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> If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The definition in the report is po

> If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The definition in the report is poor. Yes, you always need to advertise to a segment. No, you don't have to spy on users to do it. How? Make a website about something and select advertisements that are relevant to the sort of people who are probably interested in the topic of the website. ReadTheDocs has already spun off an ad business that advertises tech stuff to readers of ReadTheDocs because it's reasonable to assume that is the audience that is perusing ReadTheDocs pages.

charcircuit 5y ago
>No, you don't have to spy on users to do it. Assuming you are running an ad network you kind of have to in order to prevent ad fraud. Also by reducing that data you know about someone's interests is the knowledge that they have visited a site at least you will not be able to pick as good of an ad compared to if you had more data.
- danbruc 5y ago
  That is the problem of the ad network. If they have to deal with fraud then find a way to solve this but not at the cost of everyone.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    The problem with abuse is not special to ad networks. All sites (once they reach a certain size) have to deal with it. Surveillance is needed to handle abuse of your service.
    - danbruc 5y ago
      Surveillance is needed to handle abuse of your service. Provide one example that can not be solved without surveillance.
      - charcircuit 5y ago
        Let's say you run a website with a sign on page. In order to log in a user typically you will run the password through an algorithm like argon2. Verifying a password for an account consumes CPU resources. A malicious may decide to DOS your site by just spamming this endpoint with bogus password to make you waste your time. An easy fix with surveillance is to rate limit people based off their IP address. Without surveillance though there is not much you can do. Scale up your infrastructure to try and out scale the attack? Implement a global rate limit that locks regular users from being able to sign in?
        danbruc 5y ago
        Is is not surveillance - at the very least not in the relevant sense - if you maintain a temporary list of IPs you have seen in the past minute or hour. This is your best argument why we have to track and profile every human on the planet around the clock?
        charcircuit 5y ago
        >if you maintain a temporary list of IPs you have seen in the past minute or hour. This is totally surveillance. Just because we delete data after a while, it doesn't mean I didn't surveil you, nor does it mean I haven't used that data I got from you for my own benefit. >This is your best argument why we have to track and profile every human on the planet around the clock? You just asked for an example. If you are suggesting that my argument is to prevent abuse of systems I would say that it justifies tracking every person on the planet.
        danbruc 5y ago
        This is totally surveillance. It is not. I connected from some IP because I wanted to use your website, at the very least you have to remember my IP address for some time to send me your website back. And if I want to access your website and it will be only available if you store my IP address for a few minutes to fight off attacks, then this is a use of my IP address that I welcome because it is for my benefit. And if you really want to, just store hashes of the IP addresses [1]. Just because we delete data after a while, it doesn't mean I didn't surveil you [...] Sure, surveillance is not defined by the amount of time you store some data. If you store my shipping address for years it is not surveillance, if you store my IP address for one second to add an entry to my record in your database that I just visited the website it might be surveillance even if you do not permanently record my IP address. But I never claimed that the amount of time you store some information is a or the relevant criterion [...] nor does it mean I haven't used that data I got from you for my own benefit. Also irrelevant. If you store my IP address for a short time or my shipping address for a long time in order to send me the website I requested or my order than this benefits you because you will make some profit from my order. Relevant for whether something is surveillance or not is whether I approve what you are doing. If you track my position day and night in order to show me ads for businesses nearby it is surveillance unless I specifically requested this. If you track my position because I am using a fitness app and requested to record my run, then it is not surveillance. [1] For IPv4 this is of course essentially pointless. But maybe you could come up with a more elaborate schema than simple hashes, maybe salt them and rotate the salt every few minutes or whatever. But you will probably not gain much besides added complexity.
- indigochill 5y ago
  What's the fraud scenario? Page owners presenting fraudulent visitor/click-through numbers to advertisers? In that scenario, it seems like advertisers would pick up on that pretty quickly when they realize the conversion rate on that supposed traffic is terrible and doesn't warrant the inflated price. In the case they're using an ad network, the network could ban the page owner from their network if they see this pattern from them. Since page owners are materially benefiting from the network, proof of identity should be (probably is? I don't work in the space) applied between the page owner and network to prevent repeat fraud via identity laundering. > you will not be able to pick as good of an ad compared to if you had more data. In theory I lean towards agreeing. I was arguing for tech-powered hyper-personalized ads back when I was studying advertising 2008-2012 (and did a bit of "stealth marketing" in that period where I built relationships with bloggers to share our product before the term "influencer" had hit the mainstream vocabulary). In practice, advertisers do not personalize ads. Facebook has become pretty good about selecting ads that map to my interests thanks to the reach of their spy network, but the ads themselves still aren't personalized at all (they take my interests into account, but not my spending history to realize that I don't have the budget for what they're trying to sell me) and my conversion to a sale because of them is still very, very low.
  - stevesearer 5y ago
    We sell and host our own advertising which is content-based (office furniture ads on office design content) and think it is a good solution. Instead of selling space by impressions or clicks, we use length of time (monthly) and find it to be a good way to prevent ourselves from trying to game impressions with clickbait or clicks with fake users.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    > What's the fraud scenario? 1. Page owner / Ad network / Ad space auction market middleman fakes clicks to get click revenue 2. Page owner's rival fakes clicks to devalue ad spots 3. Advertiser's agency fakes clicks to make numbers go up 4. Advertiser's rivals fake clicks, to waste advertiser's budget 5. Ad networks 'accidentally' classifying legitimate clicks as fraud, to reduce payouts to page owners.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Sell ads based on time periods. "Your ad displayed here for 1 week for this much $$$". Then the only thing that matters is the ROI and it doesn't matter how many bots have clicked on it.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    This approach sounds much harder for an ad network to pull off and sounds like it would add a lot of risk and complication. For example, what if a web master decides they don't want to have ads on their site anymore. Whoever just paid for that space gets screwed.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      This can all be sorted by contracts? The ad network pays out only after the ad has fully ran for 7 days, and if the webmaster removes the ad or similar they don't get paid and the advertiser gets refunded. Enforcing this is trivial by the ad network or a neutral third-party scraping the websites running the ads to confirm the ads are displayed properly.
    - blooalien 5y ago
      > "This approach sounds much harder for an ad network to pull off and sounds like it would add a lot of risk and complication. Harder to pull off than advertising at people who might actually want to see the ads? More risk and complication than the growing backlash against advertising in general entirely because of shady advertising practices? More risk and complication than having to keep track of various countries' and states' laws re; privacy? > "For example, what if a web master decides they don't want to have ads on their site anymore. Whoever just paid for that space gets screwed." Existing contract law already covers this in most places. If you paid for ads to be displayed for a certain time period and they are not, then there's been a contract violation.
  - blooalien 5y ago
    That's actually the way most advertising used to work before all this surveillance stuff started, and still the way it works with some (ethical) advertisers.

charcircuit 5y ago

>No, you don't have to spy on users to do it. Assuming you are running an ad network you kind of have to in order to prevent ad fraud. Also by reducing that data you know about someone's interests is the knowledge that they have visited a site at least you will not be able to pick as good of an ad compared to if you had more data.

danbruc 5y ago
That is the problem of the ad network. If they have to deal with fraud then find a way to solve this but not at the cost of everyone.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  The problem with abuse is not special to ad networks. All sites (once they reach a certain size) have to deal with it. Surveillance is needed to handle abuse of your service.
  - danbruc 5y ago
    Surveillance is needed to handle abuse of your service. Provide one example that can not be solved without surveillance.
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      Let's say you run a website with a sign on page. In order to log in a user typically you will run the password through an algorithm like argon2. Verifying a password for an account consumes CPU resources. A malicious may decide to DOS your site by just spamming this endpoint with bogus password to make you waste your time. An easy fix with surveillance is to rate limit people based off their IP address. Without surveillance though there is not much you can do. Scale up your infrastructure to try and out scale the attack? Implement a global rate limit that locks regular users from being able to sign in?
      - danbruc 5y ago
        Is is not surveillance - at the very least not in the relevant sense - if you maintain a temporary list of IPs you have seen in the past minute or hour. This is your best argument why we have to track and profile every human on the planet around the clock?
        charcircuit 5y ago
        >if you maintain a temporary list of IPs you have seen in the past minute or hour. This is totally surveillance. Just because we delete data after a while, it doesn't mean I didn't surveil you, nor does it mean I haven't used that data I got from you for my own benefit. >This is your best argument why we have to track and profile every human on the planet around the clock? You just asked for an example. If you are suggesting that my argument is to prevent abuse of systems I would say that it justifies tracking every person on the planet.
        danbruc 5y ago
        This is totally surveillance. It is not. I connected from some IP because I wanted to use your website, at the very least you have to remember my IP address for some time to send me your website back. And if I want to access your website and it will be only available if you store my IP address for a few minutes to fight off attacks, then this is a use of my IP address that I welcome because it is for my benefit. And if you really want to, just store hashes of the IP addresses [1]. Just because we delete data after a while, it doesn't mean I didn't surveil you [...] Sure, surveillance is not defined by the amount of time you store some data. If you store my shipping address for years it is not surveillance, if you store my IP address for one second to add an entry to my record in your database that I just visited the website it might be surveillance even if you do not permanently record my IP address. But I never claimed that the amount of time you store some information is a or the relevant criterion [...] nor does it mean I haven't used that data I got from you for my own benefit. Also irrelevant. If you store my IP address for a short time or my shipping address for a long time in order to send me the website I requested or my order than this benefits you because you will make some profit from my order. Relevant for whether something is surveillance or not is whether I approve what you are doing. If you track my position day and night in order to show me ads for businesses nearby it is surveillance unless I specifically requested this. If you track my position because I am using a fitness app and requested to record my run, then it is not surveillance. [1] For IPv4 this is of course essentially pointless. But maybe you could come up with a more elaborate schema than simple hashes, maybe salt them and rotate the salt every few minutes or whatever. But you will probably not gain much besides added complexity.
indigochill 5y ago
What's the fraud scenario? Page owners presenting fraudulent visitor/click-through numbers to advertisers? In that scenario, it seems like advertisers would pick up on that pretty quickly when they realize the conversion rate on that supposed traffic is terrible and doesn't warrant the inflated price. In the case they're using an ad network, the network could ban the page owner from their network if they see this pattern from them. Since page owners are materially benefiting from the network, proof of identity should be (probably is? I don't work in the space) applied between the page owner and network to prevent repeat fraud via identity laundering. > you will not be able to pick as good of an ad compared to if you had more data. In theory I lean towards agreeing. I was arguing for tech-powered hyper-personalized ads back when I was studying advertising 2008-2012 (and did a bit of "stealth marketing" in that period where I built relationships with bloggers to share our product before the term "influencer" had hit the mainstream vocabulary). In practice, advertisers do not personalize ads. Facebook has become pretty good about selecting ads that map to my interests thanks to the reach of their spy network, but the ads themselves still aren't personalized at all (they take my interests into account, but not my spending history to realize that I don't have the budget for what they're trying to sell me) and my conversion to a sale because of them is still very, very low.
- stevesearer 5y ago
  We sell and host our own advertising which is content-based (office furniture ads on office design content) and think it is a good solution. Instead of selling space by impressions or clicks, we use length of time (monthly) and find it to be a good way to prevent ourselves from trying to game impressions with clickbait or clicks with fake users.
- michaelt 5y ago
  > What's the fraud scenario? 1. Page owner / Ad network / Ad space auction market middleman fakes clicks to get click revenue 2. Page owner's rival fakes clicks to devalue ad spots 3. Advertiser's agency fakes clicks to make numbers go up 4. Advertiser's rivals fake clicks, to waste advertiser's budget 5. Ad networks 'accidentally' classifying legitimate clicks as fraud, to reduce payouts to page owners.
Nextgrid 5y ago
Sell ads based on time periods. "Your ad displayed here for 1 week for this much $$$". Then the only thing that matters is the ROI and it doesn't matter how many bots have clicked on it.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  This approach sounds much harder for an ad network to pull off and sounds like it would add a lot of risk and complication. For example, what if a web master decides they don't want to have ads on their site anymore. Whoever just paid for that space gets screwed.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    This can all be sorted by contracts? The ad network pays out only after the ad has fully ran for 7 days, and if the webmaster removes the ad or similar they don't get paid and the advertiser gets refunded. Enforcing this is trivial by the ad network or a neutral third-party scraping the websites running the ads to confirm the ads are displayed properly.
  - blooalien 5y ago
    > "This approach sounds much harder for an ad network to pull off and sounds like it would add a lot of risk and complication. Harder to pull off than advertising at people who might actually want to see the ads? More risk and complication than the growing backlash against advertising in general entirely because of shady advertising practices? More risk and complication than having to keep track of various countries' and states' laws re; privacy? > "For example, what if a web master decides they don't want to have ads on their site anymore. Whoever just paid for that space gets screwed." Existing contract law already covers this in most places. If you paid for ads to be displayed for a certain time period and they are not, then there's been a contract violation.
- blooalien 5y ago
  That's actually the way most advertising used to work before all this surveillance stuff started, and still the way it works with some (ethical) advertisers.