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I've been trying to talk privacy with people for a while. Some folks see targeted advertising as "good" because it introduces them to new products or services.

by kodah 5y ago

I've been trying to talk privacy with people for a while. Some folks see targeted advertising as "good" because it introduces them to new products or services. To some milquetoast person with nothing "special" going on in life that's just fine, however, if you are involved in anything that you don't want the average Tom, Dick, or Harry to know about then you're fighting an up-hill battle against a monster that you can't really see but from a distance. To me, in the United States, there are two major camps of thought: * Targeted advertising is useful to me and I don't mind someone knowing everything about me * Targeted advertising is dangerous to me for x, y, and z reason A world that allows both is optimal. Allow companies to collect data, but have federal agency oversight and requirements up to and including the right to be forgotten. It should be possible to pull a level and dump most (if not all) collected data associated with you.

danShumway 5y ago
> Allow companies to collect data, but have federal agency oversight and requirements up to and including the right to be forgotten. I agree with your overall sentiment, but I think the solution you propose is bad. It allows companies to collect data automatically behind users' backs, and then tries to address the extreme power imbalance that creates with regulations and escape hatches that users can take after that data has already been created. But ideally, we want to prevent problems from occurring at all, not just to try and fix them after the fact. To your point about voluntary tracking, users may want to signal interest in some topics but not others. They may want to signal interest about some topics only in certain situations. They may want to signal interest about a topic to one site, but signal interest about another topic to a different site. They may want to "freeze" the topics that they signal interest about, so that they don't need to worry about accidentally revealing new preferences in the future, or to think about how browsing a set of sites will change the ads that they get. All of these are valid things for a user to want to do. It is better if users have complete agency over what data is transmitted, and if companies do not fingerprint or correlate users behind their backs at all. Attempting to determine user cohorts clientside is the correct move, arguably the only part of FLoC that Google got right. The problem with FLoC is that even if cohorts are determined completely clientside, the user still does not have agency and transparency about those cohorts. There is theoretically a version of FLoC that would be really good for privacy, and that would also allow the kind of optional tracking that some users want. Such a system would need to be easy for users to toggle on and off on the fly on a site-by-site basis. It would need to be transparent to users about what categories they're in, it would need to allow users to edit and delete their categories, to add new categories, and to turn off category aggregation. It would need to not send new categories to a website without the user's permission. It would need to block websites from determining whether they're being given an automatically generated category, or a user-defined category. And importantly, it would all need to be opt-in. Right now, tracking is an invisible system that happens automatically, with (rare) escape hatches that the majority of users are not expected to pursue, and that give little to no granularity about how users can customize how they present to the world. This kind of tracking is inherently invasive. We should pursue a paradigm shift where users proactively volunteer information about how they want to present to the world in any given situation -- in other words, we should give users agency to choose their own identities online. Most regulatory suggestions that I see online (including the one you give) consciously or unconsciously focus on preserving the invasive nature of tracking while adding safeguards to try and prevent advertisers from abusing the inherent power imbalance. Instead, that power imbalance ought to be totally flipped in favor of the user. We need to reject the underlying idea that preferences should be extracted from users, rather than something that users consciously choose to volunteer. ---- I've commented to the same effect a couple of times in the past: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906791 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26353494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26353494 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25907079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25907079 This isn't only true for advertising. Think about how little control users have over how personalized algorithmic content filtering/ordering works on sites like Youtube, and you'll see similar conceptual problems with how the systems are designed. But it's really apparent in advertising, moreso than in other contexts. I want to fight back against policy changes that (in my mind) cement and normalize the current philosophical approach to advertising. It's not OK to be tracked without your permission, and regulations or safeguards and escape hatches around tracking aren't enough to make it OK. The system would still be fundamentally broken.
- kodah 5y ago
  I like this take, I think I've been tired of arguing with people so I've been looking for some form of compromise. This seems to compromise nothing while keeping the system that certain people desire in tact. I dig it.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    > looking for some form of compromise I think it's kind of important when talking about privacy to keep in mind that the goal shouldn't be to force people to never reveal anything about themselves, it's to give them agency over what they reveal. That gets lost sometimes, I'm often guilty of losing sight of it as well. So a privacy world that makes it impossible for people to connect with each other, or that tells them that they're not allowed to present a certain way online is just as much of a problem as a solution that requires them to do so. To me, the core idea behind privacy in regards to user tracking is that people should have agency over what their identities are, over what identities they're "allowed" to have, and over where they share those identities and whether those identities are associated with each other. It's totally valid for people to want to be able to tell Google that they're interested in seeing certain ads, they should be able to do that. And when we expand out from privacy and look at algorithms on sites like Youtube/Twitter, that underlying idea of control becomes a bit more obvious -- it's not that content suggestions are bad, it's the inversion of control over how those suggestions are determined, the requirement that suggestions are constantly being computed and updated based on every action the user takes, the requirement that there be one set of suggestions for each user regardless of context, and the refusal from companies to give users the ability to do anything beyond slightly tweak or retrain their suggestions or to treat personally volunteered preferences as valid or trustworthy compared to what the algorithm determines they should like. But I do want to get Youtube suggestions for related videos, I just want to be in control over how that happens. I want to be the entity with power in that relationship, I want to be the entity holding onto my data, I don't want to have to trust Google not to abuse me or to ask permission for Google to forget things. This also gets at the potential benefits of a private world where users have real agency. It's very easy (I'm often guilty of this) to phrase the end goal of privacy as a world where tons of things just go away. But the reality is that targeted ads today mostly kind of stink, and there's a lot of potential for filtering, curation, and community aggregation that we can't take advantage of because users are excluded from the process of determining what they see online and how they're perceived by others. I wish there was more effort to try and describe how a private world could be better for things like search suggestions, user-relevant ads, content filtering -- because in a world where users had control over how this stuff worked and could customize their own experiences, it might be possible to try new applications, share more information, or experiment with new identities without risking abuse. Imagine a world where you're an LGBTQ+ adjacent teen trying to figure out your own identity, and you temporarily turn on a category related to that for a subset of sites. If there's not a huge danger of fingerprinting, you can see how it feels for sites to recognize that -- maybe to tell Youtube that for right now you'd like to see more videos suggested based on that category. But you can safely do that because you know that other sites won't get that information, and that at any point you can switch the category off with zero consequences. You don't have to ask Google/Youtube for permission to edit what they know about you or to forget a category, you can control it locally right from your browser without asking anyone's permission. That opens the door for really powerful applications or recommendation engines that arguably couldn't be (morally) built today. It's not about trying to create a world where nobody knows anything about anyone, it's about flipping the power imbalance and inverting the current predominant narrative about how information should be collected online. With FLoC (and with other privacy initiatives from companies like Facebook), the feeling I get is that Google is trying to convince users that it can be a responsible data steward both because of internal policies and regulations. These companies try to create a narrative that the only options are either they track us, or that we never get anything recommended again. But neither of those options are what I want, what I want is to be my own data steward.
ssss11 5y ago
I suspect you’re probably right but I can’t comprehend how anyone other than those who benefit from the digital advertising industry could accept that its ok for anyone (I.e. Everyone) to know everything about them. Isn’t it straightforward that that scenario is disadvantageous to yourself in many ways? I don’t personally think targeting works - does anyone have a good research paper that proves it? I think the optimal solution would be the old pre-internet advertising.. general ads on billboards, but now on websites. No tracking.
- fsociety 5y ago
  In a way ad targeting let’s businesses buy ad space to a smaller number of users for less money. This is in direct contrast to buying a small amount of space on a huge website, which costs more money. That means if we go back to pre-internet style of ads, then it will be expensive to advertise your business to a niche community therefore only larger companies can advertise. There is a privacy angle that needs to be figured out, and it is complex. But just going back to the old way just empowers larger businesses to beat out smaller ones. This is the sad reality we live in now.
  - rovr138 5y ago
    There’s another option to target ads without knowing anything about the person. You can choose where to advertise. Is this website, page, game, product, etc related? You can do it how DuckDuckGo does it by targeting keywords. Multiple people can buy space/impressions and you can rotate them. It doesn’t have to go back to old static banners.
  - ssss11 5y ago
    Thanks - that explanation was really insightful and I had no idea about that effect.

by kodah 5y ago

danShumway 5y ago

> Allow companies to collect data, but have federal agency oversight and requirements up to and including the right to be forgotten. I agree with your overall sentiment, but I think the solution you propose is bad. It allows companies to collect data automatically behind users' backs, and then tries to address the extreme power imbalance that creates with regulations and escape hatches that users can take after that data has already been created. But ideally, we want to prevent problems from occurring at all, not just to try and fix them after the fact. To your point about voluntary tracking, users may want to signal interest in some topics but not others. They may want to signal interest about some topics only in certain situations. They may want to signal interest about a topic to one site, but signal interest about another topic to a different site. They may want to "freeze" the topics that they signal interest about, so that they don't need to worry about accidentally revealing new preferences in the future, or to think about how browsing a set of sites will change the ads that they get. All of these are valid things for a user to want to do. It is better if users have complete agency over what data is transmitted, and if companies do not fingerprint or correlate users behind their backs at all. Attempting to determine user cohorts clientside is the correct move, arguably the only part of FLoC that Google got right. The problem with FLoC is that even if cohorts are determined completely clientside, the user still does not have agency and transparency about those cohorts. There is theoretically a version of FLoC that would be really good for privacy, and that would also allow the kind of optional tracking that some users want. Such a system would need to be easy for users to toggle on and off on the fly on a site-by-site basis. It would need to be transparent to users about what categories they're in, it would need to allow users to edit and delete their categories, to add new categories, and to turn off category aggregation. It would need to not send new categories to a website without the user's permission. It would need to block websites from determining whether they're being given an automatically generated category, or a user-defined category. And importantly, it would all need to be opt-in. Right now, tracking is an invisible system that happens automatically, with (rare) escape hatches that the majority of users are not expected to pursue, and that give little to no granularity about how users can customize how they present to the world. This kind of tracking is inherently invasive. We should pursue a paradigm shift where users proactively volunteer information about how they want to present to the world in any given situation -- in other words, we should give users agency to choose their own identities online. Most regulatory suggestions that I see online (including the one you give) consciously or unconsciously focus on preserving the invasive nature of tracking while adding safeguards to try and prevent advertisers from abusing the inherent power imbalance. Instead, that power imbalance ought to be totally flipped in favor of the user. We need to reject the underlying idea that preferences should be extracted from users, rather than something that users consciously choose to volunteer. ---- I've commented to the same effect a couple of times in the past: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906791 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26353494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26353494 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25907079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25907079 This isn't only true for advertising. Think about how little control users have over how personalized algorithmic content filtering/ordering works on sites like Youtube, and you'll see similar conceptual problems with how the systems are designed. But it's really apparent in advertising, moreso than in other contexts. I want to fight back against policy changes that (in my mind) cement and normalize the current philosophical approach to advertising. It's not OK to be tracked without your permission, and regulations or safeguards and escape hatches around tracking aren't enough to make it OK. The system would still be fundamentally broken.

kodah 5y ago
I like this take, I think I've been tired of arguing with people so I've been looking for some form of compromise. This seems to compromise nothing while keeping the system that certain people desire in tact. I dig it.
- danShumway 5y ago
  > looking for some form of compromise I think it's kind of important when talking about privacy to keep in mind that the goal shouldn't be to force people to never reveal anything about themselves, it's to give them agency over what they reveal. That gets lost sometimes, I'm often guilty of losing sight of it as well. So a privacy world that makes it impossible for people to connect with each other, or that tells them that they're not allowed to present a certain way online is just as much of a problem as a solution that requires them to do so. To me, the core idea behind privacy in regards to user tracking is that people should have agency over what their identities are, over what identities they're "allowed" to have, and over where they share those identities and whether those identities are associated with each other. It's totally valid for people to want to be able to tell Google that they're interested in seeing certain ads, they should be able to do that. And when we expand out from privacy and look at algorithms on sites like Youtube/Twitter, that underlying idea of control becomes a bit more obvious -- it's not that content suggestions are bad, it's the inversion of control over how those suggestions are determined, the requirement that suggestions are constantly being computed and updated based on every action the user takes, the requirement that there be one set of suggestions for each user regardless of context, and the refusal from companies to give users the ability to do anything beyond slightly tweak or retrain their suggestions or to treat personally volunteered preferences as valid or trustworthy compared to what the algorithm determines they should like. But I do want to get Youtube suggestions for related videos, I just want to be in control over how that happens. I want to be the entity with power in that relationship, I want to be the entity holding onto my data, I don't want to have to trust Google not to abuse me or to ask permission for Google to forget things. This also gets at the potential benefits of a private world where users have real agency. It's very easy (I'm often guilty of this) to phrase the end goal of privacy as a world where tons of things just go away. But the reality is that targeted ads today mostly kind of stink, and there's a lot of potential for filtering, curation, and community aggregation that we can't take advantage of because users are excluded from the process of determining what they see online and how they're perceived by others. I wish there was more effort to try and describe how a private world could be better for things like search suggestions, user-relevant ads, content filtering -- because in a world where users had control over how this stuff worked and could customize their own experiences, it might be possible to try new applications, share more information, or experiment with new identities without risking abuse. Imagine a world where you're an LGBTQ+ adjacent teen trying to figure out your own identity, and you temporarily turn on a category related to that for a subset of sites. If there's not a huge danger of fingerprinting, you can see how it feels for sites to recognize that -- maybe to tell Youtube that for right now you'd like to see more videos suggested based on that category. But you can safely do that because you know that other sites won't get that information, and that at any point you can switch the category off with zero consequences. You don't have to ask Google/Youtube for permission to edit what they know about you or to forget a category, you can control it locally right from your browser without asking anyone's permission. That opens the door for really powerful applications or recommendation engines that arguably couldn't be (morally) built today. It's not about trying to create a world where nobody knows anything about anyone, it's about flipping the power imbalance and inverting the current predominant narrative about how information should be collected online. With FLoC (and with other privacy initiatives from companies like Facebook), the feeling I get is that Google is trying to convince users that it can be a responsible data steward both because of internal policies and regulations. These companies try to create a narrative that the only options are either they track us, or that we never get anything recommended again. But neither of those options are what I want, what I want is to be my own data steward.

ssss11 5y ago

I suspect you’re probably right but I can’t comprehend how anyone other than those who benefit from the digital advertising industry could accept that its ok for anyone (I.e. Everyone) to know everything about them. Isn’t it straightforward that that scenario is disadvantageous to yourself in many ways? I don’t personally think targeting works - does anyone have a good research paper that proves it? I think the optimal solution would be the old pre-internet advertising.. general ads on billboards, but now on websites. No tracking.

fsociety 5y ago
In a way ad targeting let’s businesses buy ad space to a smaller number of users for less money. This is in direct contrast to buying a small amount of space on a huge website, which costs more money. That means if we go back to pre-internet style of ads, then it will be expensive to advertise your business to a niche community therefore only larger companies can advertise. There is a privacy angle that needs to be figured out, and it is complex. But just going back to the old way just empowers larger businesses to beat out smaller ones. This is the sad reality we live in now.
- rovr138 5y ago
  There’s another option to target ads without knowing anything about the person. You can choose where to advertise. Is this website, page, game, product, etc related? You can do it how DuckDuckGo does it by targeting keywords. Multiple people can buy space/impressions and you can rotate them. It doesn’t have to go back to old static banners.
- ssss11 5y ago
  Thanks - that explanation was really insightful and I had no idea about that effect.