4 ms·

Serious question, why is this bad? As far as email advertisements go, is this worse than untargeted Viagra and porn? fyi I work at Google but not on Ads.

firecall 5y ago
Well, even if we cant describe why it is 'bad', we can observe that it is a form of anti-social behaviour by these companies. People don't like it - people don't like that form of targeting. It may not be clear why they have issues with it, but they do. At my kids school, if someone is repeatedly doing something to you that you don't like, then it is classed as a form of bullying.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  That's a good analogy, but it illustrates the problem. Just because you don't like something, does not by itself make it antisocial. If someone at your kid's school told you that the teacher repeatedly made them do homework, would that be bullying? Of course not. Just because some people don't like targeted ads does not make it antisocial. You just don't like it, which is fine. Don't read the email.
  - harryvederci 5y ago
    Yes. Ads good, privacy bad. Keep working at Google. By the way, I may or may not have placed a bunch of hidden cameras in your house. What's that, antisocial? No, no. I swear it's going to be convenient for you. You may get a disturbing email from a company I sell the footage to at some point, by the way. Just don't read that email, ok?
    - mgraczyk 5y ago
      This one is pretty easy though. Forget the camera, we have a pervasive norm that you can't be in my house without my permission. With or without cameras, you've violated the norm, and in this case also the law. I'm not arguing that all data collection is ok. I'm just arguing against the point that all data collection is not ok.
      - harryvederci 5y ago
        If you approach norms purely from a "what does the law say about X" perspective, sure. But laws can change, and before we wrote it down in a book with legal constructs, a lot of people were not OK with the concept of "murder", "theft", etc. I think that from the comments here, you'll learn that a lot of people are not OK with some of the things your employer does either. I do respect you for telling people here that you work for them, though. I just hope you will ask yourself every now and then if it still feels ok to do so. That's often a pretty good indicator of whether or not it is ok. Sometimes a better indicator than the law, even.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > we have a pervasive norm that you can't be in my house without my permission. With or without cameras, you've violated the norm Well, I also do my Internet browsing from home. What are you doing in my house with your ads and trackers? Adtech industry is stepping on quite a lot of norms indeed. Not surveilling people in their homes is one that's commonly violated. That a HTTP user agent is free to interpret and present the response from a HTTP server in any way it (and the user) sees fit is another, this one frequently fretted about, and users are being bullied over it. (Another one would be consent - this one got enshrined into law in the EU. It annoys adtech people so much that they deploy every possible psychological manipulation trick to deprive users of their agency without crossing the legal line - and quite often with blatantly illegal practices. When confronted, they try to shift the blame for their techniques to regulators who are "forcing" them.)
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Corporations are stalking human beings on a massive scale, recording everything they do and selling access to dossiers more detailed than police background checks.
hunterb123 5y ago
I don't think it's the advertisement itself, I believe it's the method and data they collected to target it. They may not use it for nefarious reasons (one can argue if unwanted targeted ads is or isn't) but that data may leak either directly or via a 3rd party who purchased it. Then you have a situation where you have all this product and personal history which could be embarrassing and be used for blackmail. Can you delete this data? Do you know everything they are tracking? Someone else said it best, this is a cyber stalking industry.
nerdponx 5y ago
Among other things, it puts users at risk of having their highly personal data exposed during a hack/exfiltration/subpoena, or to a malicious internal actor.
krustymeathead 5y ago
Realistically, I think most of the time, if the ad is targeted well, there are no issues. I see a good amount of ads, and the most annoying ones, to me, are the most poorly targeted ones. However, I do think there is an inherent creepiness involved in the amount of tracking involved to achieve that level of targeting. Normally, as a person who is not terribly privacy minded, I'm not thinking about this tracking that watches everything I do. That is, until I had an experience like the top comment. I ripped the mic out of my Amazon FireTV remote that day. It made me uncomfortable that my conversation left the room without my knowledge or consent. (I realize this was Amazon, not Google, but they all do this sort of thing.) Edit: I think ad targeting has to achieve a delicate balance of serving potentially helpful ads, while not alerting the target that they are part of the Matrix.
- ksec 5y ago
  >I think ad targeting has to achieve a delicate balance of serving potentially helpful ads, while not alerting the target that they are part of the Matrix. It is a great ideal but this narrative is pretty much anti HN sentiment on Ads.
FearlessNebula 5y ago
The reason I prefer untargeted ads is that targeted ads make me more likely to spend money. I don’t want to part with my money over junk I don’t need, so I’d rather see irrelevant ads that won’t persuade me to spend.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  Yeah this is at least a rational viewpoint. You have beliefs and preferences, and under those beliefs and preferences you are better off without targeted ads. Unfortunately most other arguments against targeted ads don't have these properties and just restate the arguers convictions in various ways, with increasing levels of anger and certainty.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    ...As opposed to arguments in favor of tracking, which are totally rational and novel every time?
    - mgraczyk 5y ago
      People make bad arguments in both directions. Here's how I think about it though. Targeted advertising allows some businesses to exist that otherwise would not exist. In order to justify banning it or labeling it as unethical, we should show that there is some harm done that outweighs the benefits in terms of job creation and innovation. So far the examples of tangible harm I'm familiar with are rare and far less in magnitude than the value creation enabled by targeted advertising. What's more , all those harms can be mitigated, and it's in the best interest of large advertising platforms to mitigate so they they have better products. That's why Facebook and Google have spent more on basic research into privacy preserving computation and analytics than any other company. It's not that all targeted ads are bad or good. It's that we can make them good and keep the benefits without any of the harm. I don't see examples like "I got a personalized email" as inherently harmful, so I'm looking for justification specifically for beliefs like that one.
      - 5y ago
cortesoft 5y ago
Are those my only two choices? Tracking based targeted emails or untargeted Viagra and porn? How about neither?
scrps 5y ago
The reason is simple, it removes your control over your information (to an extent, obviously most site collect internal metrics and logs), right now via browsers and network filtering you can essentially cut off tracking and ads to (excluding fingerprinting) a large degree because you are in control of your browser and network. Moving all of the tracking and data sharing server-side means there is nothing you can do to stop it other than simply not visit sites that use it and even that isn't so simple because how are you supposed to know if they have implemented server-side tracking other than maybe a vague mention in the ToS or PP?
marcinzm 5y ago
How would you feel about advertiser showing booze ads to recovering alcoholics because they're recovering alcoholics? At some point the amount of fine tuned emotional manipulation that ads can exert on people becomes downright creepy. Like dealing with an expert con artist except everywhere and all the time.
- marketingtech 5y ago
  To play devil's advocate, what if you trusted the ad platform (ha! bear with me. it's a hypothetical) to use that data point to block alcohol advertisers from showing ads to a recovering alcoholic. In a world with personalized advertising, you can avoid those ads forever. In mediums without personalized advertising, you can't watch a sporting event without seeing a beer ad. Then again, personalized exclusion opens the door to many types of discrimination - like not showing job or housing ads to people with certain traits. All that to say, the tech can be used for both good and evil. It needs to be managed by regulation, and not by technical feasibility.
  - marcinzm 5y ago
    There is no single ad platform but a dozen+ large ones across the web. Probably thousands+ if you include all the real time bidding players. In no world would all of them be honest and many would be dishonest in subtle ways. Modern capitalism is all about hiding the externalities. The regulation people want, such as even stronger GDPR, is effectively almost a technical feasibility block on these things. Any other attempt is always going to be behind the technology curve and thus significantly less useful. Moreover politicians will add in exceptions for their top donors and friends. This is harder is regulation that doesn't get into deep weeds.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Well, in that hypothetical reality, I'd submit a dossier about myself to the ad platform. It would simplify so many things for everyone. If I could trust the advertisers, they wouldn't have to spy on me to learn about my habits - I would just volunteer them. My likes and dislikes, my dreams and my deep problems. Alas, this is not how the real world works. Everyone on the advertising side has an incentive to exploit my weak sides, so I can't trust advertisers in general. And so they spy on me, and I'm desperately trying to protect myself. Your hypothetical reality is an unstable equilibrium. Our actual reality is a stable one. So even if, by some miracle, the stars aligned and the hypothetical suddenly became real, it would very quickly degenerate into our current reality. "In paradise, the first one to pick up a stone becomes Genghis Khan", and all that. So, in conclusion, adtech industry needs to be burned out by regulatory means like the cancer it is, until what remains can be reshaped into a construct that provides value to the society.
unionpivo 5y ago
Because it's not just the ADs. For getting good targeted ads, you need to know a lot about targets. And that knowledge can be used for other things than just selling ads. It can be used by politicians to target specific groups, it can be used by scam artist to get access to more susceptible people. It can be used by business, like payday loans, cc companies, lotteries, etc. to target people that are in already bad place, to dig a hole even deeper (and that already happens today). It can be used to target people who are whales in one microtransaction whatever, to spend on some other etc. It can be used by bad governments to target people with specific viewpoints, smear campaigns, find dissidents etc. They all need same kind of data. And even if you collect that data for one purpose today, doesn't mean it cant be used for something else in 10 years time. Just because Google might not sell that data right now, doesn't mean it wont in the future. I would have a lot less problems it it was just ads, but it's really not.

firecall 5y ago

Well, even if we cant describe why it is 'bad', we can observe that it is a form of anti-social behaviour by these companies. People don't like it - people don't like that form of targeting. It may not be clear why they have issues with it, but they do. At my kids school, if someone is repeatedly doing something to you that you don't like, then it is classed as a form of bullying.

mgraczyk 5y ago
That's a good analogy, but it illustrates the problem. Just because you don't like something, does not by itself make it antisocial. If someone at your kid's school told you that the teacher repeatedly made them do homework, would that be bullying? Of course not. Just because some people don't like targeted ads does not make it antisocial. You just don't like it, which is fine. Don't read the email.
- harryvederci 5y ago
  Yes. Ads good, privacy bad. Keep working at Google. By the way, I may or may not have placed a bunch of hidden cameras in your house. What's that, antisocial? No, no. I swear it's going to be convenient for you. You may get a disturbing email from a company I sell the footage to at some point, by the way. Just don't read that email, ok?
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    This one is pretty easy though. Forget the camera, we have a pervasive norm that you can't be in my house without my permission. With or without cameras, you've violated the norm, and in this case also the law. I'm not arguing that all data collection is ok. I'm just arguing against the point that all data collection is not ok.
    - harryvederci 5y ago
      If you approach norms purely from a "what does the law say about X" perspective, sure. But laws can change, and before we wrote it down in a book with legal constructs, a lot of people were not OK with the concept of "murder", "theft", etc. I think that from the comments here, you'll learn that a lot of people are not OK with some of the things your employer does either. I do respect you for telling people here that you work for them, though. I just hope you will ask yourself every now and then if it still feels ok to do so. That's often a pretty good indicator of whether or not it is ok. Sometimes a better indicator than the law, even.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > we have a pervasive norm that you can't be in my house without my permission. With or without cameras, you've violated the norm Well, I also do my Internet browsing from home. What are you doing in my house with your ads and trackers? Adtech industry is stepping on quite a lot of norms indeed. Not surveilling people in their homes is one that's commonly violated. That a HTTP user agent is free to interpret and present the response from a HTTP server in any way it (and the user) sees fit is another, this one frequently fretted about, and users are being bullied over it. (Another one would be consent - this one got enshrined into law in the EU. It annoys adtech people so much that they deploy every possible psychological manipulation trick to deprive users of their agency without crossing the legal line - and quite often with blatantly illegal practices. When confronted, they try to shift the blame for their techniques to regulators who are "forcing" them.)

matheusmoreira 5y ago

Corporations are stalking human beings on a massive scale, recording everything they do and selling access to dossiers more detailed than police background checks.

hunterb123 5y ago

I don't think it's the advertisement itself, I believe it's the method and data they collected to target it. They may not use it for nefarious reasons (one can argue if unwanted targeted ads is or isn't) but that data may leak either directly or via a 3rd party who purchased it. Then you have a situation where you have all this product and personal history which could be embarrassing and be used for blackmail. Can you delete this data? Do you know everything they are tracking? Someone else said it best, this is a cyber stalking industry.

nerdponx 5y ago

Among other things, it puts users at risk of having their highly personal data exposed during a hack/exfiltration/subpoena, or to a malicious internal actor.

krustymeathead 5y ago

Realistically, I think most of the time, if the ad is targeted well, there are no issues. I see a good amount of ads, and the most annoying ones, to me, are the most poorly targeted ones. However, I do think there is an inherent creepiness involved in the amount of tracking involved to achieve that level of targeting. Normally, as a person who is not terribly privacy minded, I'm not thinking about this tracking that watches everything I do. That is, until I had an experience like the top comment. I ripped the mic out of my Amazon FireTV remote that day. It made me uncomfortable that my conversation left the room without my knowledge or consent. (I realize this was Amazon, not Google, but they all do this sort of thing.) Edit: I think ad targeting has to achieve a delicate balance of serving potentially helpful ads, while not alerting the target that they are part of the Matrix.

ksec 5y ago
>I think ad targeting has to achieve a delicate balance of serving potentially helpful ads, while not alerting the target that they are part of the Matrix. It is a great ideal but this narrative is pretty much anti HN sentiment on Ads.

FearlessNebula 5y ago

The reason I prefer untargeted ads is that targeted ads make me more likely to spend money. I don’t want to part with my money over junk I don’t need, so I’d rather see irrelevant ads that won’t persuade me to spend.

mgraczyk 5y ago
Yeah this is at least a rational viewpoint. You have beliefs and preferences, and under those beliefs and preferences you are better off without targeted ads. Unfortunately most other arguments against targeted ads don't have these properties and just restate the arguers convictions in various ways, with increasing levels of anger and certainty.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  ...As opposed to arguments in favor of tracking, which are totally rational and novel every time?
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    People make bad arguments in both directions. Here's how I think about it though. Targeted advertising allows some businesses to exist that otherwise would not exist. In order to justify banning it or labeling it as unethical, we should show that there is some harm done that outweighs the benefits in terms of job creation and innovation. So far the examples of tangible harm I'm familiar with are rare and far less in magnitude than the value creation enabled by targeted advertising. What's more , all those harms can be mitigated, and it's in the best interest of large advertising platforms to mitigate so they they have better products. That's why Facebook and Google have spent more on basic research into privacy preserving computation and analytics than any other company. It's not that all targeted ads are bad or good. It's that we can make them good and keep the benefits without any of the harm. I don't see examples like "I got a personalized email" as inherently harmful, so I'm looking for justification specifically for beliefs like that one.
    - 5y ago

cortesoft 5y ago

Are those my only two choices? Tracking based targeted emails or untargeted Viagra and porn? How about neither?

scrps 5y ago

The reason is simple, it removes your control over your information (to an extent, obviously most site collect internal metrics and logs), right now via browsers and network filtering you can essentially cut off tracking and ads to (excluding fingerprinting) a large degree because you are in control of your browser and network. Moving all of the tracking and data sharing server-side means there is nothing you can do to stop it other than simply not visit sites that use it and even that isn't so simple because how are you supposed to know if they have implemented server-side tracking other than maybe a vague mention in the ToS or PP?

marcinzm 5y ago

How would you feel about advertiser showing booze ads to recovering alcoholics because they're recovering alcoholics? At some point the amount of fine tuned emotional manipulation that ads can exert on people becomes downright creepy. Like dealing with an expert con artist except everywhere and all the time.

marketingtech 5y ago
To play devil's advocate, what if you trusted the ad platform (ha! bear with me. it's a hypothetical) to use that data point to block alcohol advertisers from showing ads to a recovering alcoholic. In a world with personalized advertising, you can avoid those ads forever. In mediums without personalized advertising, you can't watch a sporting event without seeing a beer ad. Then again, personalized exclusion opens the door to many types of discrimination - like not showing job or housing ads to people with certain traits. All that to say, the tech can be used for both good and evil. It needs to be managed by regulation, and not by technical feasibility.
- marcinzm 5y ago
  There is no single ad platform but a dozen+ large ones across the web. Probably thousands+ if you include all the real time bidding players. In no world would all of them be honest and many would be dishonest in subtle ways. Modern capitalism is all about hiding the externalities. The regulation people want, such as even stronger GDPR, is effectively almost a technical feasibility block on these things. Any other attempt is always going to be behind the technology curve and thus significantly less useful. Moreover politicians will add in exceptions for their top donors and friends. This is harder is regulation that doesn't get into deep weeds.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Well, in that hypothetical reality, I'd submit a dossier about myself to the ad platform. It would simplify so many things for everyone. If I could trust the advertisers, they wouldn't have to spy on me to learn about my habits - I would just volunteer them. My likes and dislikes, my dreams and my deep problems. Alas, this is not how the real world works. Everyone on the advertising side has an incentive to exploit my weak sides, so I can't trust advertisers in general. And so they spy on me, and I'm desperately trying to protect myself. Your hypothetical reality is an unstable equilibrium. Our actual reality is a stable one. So even if, by some miracle, the stars aligned and the hypothetical suddenly became real, it would very quickly degenerate into our current reality. "In paradise, the first one to pick up a stone becomes Genghis Khan", and all that. So, in conclusion, adtech industry needs to be burned out by regulatory means like the cancer it is, until what remains can be reshaped into a construct that provides value to the society.

unionpivo 5y ago

Because it's not just the ADs. For getting good targeted ads, you need to know a lot about targets. And that knowledge can be used for other things than just selling ads. It can be used by politicians to target specific groups, it can be used by scam artist to get access to more susceptible people. It can be used by business, like payday loans, cc companies, lotteries, etc. to target people that are in already bad place, to dig a hole even deeper (and that already happens today). It can be used to target people who are whales in one microtransaction whatever, to spend on some other etc. It can be used by bad governments to target people with specific viewpoints, smear campaigns, find dissidents etc. They all need same kind of data. And even if you collect that data for one purpose today, doesn't mean it cant be used for something else in 10 years time. Just because Google might not sell that data right now, doesn't mean it wont in the future. I would have a lot less problems it it was just ads, but it's really not.