market price on privacy. I can always not use the loyalty card if I really want a purchase to be private, but that would only be really true if: - I approached the store not using any type of vehicle with a government identifier that could be potientially observed or tracked, - I paid cash, - I wore a disguise to not show up on the store's security cameras or be recognizable to others, - and I didn't bring a cell phone and/or any other device broadcasting a MAC address to a potential sniffer.
- mrec 6y agoIs it? If it was really that easy to track and identify customers without using loyalty cards, why would they bother with the faff and expense of loyalty cards? I half-wonder whether there's a more pernicious plan which actively wants customers to know they're being tracked, on the assumption that if they see their purchases as contributing to a persistent profile with unknown distribution, they'll try to curate that profile to make themselves "look good" the same way they do on Facebook etc. Don't want everyone to think I'm a cheapskate, better buy that more expensive brand even though I can't taste the difference...
- noobface1337 6y agoWelp, there goes Facebook's whole business model. In all seriousness though, there are times that I really don't mind targeted ads since they are somewhat relevant to me. But at other times, it does get super creepy how much these ad-tech companies know me.
- ashton314 6y agoAs a possible alternative, what if we just prohibited the use of passively collected data for monetization purposes? Instead, if a company wanted to do targeted advertising, they would have to ask you explicitly about your preferences, kind of like how YouTube sometimes throws up those interest surveys. This is still a nascent idea; I don’t know how this would be enforced, and there are a lot of blurry boundaries. I think this would be an interesting thing to explore.
- TuringTest 6y agoEurope's GDPR is exactly that. It forced the creation of modal popups that harass you on every web site you enter, prompting you to "Accept" being tracked and monetized. And apparently it wasn't enough, since the EU was lobbied to update the law with "special interests" that allow companies to track and monetize you without opt-in anyway. So, the worst of both worlds.
- freeone3000 6y agoThese sites are likely non-GPDR-compliant, as the "Deny" must be as easy as the "Accept", and clicking "Deny" must afford you the same functionality. This is frequently not the case.
- TuringTest 6y agoEven those places with a "Reject" button have the "special interests" enabled, and you need to explicitly opt-out - even from them building a targeted profile. Yes, it's likely that those opt-out checks, hidden under a folded option and requiring literally hundreds of clicks to remove all third-party ad providers, are illegal. [1] That doesn't seem to deter popup developers from designing them that way. [1] https://dma.org.uk/uploads/misc/5b0523a0d1a2b-5ae1fbf5c60fd-gdpr-for-marketers---consent-and-legitimate-interest_5ae1fbf5c6066_5b0523a0d198f.pdf https://dma.org.uk/uploads/misc/5b0523a0d1a2b-5ae1fbf5c60fd-...
- labawi 6y ago
- h4ck32n3w5 6y agoTLDR: The author presumes that the call for banning is nothing more than an aggressive negotiation stance that isn’t intended to stand. I agree
- netsharc 6y agoIt brings back a memory of an online shop that offered a discount if you didn't use Internet Explorer, they said maintaining the site for IE cost them extra money, so it makes sense. I wonder if online shops would start offering a discount if the user says yes to targetted advertising.
- idrios 6y agoI wouldn't even mind this. There are a lot of services I would pay for to not have ads. But I also actually know people who like having ads tailored to them
- Jtsummers 6y agoAmazon offers discounts on their Kindle devices if you accept ads on it (as I recall they're fairly nonintrusive, appearing when the device is otherwise inactive not pop-ups jumping out at you during normal use). This is the same premise as some older free internet services and very cheap "internet appliances", back when those were a thing.
- bondarchuk 6y agoLet's just make it the end of advertising altogether, finally. Advertising's goal is to influence your behaviour in a way that benefits somebody else, not necessarily yourself. Of course we can easily imagine why having such a system in place is also beneficial for governments. That is IMHO all the more reason why it should be a basic human right to be free from advertising in all aspects of your life, if you want.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoI agree that even untargeted advertising can be manipulative. However, to end advertising completely would require the presence of established Consumer Reports-type media that are widely known in society, so that consumers are aware of what products are out there for their needs. Since most countries lack such prominent independent sources of product news, consumers have few other sources of information on what options they have than media that, in some way or another, is linked with advertising.
- bondarchuk 6y agoIf advertisers want to inform people, and people actually want to be informed, I'm sure together they will find a way to communicate, even if it does not include shoving stuff into other people's faces. Of course well-researched, unbiased consumer-oriented media are very nice but the bar for replacing advertising as it currently is is much lower. You just need a place to put stuff, maybe sort it into categories, and give more room to advertisers who pay more. The only difference is that people will engage with it voluntarily.
- account42 6y ago> If advertisers want to inform people, and people actually want to be informed I think that's exactly it - advertisement are unsolicited communication - aka spam. Outlawing spam does not mean that you cannot communicate with people that choose to listen.
- jraby3 6y agoWouldn’t that mean an end to a lot of free services? If I want to pay for email there are plenty of services. If I want to trade viewing some ads for free email service shouldn’t that choice be up to me?
- dagorenouf 6y agoWouldn't the death of tailored advertising hurt early-stage startups a lot (caveat: I'm one of them)? When you're a tiny operation, you can't spend millions on a broad fishing net and hope somebody will match your ideal customer. Having the ability to precisely target who sees your ads is a great way to get some initial momentum and traction, without going under.
- jkubicek 6y ago> Such measures should include a phase-out leading to a prohibition of targeted advertising on the basis of pervasive tracking It sounds like targeted advertising based on a user's behavior on a specific site would still be allowed? i.e. I watch a lot of backpacking videos on Youtube, show me backpacking gear advertisements on youtube.
- diggernet 6y agoTarget the context, not the user. In your case, don't watch your behavior on YouTube, just put the ads on backpacking videos.
- godelski 6y agoRight? I research products when I buy them and I'm more than happy to have ads on. I think a lot of people don't understand the real reasons I (and many others) use an adblocker though. 1) malvertising is a common attack vector and I can't trust most sites 2) tracking scripts 3) ads are fashy and distracting with popups and popunders 4) page load times are substantially faster. As long as there are enough bad actors in the space I'll keep doing it, but right now those bad actors include every major website (hitting all 4 points). Show me relevant ads to the topic at hand, don't shove it in my face, don't play sounds or be flashy, don't track me, don't put a billion scripts on your website, just respect me.
- McDyver 6y agoHonest question: As a company, would you think "I don't care about the users' privacy, I want a marketing company that gives me as much of my target audience as possible"? Would you care how that marketing company got the users' information? How would you feel as a user? Are you always interested in being a "consumer" and willing to have your habits sold so you are the target of ads? How does your target audience feel?
- tpmx 6y agoWhich (giant to very large) companies besides Alphabet/Google and Facebook would suffer dramatically if this happened? (I couldn't really think of any.)
- tompccs 6y agoAs much as we love to hate targeted advertising here on HN, it's a godsend to small businesses. And, dare I say...some people like it? Step outside the techie bubble and I have friends who actually curate their Facebook interests to make the adverts more relevant to them (yes, they know it's making them easier to sell to and invading their privacy and no, they don't care!). I'm buying my girlfriend a £100 wool jumper for her birthday because she saw an advert on Facebook, from a company I've never heard of. Targeted advertising (especially on social media) really levels the playing-field, as smaller businesses can target niche audiences. It's sad that Big Tech have ended up the de-facto middleman between all advertisers and all communities, but that's a separate question. If you want to make it easier for competing advertising agencies to carve out parts of the market the worst thing you can do is add onerous complex regulation.
- seibelj 6y agoYou have friends that actually spend their free time modifying their profile to make advertising easier? The fuck? Is this a psyop post from FB lobbying group?
- CubsFan1060 6y agoIMHO, targeted advertising is completely ok, as long as you know you're being targeted. I think most people can deduce that their actions on Facebook change their ads on Facebook. The problem is when you walk into an auto parts store, have to wait in line, so you play whatever the newest game is on your phone. The game figures out where you are via gps, reports that to facebook, and suddenly you're getting car part ads on facebook. This is not clear to most people. And I'd even say this behavior is just fine if you opt-in to it. And it gets worse. You have a friend in your contacts list (which you shared with Facebook for some reason). Facebook thinks that they probably share the same interests as you, so now THEY are getting auto parts ads. At least for me, as long as this is all clear and accepted, I'm fine with it. As of now, consumers either don't have a choice, or the choice they do have is so hidden that they don't know they have it.
- Animats 6y agoAs much as we love to hate targeted advertising here on HN, it's a godsend to small businesses. It's become more of an extortion scheme. Ask a small business about Yelp.
- elbelcho 6y agoWiewiorówski's advocacy for an eventual prohibition on targeted advertising may be more of a negotiating position than a realistic goal.
- nofunsir 6y agoAll advertising is a non-necessary evil, with ONE exception only: I’m IN a store, show me ads with spec sheets for items IN your store only. I save time. You sell more, more easily.
- Lev1a 6y agoOr if you subscribe to your local/regional weekly newspaper and it includes a few brochures of local supermarkets (with selection of discount offers for the week). Makes the planning for the (bi-)weekly shopping for cheap necessities easier without the constant information bombardment and invasive tracking that's inherent to internet-based advertising.
- diggernet 6y agoIf we upvote this story to the moon, will it come true?
- mnd999 6y agoThe New York Times stopped doing it in Europe, and it wasn’t a problem: https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut-off-ad-exchanges-europe-ad-revenue/ https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut... Perhaps it’s not much of a loss.
- hogFeast 6y agoThe CMA in the UK did an investigation into this, and targeting is worth a 30% bump in price. It is very effective for all parties. That being said, it is possible to get around this. The trade-off is: the privacy cost versus efficiency of advertising. I don't think there are any easy solutions short of coming down definitively on privacy. All the pop-ups are very annoying, and introduce friction to just using the website (I go onto Google, I search, I click result, stuff starts leaping on my screen...Agree to this...ad blocker on? Do this please...what a mess).
- ksm1717 6y agoSo glad euro privacy watchdog has made their stance clear on whether the end of targeted advertising should be called for. Ive spent too many sleepless nights wondering who will call for the end of targeted advertising, and when. For euro privacy watchdog to end all the speculation and call for the end of targeted advertising is a surprise, but a welcome one indeed, bravo sir!
- opensmtpd 6y agoI have the impression that google claims that personalized advertising somehow benefits users. I think I saw this kind of claims in some of their campaigns or somewhere. But is this really the case? Well I can see how personalized ads benefit advertisers. But users? I mean at first, it seems like it make sense because personalized ads are based on what I'm interested in. But more I think about it, I'm not really sure if it is actually beneficial to me. For example, if I want to buy a hard drive, the ads don't tell me what kinds of hard drives there are and what the pros and cons of each of them are. The ads are just what an arbitrary company X wants me to think of their product in order to change my behavior. They are rarely actually informative. Can someone give me an example why personalized ads are beneficial to users compared to non-personalized ads or no ads at all? Edit: I'm afraid I haven't elaborated enough. I'm not saying that non-personalized ads are better than personalized ads. I just think they don't add much informational value. If I want to buy something, information access is so trivial these days that I can easily look for products myself, and the information I find will likely be a lot more helpful than ads. So what I'm trying to say is that personalized and non-personalized ads don't look a lot different in terms of benefits they bring to the viewer.
- andreygrehov 6y agoYou don't have to buy the hard drive that is being advertised to you. At the end of the day, it's your decision. If ads were not targeted, you'd see a milk shake ad instead. How's that better? Edit: my milk shaker example is not even that great. If targeting was killed, you'd most likely see ads from massive corporations only - those who have a lot of cash to spend on ads. Little players (small business owners, startup owners) would have zero chance to compete against those corporations. They'd lose every single ad auction.
- dabbledash 6y ago“How's that better?” Because it doesn’t require invasive surveillance.
- deltron3030 6y ago>If targeting was killed, you'd most likely see ads from massive corporations only - those who have a lot of cash to spend on ads. Why? If I run a niche site with ads I'd want to pick ads that fit my site and audience, similar to picking affiliate programs. Picking relevant ads should be my job a as a site owner.
- ArkanExplorer 6y agoInstead of increasing regulation, the burden of which will fall on small businesses, the EU should encourage online micro-payments. If individual users could pay a few cents to access content across thousands of websites, with the total spend level aggregated, this could replace the need for advertising.
- matheusmoreira 6y agoThat just leads to a scenario where people pay for stuff and are subjected to ads. There is no situation where business owners wouldn't benefit from putting ads into their stuff. Choosing not to do it means leaving money on the table.
- labawi 6y agoThat's partially true. Some turn to ads because they can't afford to host/build the content otherwise, even though they don't like having ads. I think we do desperately need viable widespread micropayments system(s). We need an alternative funding mechanism. Plastering everything with ads is no good solution, whether they invade privacy or not.
- gerash 6y agoI don't mind good regulations but last time Europe wrote a law for the web this is what users ended up with: https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1180978631054508034?s=20 https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1180978631054508034?s=20 Let's clean that up first before creating a new set of rules.
- haditab 6y agoTotally off-topic, but which phone had 5G in October 2019?
- teddyh 6y agoThe ugliness of the web site as shown in your link is not directly caused by any law. The obnoxious cookie banners are meant to be obnoxious, in order to 1. get you used to clicking “OK” all the time and 2. convince you that the law that was made is somehow to blame for all this. It is not. If companies really wanted to make a nice clean experience, they would do what the law requires and stop hoarding all personal information. But they don’t want that; they want to make a political statement about how that nasty law is somehow making them do annoying things. But they brought it all on themselves. Don’t be fooled.
- gerash 6y agoWhat would you say if there was a law that said everytime you made a purchase from a shop that uses a credit card reader then there had to be a lawyer present from the business to walk you through 50 pages of legalize that you had to read, initial and sign for your "privacy" because Visa might get a record of what you bought. You'd had to do this for every new store you visited even if it's to just pick up milk on your way home. At that point I wouldn't care about "intentions" behind such regulation.
- teddyh 6y agoYour strawman does not even come close to being relevant. The law in question is nothing like what you describe.
- 6y ago
- 5tefan 6y agoAdvertising should not be a valid reason to collect my data. Collecting the data should be illegal in the first place.