5 ms·

Hear me out - unpopular opinion. Banning targeted ads wastes everyone’s times. Ads for things that have zero applicability to me are a waste of my time, the ad

by donatj 5y ago

Hear me out - unpopular opinion. Banning targeted ads wastes everyone’s times. Ads for things that have zero applicability to me are a waste of my time, the advertisers time, everyone’s time. We’re not going to ever live in a world without ads and I would far rather they be an actual service to me, presenting me things I actually think are cool and might like to buy. A well targeted ad can be a net positive to my life. An ad for something I would never use, ever, because it doesn’t apply to me is a net negative.

tgv 5y ago
Hear me out. Perhaps it's not about the ads per se.
- donatj 5y ago
  Go on?
  - sgjohnson 5y ago
    It’s about the data collection incentives. If you can’t use the data you collect to advertise, there’s no point in collecting the data in the first place. Except in this case, where it makes no difference at all, because only certain groups are protected.
    - donatj 5y ago
      And I come back with what is the actual harm in data collection? It’s not like all the governments of the world don’t already have a much more intensive dossier on you. The governments are the ones out to kill you or otherwise materially destroy your life. Corporations just want you to buy stuff. All preventing private industry from data collection is prevent useful things like this.
      - sgjohnson 5y ago
        > And I come back with what is the harm in data collection? None. Because it’s done anyway, except in an “anonymized” form. But as we all know, lifting that veil is trivial if you have enough data.
      - chmod775 5y ago
        I don't care about "all the governments in the world". I care about my own government most. And as long as private companies are unable to collect medical data on me and medical confidentiality holds, they won't be able to obtain any such data. I also certainly don't want some company putting ideas into the heads of my relatives - or my own - about what medicine is appropriate over the advice of medical professionals. The first step would be obtaining data on people's medical condition in the first place, so let's shut it down right there. They can go directly advertise to doctors who have the required background to actually make an informed decision, but if they trick my gullible grandmother into paying for something that is likely not the optimal treatment, then we have a massive fucking problem. And that goes for more than just health ads. Most ads are clearly appealing to people emotions instead of rationality: They tell a story of a happy family instead of showing you a fact sheet. They don't exist to "inform" people of their options and help them make a rational decision. If you are going to argue anything else, then I suggest we have a watch party of some randomly selected ads and see whether you can still look me straight in the face, arguing the same, afterwards. Most arguments for the benefits of advertisement are contingent on the idea of the "rational consumer" - as far as I am concerned that ship has sunk and was full of holes to begin with. Even if people were largely qualified to make rational decisions in specialist areas, a sizeable amount likely still wouldn't. But I don't care as much about people wasting money on some "manscaping" garbage, nose hair trimmer or whatever inferior garbage is currently sold at upmarket prices. So another weasel gets rich? Whatever. It's health where I start to take issue, the weasel grows six legs and becomes something I want to take the boot to.
        ErikCorry 5y ago
        This sounds like a completely different regulation issue - advertizing meds directly to consumers. Some places regulate it, others ban it.
raspyberr 5y ago
An ad is designed to make you buy something. It's irrelevant to them if that makes your life better or worse. We're emotional creatures and I want to minimise companies taking advantage of my emotional state to buy shit I thought I needed. I want to buy less stuff in general. There's more to life than the dopamine you get from spending money.
lampe3 5y ago
Sure, let's target you with non-working medicine when you are sick and desperate to try everything or, even worse, stop the treating you get that works but takes longer than the one from the ad. Yes, this happens right now. Sure, let's target you with our extreme Church that thinks being gay is an illness, and you too should help to get rid of them. Yes, this happens too right now. It's about this kind of ad's not your Raid Legends or I don't know become a rich person with 2 hours of work ad's.
- donatj 5y ago
  There are already laws against selling snake oil. Advertising your church regardless of its beliefs seems to follow the basic religious freedom? There isn’t really a valid argument here.
  - lampe3 5y ago
    Okay, so why are globuli still a thing? You can advertise your church but not call to harm other people, this is not religious freedom.
    - donatj 5y ago
      I’m not familiar with globuli. Does it make actual claims of curing things?
  - dessant 5y ago
    Their religious freedom can take a hike when they use their power to advocate for taking away human rights.
    - effie 5y ago
      Are they really advocating "taking away human rights"? For comparison, is an activist ad promoting quitting smoking advocating for taking away human rights?
      - deleted 5y ago
bluesign 5y ago
> A well targeted ad can be a net positive to my life I think key word here is `can be` > We’re not going to ever live in a world without ads and I would far rather they be an actual service to me, presenting me things I actually think are cool and might like to buy. This is not how ads work. If you have 2 products: one you have 1% chance to buy, another lets say 10%. If 1% one has 20x more profit, thats the ad you will see.
ui4jd73bdj 5y ago
I prefer random ads. If I plan to buy something I will never do it from an ad. At least with random ads there can be something I didn't even think about buying. Now you might try to argue that tracking can predict these awesome things I want but didn't know about, but in my experience it always leads to the most obvious predictable and boring ads.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Anecdote here: Old school targeted ads helped me discover something i didn't know i wanted. I was watching a game of football ( soccer for americans), and during the halftime break there were ads I wasn't really paying attention to, and per tradition, they were oriented towards males. There was an add for a decent looking multi-purpose electric razer that came with all sorts of attachments for different body parts, including head. I bought it and use it frequently, including for cutting my hair ( which has saved me hundreds of euros compared to going to a hairdresser) and beard. So, sometimes a targeted ad can be useful. A contextually targeted ad can be useful too ( e.g. cooking utensils / supplies on a a recipe site).
  - anhner 5y ago
    Sorry, those are not example of targeted ads. A targeted ad is one that knows more about you than your age range, gender and what you are currently looking at (sports event, cooking site etc.). A targeted ad knows that you usually buy tickets to a certain sports team, or you prefer baking cookies rather than cakes, and that you prefer the "Mestle" brand of flour etc.
  - namlem 5y ago
    That's a traditional untargeted ad though. Literally just a TV commercial.
    - orwin 5y ago
      And this is a "good" ad. When I'm on a hiking website, I'm interested in ads for tents and hiking utilities. When I'm on a tab website, i might be interested in a guitar selling ad. Those are good ads, I'm never mad when I see those
beebmam 5y ago
Ad companies aren't targeting you to help you find things you want. Ad companies target you because you ended up being one of their most profitable targets, and often those ads extend beyond just profit to highly ethically dubious purposes
- sokoloff 5y ago
  There is substantial overlap between “things I want” and “things I’m willing to buy”. The former is my angle on it, while the latter is the advertisers’ angle.
tuyiown 5y ago
A well targeted predatory ad can destroy your life. I it looks like an overstatement, read it as «a long stream of well targeted predatory add campaign that span for years can destroy your life, and along the life of many others»
lucozade 5y ago
That's fine as long as the targeting is solely based on data that I expressly gave to the organisation that produces the product that the ad is for. If the ad is based on data that was harvested without my permission from a source that wasn't related in any way to the product then I don't want it targeting me. And every single targeted ad is of the second type. It's nefarious and I have no issue with the current type of targeting being restricted.
goodpoint 5y ago
> A well targeted ad can be a net positive to my life *can*. And is also a net negative to millions of people, by creating pressure to consume in a world facing environmental collapse. Ads pollute our minds and the world. Furthermore, they cost quite a bit of money and the cost is ultimately always paid by the consumer. This is another net negative. I'd rather see all ads banned.
mrweasel 5y ago
Maybe use ads that are targeted to the context you're currently in, rather than target you as person? The alternative to ads targeted towards an individual doesn't have to be completely random ads. Google even does this. The ads you see on a Google search is tailored to your search, they aren't ads based on your browsing history (though that might be part of the input).
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Google does not show any retargeting ads on SERPs? Edit to add: I’m into 3D printing and when I search “new printer” from a normal tab, I get a mix of 2D and 3D printer ads on my Google SERP. From the same device and search term 10 seconds later in an incognito tab, I get only ads for 2D printers. (I’m fine with this state as I’m interested in 3D printers, but it seems like I’m being targeted here rather than just my search terms being targeted.)
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    I can tell you that they don't, but I only ever see ads relevant to my search.
maccard 5y ago
You know what makes well targeted ads? Sponsored reviews for products, or inline ads on related sites. Showing me ads for the latest iPhone when I'm reading articles about mobile phones,or tech. I don't know if I'm an outlier but almost all the ads I see are for products that I will never buy, or that I've already bought. I was looking for a recipe on my partner's phone last night and there was an interstitial ad with Amazon items - all of them were variations on a consumable that we had just bought 6 months worth of, and they were not cooking related. We can have targeted ads that are appropriate, but we don't need invasive tracking to so so.
Vinnl 5y ago
Ads can be applicable to you, but not in your interest. My go-to example is if they target certain political views in order to discourage them from voting. That said, non-targeted ads doesn't mean irrelevant. They can be contextual, e.g. DuckDuckGo's ads are not targeted, but based on your search terms.
amelius 5y ago
We can talk about opt-in after we first ban general use. Also, targeted ads introduce too many bad incentives: collecting data about users is profitable, social media pushing toxic content to increase engagement, increasing overconsumption, ... Banning targeted ads (where user tracking is involved) is a good step.
usrbinbash 5y ago
The benefits don't outweigh the cost. The cost being data collection on a MASSIVE scale.
foxfluff 5y ago
> A well targeted ad can be a net positive to my life. Have you ever bought anything based on a targeted ad? I think targeted ads are a waste of my time, the advertiser's time, everyone's time. Because despite all the effort, they fail to advertise anything I would care for. At worst, they might advertise something that almost seems like something I could want, and then I dive down the rabbit hole and find out it's not what I want. Complete waste of time. Thankfully that's only happened once or twice (usually ads are so far off the mark that I can dismiss them on first sight).
- anhner 5y ago
  Also, let's not talk about when you buy a product (that you would usually only buy once or once every couple years or so) and then you get bombarded with ads for the same type of product for weeks on end. Like, I'm not collecting fridges, I just bought one.
threatofrain 5y ago
Targeting can still occur by proximity to content, which is how things used to happen. We shouldn’t have random ad performance but neither should we be optimizing for it at the price of privacy. A lot of people here use the web with barely any targeted ads due to good ad block. I don’t believe they are missing out as opposed to living better.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Targeted ads, like all forms of algorithmic personalization, put me in a filter bubble. I don't want to be shown content that's targeted at me—I want to be exposed to the full diversity of the world. If the tech giants are convinced I like technology and computers, that's all I will ever learn about. What if I'd prefer ballet dancing, or basket-weaving, or something else I can't begin to imagine? I don't want to be trapped in an algorithmic box, which assumes my past will dictate my future. The algorithms think that they know who I am, but I don't know that yet, and I don't think I'll ever know, and I certainly don't want them to decide for me.
dqpb 5y ago
> We’re not going to ever live in a world without ads It’s because of this very hopelessness that I would rather they get worse than get better.
foxfluff 5y ago
The proposal still allows you to consent to targeted advertising. However targeting minors and certain protected groups is not allowed. So if you think targeted ads can be a net positive to your life, I have good news: you can still consent even if this proposal passes in its current form. Those of us who don't agree with you get to make a choice.
tremon 5y ago
You're presenting a false dichotomy. "Targeted" ads refer to ads that are contextual on the user (and thereby objectifying the person). There's nothing wrong with contextualizing ads in another way, e.g. on geography or on surrounding site content. When I walk outside, I don't see ads for the NYC Metro system here. If real-life ads were as random as you suggest, I should have seen a few of those. But I don't, because real-life ads are geographically targeted. That's not the kind of targeting that's being banned here.

by donatj 5y ago

tgv 5y ago

Hear me out. Perhaps it's not about the ads per se.

donatj 5y ago
Go on?
- sgjohnson 5y ago
  It’s about the data collection incentives. If you can’t use the data you collect to advertise, there’s no point in collecting the data in the first place. Except in this case, where it makes no difference at all, because only certain groups are protected.
  - donatj 5y ago
    And I come back with what is the actual harm in data collection? It’s not like all the governments of the world don’t already have a much more intensive dossier on you. The governments are the ones out to kill you or otherwise materially destroy your life. Corporations just want you to buy stuff. All preventing private industry from data collection is prevent useful things like this.
    - sgjohnson 5y ago
      > And I come back with what is the harm in data collection? None. Because it’s done anyway, except in an “anonymized” form. But as we all know, lifting that veil is trivial if you have enough data.
    - chmod775 5y ago
      I don't care about "all the governments in the world". I care about my own government most. And as long as private companies are unable to collect medical data on me and medical confidentiality holds, they won't be able to obtain any such data. I also certainly don't want some company putting ideas into the heads of my relatives - or my own - about what medicine is appropriate over the advice of medical professionals. The first step would be obtaining data on people's medical condition in the first place, so let's shut it down right there. They can go directly advertise to doctors who have the required background to actually make an informed decision, but if they trick my gullible grandmother into paying for something that is likely not the optimal treatment, then we have a massive fucking problem. And that goes for more than just health ads. Most ads are clearly appealing to people emotions instead of rationality: They tell a story of a happy family instead of showing you a fact sheet. They don't exist to "inform" people of their options and help them make a rational decision. If you are going to argue anything else, then I suggest we have a watch party of some randomly selected ads and see whether you can still look me straight in the face, arguing the same, afterwards. Most arguments for the benefits of advertisement are contingent on the idea of the "rational consumer" - as far as I am concerned that ship has sunk and was full of holes to begin with. Even if people were largely qualified to make rational decisions in specialist areas, a sizeable amount likely still wouldn't. But I don't care as much about people wasting money on some "manscaping" garbage, nose hair trimmer or whatever inferior garbage is currently sold at upmarket prices. So another weasel gets rich? Whatever. It's health where I start to take issue, the weasel grows six legs and becomes something I want to take the boot to.
      - ErikCorry 5y ago
        This sounds like a completely different regulation issue - advertizing meds directly to consumers. Some places regulate it, others ban it.

raspyberr 5y ago

An ad is designed to make you buy something. It's irrelevant to them if that makes your life better or worse. We're emotional creatures and I want to minimise companies taking advantage of my emotional state to buy shit I thought I needed. I want to buy less stuff in general. There's more to life than the dopamine you get from spending money.

lampe3 5y ago

Sure, let's target you with non-working medicine when you are sick and desperate to try everything or, even worse, stop the treating you get that works but takes longer than the one from the ad. Yes, this happens right now. Sure, let's target you with our extreme Church that thinks being gay is an illness, and you too should help to get rid of them. Yes, this happens too right now. It's about this kind of ad's not your Raid Legends or I don't know become a rich person with 2 hours of work ad's.

donatj 5y ago
There are already laws against selling snake oil. Advertising your church regardless of its beliefs seems to follow the basic religious freedom? There isn’t really a valid argument here.
- lampe3 5y ago
  Okay, so why are globuli still a thing? You can advertise your church but not call to harm other people, this is not religious freedom.
  - donatj 5y ago
    I’m not familiar with globuli. Does it make actual claims of curing things?
- dessant 5y ago
  Their religious freedom can take a hike when they use their power to advocate for taking away human rights.
  - effie 5y ago
    Are they really advocating "taking away human rights"? For comparison, is an activist ad promoting quitting smoking advocating for taking away human rights?
    - deleted 5y ago

bluesign 5y ago

> A well targeted ad can be a net positive to my life I think key word here is `can be` > We’re not going to ever live in a world without ads and I would far rather they be an actual service to me, presenting me things I actually think are cool and might like to buy. This is not how ads work. If you have 2 products: one you have 1% chance to buy, another lets say 10%. If 1% one has 20x more profit, thats the ad you will see.

ui4jd73bdj 5y ago

I prefer random ads. If I plan to buy something I will never do it from an ad. At least with random ads there can be something I didn't even think about buying. Now you might try to argue that tracking can predict these awesome things I want but didn't know about, but in my experience it always leads to the most obvious predictable and boring ads.

sofixa 5y ago
Anecdote here: Old school targeted ads helped me discover something i didn't know i wanted. I was watching a game of football ( soccer for americans), and during the halftime break there were ads I wasn't really paying attention to, and per tradition, they were oriented towards males. There was an add for a decent looking multi-purpose electric razer that came with all sorts of attachments for different body parts, including head. I bought it and use it frequently, including for cutting my hair ( which has saved me hundreds of euros compared to going to a hairdresser) and beard. So, sometimes a targeted ad can be useful. A contextually targeted ad can be useful too ( e.g. cooking utensils / supplies on a a recipe site).
- anhner 5y ago
  Sorry, those are not example of targeted ads. A targeted ad is one that knows more about you than your age range, gender and what you are currently looking at (sports event, cooking site etc.). A targeted ad knows that you usually buy tickets to a certain sports team, or you prefer baking cookies rather than cakes, and that you prefer the "Mestle" brand of flour etc.
- namlem 5y ago
  That's a traditional untargeted ad though. Literally just a TV commercial.
  - orwin 5y ago
    And this is a "good" ad. When I'm on a hiking website, I'm interested in ads for tents and hiking utilities. When I'm on a tab website, i might be interested in a guitar selling ad. Those are good ads, I'm never mad when I see those

beebmam 5y ago

Ad companies aren't targeting you to help you find things you want. Ad companies target you because you ended up being one of their most profitable targets, and often those ads extend beyond just profit to highly ethically dubious purposes

sokoloff 5y ago
There is substantial overlap between “things I want” and “things I’m willing to buy”. The former is my angle on it, while the latter is the advertisers’ angle.

tuyiown 5y ago

A well targeted predatory ad can destroy your life. I it looks like an overstatement, read it as «a long stream of well targeted predatory add campaign that span for years can destroy your life, and along the life of many others»

lucozade 5y ago

That's fine as long as the targeting is solely based on data that I expressly gave to the organisation that produces the product that the ad is for. If the ad is based on data that was harvested without my permission from a source that wasn't related in any way to the product then I don't want it targeting me. And every single targeted ad is of the second type. It's nefarious and I have no issue with the current type of targeting being restricted.

goodpoint 5y ago

> A well targeted ad can be a net positive to my life *can*. And is also a net negative to millions of people, by creating pressure to consume in a world facing environmental collapse. Ads pollute our minds and the world. Furthermore, they cost quite a bit of money and the cost is ultimately always paid by the consumer. This is another net negative. I'd rather see all ads banned.

mrweasel 5y ago

Maybe use ads that are targeted to the context you're currently in, rather than target you as person? The alternative to ads targeted towards an individual doesn't have to be completely random ads. Google even does this. The ads you see on a Google search is tailored to your search, they aren't ads based on your browsing history (though that might be part of the input).

sokoloff 5y ago
Google does not show any retargeting ads on SERPs? Edit to add: I’m into 3D printing and when I search “new printer” from a normal tab, I get a mix of 2D and 3D printer ads on my Google SERP. From the same device and search term 10 seconds later in an incognito tab, I get only ads for 2D printers. (I’m fine with this state as I’m interested in 3D printers, but it seems like I’m being targeted here rather than just my search terms being targeted.)
- mrweasel 5y ago
  I can tell you that they don't, but I only ever see ads relevant to my search.

maccard 5y ago

You know what makes well targeted ads? Sponsored reviews for products, or inline ads on related sites. Showing me ads for the latest iPhone when I'm reading articles about mobile phones,or tech. I don't know if I'm an outlier but almost all the ads I see are for products that I will never buy, or that I've already bought. I was looking for a recipe on my partner's phone last night and there was an interstitial ad with Amazon items - all of them were variations on a consumable that we had just bought 6 months worth of, and they were not cooking related. We can have targeted ads that are appropriate, but we don't need invasive tracking to so so.

Vinnl 5y ago

Ads can be applicable to you, but not in your interest. My go-to example is if they target certain political views in order to discourage them from voting. That said, non-targeted ads doesn't mean irrelevant. They can be contextual, e.g. DuckDuckGo's ads are not targeted, but based on your search terms.

amelius 5y ago

We can talk about opt-in after we first ban general use. Also, targeted ads introduce too many bad incentives: collecting data about users is profitable, social media pushing toxic content to increase engagement, increasing overconsumption, ... Banning targeted ads (where user tracking is involved) is a good step.

usrbinbash 5y ago

The benefits don't outweigh the cost. The cost being data collection on a MASSIVE scale.

foxfluff 5y ago

> A well targeted ad can be a net positive to my life. Have you ever bought anything based on a targeted ad? I think targeted ads are a waste of my time, the advertiser's time, everyone's time. Because despite all the effort, they fail to advertise anything I would care for. At worst, they might advertise something that almost seems like something I could want, and then I dive down the rabbit hole and find out it's not what I want. Complete waste of time. Thankfully that's only happened once or twice (usually ads are so far off the mark that I can dismiss them on first sight).

anhner 5y ago
Also, let's not talk about when you buy a product (that you would usually only buy once or once every couple years or so) and then you get bombarded with ads for the same type of product for weeks on end. Like, I'm not collecting fridges, I just bought one.

threatofrain 5y ago

Targeting can still occur by proximity to content, which is how things used to happen. We shouldn’t have random ad performance but neither should we be optimizing for it at the price of privacy. A lot of people here use the web with barely any targeted ads due to good ad block. I don’t believe they are missing out as opposed to living better.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

Targeted ads, like all forms of algorithmic personalization, put me in a filter bubble. I don't want to be shown content that's targeted at me—I want to be exposed to the full diversity of the world. If the tech giants are convinced I like technology and computers, that's all I will ever learn about. What if I'd prefer ballet dancing, or basket-weaving, or something else I can't begin to imagine? I don't want to be trapped in an algorithmic box, which assumes my past will dictate my future. The algorithms think that they know who I am, but I don't know that yet, and I don't think I'll ever know, and I certainly don't want them to decide for me.

dqpb 5y ago

> We’re not going to ever live in a world without ads It’s because of this very hopelessness that I would rather they get worse than get better.

foxfluff 5y ago

The proposal still allows you to consent to targeted advertising. However targeting minors and certain protected groups is not allowed. So if you think targeted ads can be a net positive to your life, I have good news: you can still consent even if this proposal passes in its current form. Those of us who don't agree with you get to make a choice.

tremon 5y ago

You're presenting a false dichotomy. "Targeted" ads refer to ads that are contextual on the user (and thereby objectifying the person). There's nothing wrong with contextualizing ads in another way, e.g. on geography or on surrounding site content. When I walk outside, I don't see ads for the NYC Metro system here. If real-life ads were as random as you suggest, I should have seen a few of those. But I don't, because real-life ads are geographically targeted. That's not the kind of targeting that's being banned here.