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Temporary ban on behavioural advertising on Facebook and Instagram

208 points by matsemann 3y ago

matsemann 3y ago
Letter sent to Meta: https://www.datatilsynet.no/contentassets/36ad4a92100943439df9a8a3a7015c19/urgent-and-provisional-measures--meta_redacted.pdf https://www.datatilsynet.no/contentassets/36ad4a92100943439d... 1 mill NOK (~$100k) daily fine if breached.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Aside but: The kerning (?) used in that letter is absolutely awful.
  - patates 3y ago
    That was my first thought too but perhaps that's just part of the punishment: Having to follow that document to the unevenly spaced letter.
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    Generated by Microsoft Word, of course
  - latexr 3y ago
    Kerning¹ concerns pairs of characters; tracking² adjusts spacing over a range of them. What you’re seeing here is a consequence of text justification³ warping the text. Justification is rife with problems such as rivers⁴ and hard to get right. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_spacing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_spacing ³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_alignment#Justified https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_alignment#Justifie... ⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography)
  - TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
    It looks fine for me, but I'm on macOS, which comes with all the Windows fonts, including Times New Roman. What you're seeing might be due to your system not having a copy of that font? (PDFs can embed fonts, but don't necessarily.)
- yard2010 3y ago
  It's like imposing 5 shmeckels-a-day fine on an individual, it's a waste of time and money
  - williamdclt 3y ago
    ~$30M a month, ~$3.6B a year, I'm not sure what's Meta's annual profit but it doesn't seem like a drop in the bucket (assuming it can actually get enforced)
    - vincnetas 3y ago
      ~$3M month, ~$36M a year. Thats affordable :)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - fakedang 3y ago
      ^ He did the math /s $100k a day is $3m a month which is $36m a year. Even if it were $30m a month, it would still be $360m a year.
      - williamdclt 3y ago
        facepalm, thanks for the correction
  - Nurw 3y ago
    Norway has 5 million inhabitants, it sets the precedent for other countries to do something similar with fines scaled for their population. At that point it might start to hurt.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    Meta makes about 25% of their revenue in Europe. Norway should be about 1-2% of the European revenue, so if we take the upper end of that. Norway should be on the order of 0.5% of their total revenue. Meta's net income is about $6 billion / quarter. If we assume that revenue share translates to profit share, that means their profits from Norway are about $30 million / quarter, or about $300k / day. So the fine is about a third of their profits from Norway. That seems like a pretty significant proportion. If such sums weren't significant, they'd not bother operating in Norway in the first place.
nwoli 3y ago
Suddenly thankful for meta not releasing threads to scandinavia given that this is what they’d use my data for
pyeri 3y ago
But what if the user actually consents by clicking on that dirty yellow "I AGREE" button? That was the whole defense of tech companies when it came to pushing forced content so far.
- supermatt 3y ago
  It wont be long before consumer ToS that take 57 minutes JUST to read will be deemed unenforceable. I'm surprised that any of these contracts could have ever been deemed "considered" by the consumer party, although I appreciate there have been rulings that say otherwise.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jsnell 3y ago
I'm a bit confused by this, because it's saying that the Irish DPC found behavioral advertising to be illegal. I thought that decision was just about the use of standard contractual clauses for copying data to the US. Was there another decision on this as well, or was the scope of that decision wider than was reported? I also don't see how the CJEU decision is saying anything about whether Meta's behavioral advertising currently complies to GDPR or not. It's saying that they can't justify the data processing via legitimate interest, and it's saying that just the mere fact of using Facebook or websites isn't consent. But isn't Facebook explicitly asking for consent these days?
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  > But isn't Facebook explicitly asking for consent these days? Consent is a difficult term in software these days, because it's almost entirely driven by UX and legislation. With a default yes checkbox and ToS buried in a link most users would sign away a lifetime of indentured servitude. With a per item consent over the telephone from an operator with an overseas accent, most consumers would reject life saving medicine and vaccines because of a 1 in billion risk of an exotic harm.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    Sure, I'm not talking about an opt-out form hidden in a basement lavatory with a "beware the jaguar sign" on the door. Does Facebook really not have a standard consent prompt on first interaction with the site or the apps, requiring an explicit choice rather than defaulting, and with the same level of friction (single click) for consenting / not consenting?
    - spacebanana7 3y ago
      I imagine they have such prompts and opt outs as minimally required by local regulations, but the problem of consent still exists. Most users have no idea what cookies or behavioural advertising are and therefore can't give informed consent. It's a hard problem because policymakers (including Apple) are put into a position of making the decision for large groups of people. However, those policymakers have their own interests. Through a series of court cases and legislation, it's been decided that copyright and content moderation policies are okay to bury in ToS style documents but large parts of privacy policies aren't. I don't enjoy this status quo but it's hard to come up with a politically viable alternative.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Wow, I want to live in Norway now.
- bradleybuda 3y ago
  You can make a voluntary decision not to use these apps from anywhere in the world!
  - jen20 3y ago
    You cannot opt out of their scumbag data harvesting practices though.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    You can't opt out of certain surveillance, even by never touching the surveilling entity. But regulation can curb these practices, like how GDPR did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile
  - realusername 3y ago
    That doesn't stop facebook to track you
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    That doesn’t matter in a world full of iframes, js sdks, app/site integrations, and shadow accounts. A company with the massive reach of Facebook or Google can absolutely track you all over the web without you ever signing up for or even directly using any of their services.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    Can you also make a voluntary decision not to file taxes? https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/tax-prep-companies-taxpayer-data-google-meta/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/tax-prep-companies-taxpa...
    - kaugesaar 3y ago
manuelabeledo 3y ago
I, for one, am happy. But aside from the obvious risks to privacy, it has always surprised me that, given the recent affairs with political ads, this behavioural targeting hasn’t been banned everywhere.
- damnesian 3y ago
  US privacy support is nothing like the EU, unfortunately. This case in Norway is perfectly reasonable and its premises make sense. However primacy of corporatism makes it a much tougher row to hoe here in the states. You have to practically get nearly murdered by a stalker to see significant legal action.
- soared 3y ago
  You’re surprised the us government has caused an economic recession and capital flight by banning the primary revenue driver of some of our largest tech companies?
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    What surprises me is that, for a country that does not miss a single opportunity to flaunt its status as a democracy, its representatives do next to nothing to protect it from a well known threat.
    - soared 3y ago
      The US gov defined free speech in a broad sense so that advertising is considered a form of speech. That means political advertising actually promotes democracy rather than threaten it - from their perspective.
      - hackerlight 3y ago
        That's a non-sequitur. Just because X receives Constitutional protections does not imply that X inherently promotes democracy. To illustrate, imagine that X = me giving a speech to 1 million people urging them to abandon democracy. That speech receives Constitutional protections but that speech is not promoting democracy.
tikkun 3y ago
@dang, may be good to change the title to 'in Norway'
- shmde 3y ago
  @ someone on hn does not notify the person. Email them instead.
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    In practice it seems like dang does see most of the people who @ him, so maybe they have that string hardcoded somewhere for alerts. Or maybe he just reads all/most of the comments on all stories...
    - viraptor 3y ago
      Or people see a futile use of tag and send on the message in a way that works. (I've done that in the past)
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      > Or maybe he just reads all/most of the comments on all stories... I think it's this one.
      - SoftTalker 3y ago
        I doubt that's possible. It would be exhausting at best. But he probably does the equivalent of grepping them for [@]dang, and keywords that are typical in flamebait.
  - tikkun 3y ago
    FWIW, I emailed him at the same time I posted the comment :)
    - dang 3y ago
      Got it, thanks. In principle we could put Norway up there, but as any such ban is going to be in a particular jurisdiction, and as the domain suffix already indicates which one it is, I think it's ok to leave it implicit. It's ok for readers to work a little bit sometimes.
jqpabc123 3y ago
Can we get this banned in more countries? Is there any real evidence that personalized advertising is more effective than context based? I know from first hand experience how it can be a nuisance. I use Brave as my primary browser for it's ad blocking and anti-tracking features. I use default Firefox for the limited cases where ads might be desirable or necessary. 6 months ago, I used Firefox to research autos before finally making a purchase. To this day, I still receive auto related ads whenever I use Firefox. Lots of businesses are wasting money to push these ads toward me now based on nothing more than my personal history.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  > Is there any real evidence that personalized advertising is more effective than context based? I know from first hand experience how it can be a nuisance. I'd love for someone who works in the advertising industry to reply to this, but speaking as a layperson: if it didn't work, they wouldn't use it. Basic rule of capitalism and min / maxing. The difference has got to be statistically significant, else it wouldn't be a multi-billion industry. Mind you, it may also have been really good marketing.
  - jqpabc123 3y ago
    if it didn't work, they wouldn't use it. I'm sure it does work but the question is --- does it work *better* than simple, cheaper, more logic driven, context based advertising? I know for a fact that it doesn't work in a lot of cases. Right now, businesses out there are paying to show me auto-related ads based solely on my personal history --- and it doesn't work because I bought a car 6 months ago. "Context based" means displaying ads when I actively express an interest in a product --- like when I use a search engine to find info for a particular model or visit a web site dedicated to a particular brand. Paying for ads based on nothing but personal history is really kinda dumb --- because history can be a poor indicator of current or future interest.
    - soared 3y ago
      That does not mean for a fact that it doesn’t work. You’re in an audience group with millions of other people - the advertiser doesn’t care if x% of users already bought a car. They only care if targeting that audience is more efficient at driving purchases than other tactics (like context targeting).
dtech 3y ago
I would be so happy if can go back to a world where advertising happens purely based on the content like we've had for ages in TV/radio/magazines. The amount of privacy we've globally lost just for a few advertising dollars is atrocious. I've never been convinced that it even adds that much value for advertisers, but they must think otherwise and I guess the sheer amount of money and effort that is put into targeted advertising shows otherwise.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  > I've never been convinced that it even adds that much value for advertisers It does, particularly for small businesses. I own a small ecommerce company, and there's just no way I could profitably advertise in the way you're describing. Current digital advertising is far superior on multiple levels: - Scale: I started with a few bucks a day and can run very small tests. Neither possible with the kind of ads you're describing. - Targeting: The current digital advertising is simply much better at targeting, which means my returns are much higher because a much higher percent of people who click on it convert. As a point of comparison, I've done newsletters (and very targeted ones - I run a dog treat company, so there are some good magazines/newsletters for my audience) and they're much worse than Meta ads. - Feedback: At this point, I just won't do anything if I can't track the results. If you're investing in TV/radio/magazines, you're just guessing what works and burning a bunch of money on the stuff that doesn't.
  - balder1991 3y ago
    This is a perspective that’s not usually talked.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      Small, incredibly niche businesses come up often when we talk about ads. Probably because they are one of the few sympathetic business models that benefit from hyper-targeted ads. It is nice that people can start these incredibly niche businesses, but we have to weigh that against the fact they we’ve built a massive surveillance apparatus and also the misinformation ecosystem that grew out of Facebook is screwing up politics around the world. But ya know, dog treats, I guess it is a hard choice.
jdjdndim 3y ago
> The Norwegian Data Protection Authority imposes a ban on Meta carrying out behavioural advertising based on the surveillance and profiling of users in Norway. I skimmed through the article, but what is behavioral advertising based on the surveillance and profiling of users defined as? Almost everything I know tracks their users and usage of products/services/apps e.g. websites, apps on your phone, your phone, laptop, car etc. Even this website has the pop up about cookie tracking etc. Does this mean they are ok with collecting data on the users but not using it for advertising (or selling the data)? Are all companies involved with such business models affected or just one company singled out? Can a business offer a 10% off on first purchase or when you signup deal? If I visit Amazon or any shopping website, is it not ok to have the home page search results based on purchase and search history or it should be a static page/search results always? Can my book review blog have affiliate links to purchase the book? Are content recommendations based on usage history/likes on YouTube/Netflix/Spotify legal?
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  > The decision does not for example stop Meta from targeting advertising based on information a user put in their bio, such as place of residence, gender and age, or based on interests a user has provided themselves. I haven't read the decision itself, but it seems like it comes down to whether the input element in the UI is designed to convey persistence or not. When you type into a text input labeled "interests" and then whatever you entered continues to be shown when you look at that field again in perpetuity, persistence is sufficiently conveyed, so it can be used for advertising. When you type into a text input labeled "search" and then whatever you entered is echoed back only in that particular SERP never to be seen again after that, the UI doesn't convey persistence and therefore it can't be used for advertising purposes. If search history is conspicuous, then maybe? But as for links, I don't see how persistence could be conspicuous enough. They cause a GET rather than a POST, for one thing, which semantically means not changing state beyond access logs used for sysadmin troubleshooting. The pattern I personally hate is when nearly every item in a list has a "read more" option that merely reveals the last 5% of the content. The truncation was clearly applied only to measure read rates based on these "read more" clicks, not for lack of real estate, and therefore to gather behavioral data with some plausible deniability.
quicon 3y ago
I wonder if it would be possible to make unsolicited advertisement illegal. Something difficult to imagine in the world we live in, but I believe it could be possible: - no ads in the public space - magazines and newspapers with 2 versions: with ads (lower price) and without ads (higher price) - TV and radio: special channels only for ads - internet: banners are blank and marked as Ad, you can only see them if you click on them. Wishful thinking?
- remedan 3y ago
  The Amazon Kindle does a version of this. They offer a more expensive ad-free version and a cheaper one that displays ads on the lock screen. I have already chosen twice to pay more for the ad-free model, and I'm glad to have been given the choice.
  - LeafItAlone 3y ago
    FWIW, I have one of the the ad version Kindles and rarely notice the ads. And the ones I have seen are not even close to anything I would want.
- user3939382 3y ago
  As far as public ads they're doing exactly that in Sao Paulo Brazil. I love the idea.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  'no ads in the public space' seems to me like one of those well-intentioned ideas that sounds good but has a lot of edge cases. What about if I am a plumber and I have my business logo on the side of my truck. Is that advertising? What if I have a sign in front of my shop? If someone really likes skittles and they mention that (unpaid) on a TV show is that advertising? What if skittles sends me some free skittles after, is it retroactively advertising now? What if I have a negative experience with one provider that ends up driving business to a different provider when I relay it. Is that advertising? It seems like instead of starting from an overly broad position the best thing to do would be to start specifically. We could start by moving content online back into being protocol-based instead of walled gardens. Let me subscribe or not subscribe to whatever content I want without being beholden to a platform.
siraben 3y ago
If you set your VPN location to Norway now, is this likely to force your ads to not be based on behavioral advertising?
Pxtl 3y ago
Honestly, I'm surprised that sites invest so heavily in this approach because it leads to your advertisers trolling your users, and is basically sacrificing the actual experience of the site and the access to advertisers that the users might actually possibly buy products from. "Here's a long weird video that promises a big payoff in the end... and then fails to deliver. The user is interested because they want to see how it ends, but they didn't actually like it. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that." "Here's an incredibly confusing graphic. The user paused to figure out what the hell is going on. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that." "Here's a poorly cropped image of something possibly very strange. The user clicks through to find nothing related to that image after the clickthrough. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that."
dcsommer 3y ago
I'm just as concerned about behavioral targeting for non-advertising content. It seems weird to disallow targeting for one type of content and not another. Behavioral targeting of the majority of content (advertising is a minority) is increasingly the norm, and it is what is making society more stratified and balkanized.
michaelcampbell 3y ago
...in Norway.
cdme 3y ago
If you look at the information collected by any of Meta’s apps do they really need more information on their users than their users’ local tax authority, for example, might have?
ineedasername 3y ago
>[regarding personal information e.g., demographics, political beliefs] ...the mere fact that a user visits websites or apps that may reveal such information does not in any way mean that the user manifestly makes public his or her data Part of the underlying reasoning, given in the court decision that prompted this ban[1]. I think this gets at the core of what makes such data collection & utilization in targeted advertisements so problematic. Also of interest from the same, regarding processing of any data in general without explicit consent: >only on condition that the data processing is objectively indispensable such that the main subject matter of the contract cannot be achieved... Where subject matter means the purpose for which the user is using the site. And then this: >the personalised advertising by which the online social network Facebook finances its activity, cannot justify [data processing] ...in the absence of the data subject’s consent Basically, "But that's how we keep the lights on" is not sufficient to justify using this data without consent. I can't easily think of a product or service that could not function, as a matter of practicality, unless it used my data without my consent. If a product or service cannot function without such data, it seems like that would be pretty clear by the nature of the product? Are there counter examples to this where the exception might apply? [1] https://www.datatilsynet.no/en/news/aktuelle-nyheter-2023/temporary-ban-of-behavioural-advertising-on-facebook-and-instagram/ https://www.datatilsynet.no/en/news/aktuelle-nyheter-2023/te...
- jsnell 3y ago
  > Are there counter examples to this where the exception might apply? The "legitimate interest" basis for processing data is meant for things like security, fraud prevention, etc. So more concretely, credit card buyers can't to opt out of data processing for fraud prevention, because that's what every fraudster would do. Or as another example, sites need to be able to log data like IP addresses for a reasonable time to figure out if they're under a Dos attack, or a password stuffing attack, etc, and to block abusive IPs. These can't require consent, because an attacker will not give consent. (And you can't just block everyone that withholds consent either.) Legitimate interest is definitel not supposed to be used as "it's our legitimate interest to make as much money as possible", and it's kind of crazy how many companies have tried that. There's just no ambiguity to that. But there is various interesting and ambiguous middle ground. Is a site allowed to claim legitimate interest in order to use Recaptcha to protect their login form? It is necessary to protect that login page one way or another. But there could be other ways to protect it with a smaller data footprint. Those ways might not be as effective, or they might not be more expensive, but obviously the law doesn't specify any kind of crisp criteria for just what tradeoffs are acceptable.
beginning_end 3y ago
Am I the only one who thinks ads (including non-tracking/privacy-respecting ads) are universally bad & should be regulated much harder than today? And mostly helps bad products and large companies?

208 points by matsemann 3y ago

Letter sent to Meta: https://www.datatilsynet.no/contentassets/36ad4a92100943439df9a8a3a7015c19/urgent-and-provisional-measures--meta_redacted.pdf https://www.datatilsynet.no/contentassets/36ad4a92100943439d... 1 mill NOK (~$100k) daily fine if breached.

avgcorrection 3y ago
Aside but: The kerning (?) used in that letter is absolutely awful.
- patates 3y ago
  That was my first thought too but perhaps that's just part of the punishment: Having to follow that document to the unevenly spaced letter.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  Generated by Microsoft Word, of course
- latexr 3y ago
  Kerning¹ concerns pairs of characters; tracking² adjusts spacing over a range of them. What you’re seeing here is a consequence of text justification³ warping the text. Justification is rife with problems such as rivers⁴ and hard to get right. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_spacing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_spacing ³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_alignment#Justified https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_alignment#Justifie... ⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography)
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
  It looks fine for me, but I'm on macOS, which comes with all the Windows fonts, including Times New Roman. What you're seeing might be due to your system not having a copy of that font? (PDFs can embed fonts, but don't necessarily.)
yard2010 3y ago
It's like imposing 5 shmeckels-a-day fine on an individual, it's a waste of time and money
- williamdclt 3y ago
  ~$30M a month, ~$3.6B a year, I'm not sure what's Meta's annual profit but it doesn't seem like a drop in the bucket (assuming it can actually get enforced)
  - vincnetas 3y ago
    ~$3M month, ~$36M a year. Thats affordable :)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - fakedang 3y ago
    ^ He did the math /s $100k a day is $3m a month which is $36m a year. Even if it were $30m a month, it would still be $360m a year.
    - williamdclt 3y ago
      facepalm, thanks for the correction
- Nurw 3y ago
  Norway has 5 million inhabitants, it sets the precedent for other countries to do something similar with fines scaled for their population. At that point it might start to hurt.
- jsnell 3y ago
  Meta makes about 25% of their revenue in Europe. Norway should be about 1-2% of the European revenue, so if we take the upper end of that. Norway should be on the order of 0.5% of their total revenue. Meta's net income is about $6 billion / quarter. If we assume that revenue share translates to profit share, that means their profits from Norway are about $30 million / quarter, or about $300k / day. So the fine is about a third of their profits from Norway. That seems like a pretty significant proportion. If such sums weren't significant, they'd not bother operating in Norway in the first place.

nwoli 3y ago

Suddenly thankful for meta not releasing threads to scandinavia given that this is what they’d use my data for

pyeri 3y ago

But what if the user actually consents by clicking on that dirty yellow "I AGREE" button? That was the whole defense of tech companies when it came to pushing forced content so far.

supermatt 3y ago
It wont be long before consumer ToS that take 57 minutes JUST to read will be deemed unenforceable. I'm surprised that any of these contracts could have ever been deemed "considered" by the consumer party, although I appreciate there have been rulings that say otherwise.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jsnell 3y ago

I'm a bit confused by this, because it's saying that the Irish DPC found behavioral advertising to be illegal. I thought that decision was just about the use of standard contractual clauses for copying data to the US. Was there another decision on this as well, or was the scope of that decision wider than was reported? I also don't see how the CJEU decision is saying anything about whether Meta's behavioral advertising currently complies to GDPR or not. It's saying that they can't justify the data processing via legitimate interest, and it's saying that just the mere fact of using Facebook or websites isn't consent. But isn't Facebook explicitly asking for consent these days?

spacebanana7 3y ago
> But isn't Facebook explicitly asking for consent these days? Consent is a difficult term in software these days, because it's almost entirely driven by UX and legislation. With a default yes checkbox and ToS buried in a link most users would sign away a lifetime of indentured servitude. With a per item consent over the telephone from an operator with an overseas accent, most consumers would reject life saving medicine and vaccines because of a 1 in billion risk of an exotic harm.
- jsnell 3y ago
  Sure, I'm not talking about an opt-out form hidden in a basement lavatory with a "beware the jaguar sign" on the door. Does Facebook really not have a standard consent prompt on first interaction with the site or the apps, requiring an explicit choice rather than defaulting, and with the same level of friction (single click) for consenting / not consenting?
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    I imagine they have such prompts and opt outs as minimally required by local regulations, but the problem of consent still exists. Most users have no idea what cookies or behavioural advertising are and therefore can't give informed consent. It's a hard problem because policymakers (including Apple) are put into a position of making the decision for large groups of people. However, those policymakers have their own interests. Through a series of court cases and legislation, it's been decided that copyright and content moderation policies are okay to bury in ToS style documents but large parts of privacy policies aren't. I don't enjoy this status quo but it's hard to come up with a politically viable alternative.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

Wow, I want to live in Norway now.

bradleybuda 3y ago
You can make a voluntary decision not to use these apps from anywhere in the world!
- jen20 3y ago
  You cannot opt out of their scumbag data harvesting practices though.
- npteljes 3y ago
  You can't opt out of certain surveillance, even by never touching the surveilling entity. But regulation can curb these practices, like how GDPR did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile
- realusername 3y ago
  That doesn't stop facebook to track you
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  That doesn’t matter in a world full of iframes, js sdks, app/site integrations, and shadow accounts. A company with the massive reach of Facebook or Google can absolutely track you all over the web without you ever signing up for or even directly using any of their services.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  Can you also make a voluntary decision not to file taxes? https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/tax-prep-companies-taxpayer-data-google-meta/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/tax-prep-companies-taxpa...
  - kaugesaar 3y ago

manuelabeledo 3y ago

I, for one, am happy. But aside from the obvious risks to privacy, it has always surprised me that, given the recent affairs with political ads, this behavioural targeting hasn’t been banned everywhere.

damnesian 3y ago
US privacy support is nothing like the EU, unfortunately. This case in Norway is perfectly reasonable and its premises make sense. However primacy of corporatism makes it a much tougher row to hoe here in the states. You have to practically get nearly murdered by a stalker to see significant legal action.
soared 3y ago
You’re surprised the us government has caused an economic recession and capital flight by banning the primary revenue driver of some of our largest tech companies?
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  What surprises me is that, for a country that does not miss a single opportunity to flaunt its status as a democracy, its representatives do next to nothing to protect it from a well known threat.
  - soared 3y ago
    The US gov defined free speech in a broad sense so that advertising is considered a form of speech. That means political advertising actually promotes democracy rather than threaten it - from their perspective.
    - hackerlight 3y ago
      That's a non-sequitur. Just because X receives Constitutional protections does not imply that X inherently promotes democracy. To illustrate, imagine that X = me giving a speech to 1 million people urging them to abandon democracy. That speech receives Constitutional protections but that speech is not promoting democracy.

tikkun 3y ago

@dang, may be good to change the title to 'in Norway'

shmde 3y ago
@ someone on hn does not notify the person. Email them instead.
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  In practice it seems like dang does see most of the people who @ him, so maybe they have that string hardcoded somewhere for alerts. Or maybe he just reads all/most of the comments on all stories...
  - viraptor 3y ago
    Or people see a futile use of tag and send on the message in a way that works. (I've done that in the past)
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    > Or maybe he just reads all/most of the comments on all stories... I think it's this one.
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      I doubt that's possible. It would be exhausting at best. But he probably does the equivalent of grepping them for [@]dang, and keywords that are typical in flamebait.
- tikkun 3y ago
  FWIW, I emailed him at the same time I posted the comment :)
  - dang 3y ago
    Got it, thanks. In principle we could put Norway up there, but as any such ban is going to be in a particular jurisdiction, and as the domain suffix already indicates which one it is, I think it's ok to leave it implicit. It's ok for readers to work a little bit sometimes.

jqpabc123 3y ago

Can we get this banned in more countries? Is there any real evidence that personalized advertising is more effective than context based? I know from first hand experience how it can be a nuisance. I use Brave as my primary browser for it's ad blocking and anti-tracking features. I use default Firefox for the limited cases where ads might be desirable or necessary. 6 months ago, I used Firefox to research autos before finally making a purchase. To this day, I still receive auto related ads whenever I use Firefox. Lots of businesses are wasting money to push these ads toward me now based on nothing more than my personal history.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
> Is there any real evidence that personalized advertising is more effective than context based? I know from first hand experience how it can be a nuisance. I'd love for someone who works in the advertising industry to reply to this, but speaking as a layperson: if it didn't work, they wouldn't use it. Basic rule of capitalism and min / maxing. The difference has got to be statistically significant, else it wouldn't be a multi-billion industry. Mind you, it may also have been really good marketing.
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  if it didn't work, they wouldn't use it. I'm sure it does work but the question is --- does it work *better* than simple, cheaper, more logic driven, context based advertising? I know for a fact that it doesn't work in a lot of cases. Right now, businesses out there are paying to show me auto-related ads based solely on my personal history --- and it doesn't work because I bought a car 6 months ago. "Context based" means displaying ads when I actively express an interest in a product --- like when I use a search engine to find info for a particular model or visit a web site dedicated to a particular brand. Paying for ads based on nothing but personal history is really kinda dumb --- because history can be a poor indicator of current or future interest.
  - soared 3y ago
    That does not mean for a fact that it doesn’t work. You’re in an audience group with millions of other people - the advertiser doesn’t care if x% of users already bought a car. They only care if targeting that audience is more efficient at driving purchases than other tactics (like context targeting).

dtech 3y ago

I would be so happy if can go back to a world where advertising happens purely based on the content like we've had for ages in TV/radio/magazines. The amount of privacy we've globally lost just for a few advertising dollars is atrocious. I've never been convinced that it even adds that much value for advertisers, but they must think otherwise and I guess the sheer amount of money and effort that is put into targeted advertising shows otherwise.

idopmstuff 3y ago
> I've never been convinced that it even adds that much value for advertisers It does, particularly for small businesses. I own a small ecommerce company, and there's just no way I could profitably advertise in the way you're describing. Current digital advertising is far superior on multiple levels: - Scale: I started with a few bucks a day and can run very small tests. Neither possible with the kind of ads you're describing. - Targeting: The current digital advertising is simply much better at targeting, which means my returns are much higher because a much higher percent of people who click on it convert. As a point of comparison, I've done newsletters (and very targeted ones - I run a dog treat company, so there are some good magazines/newsletters for my audience) and they're much worse than Meta ads. - Feedback: At this point, I just won't do anything if I can't track the results. If you're investing in TV/radio/magazines, you're just guessing what works and burning a bunch of money on the stuff that doesn't.
- balder1991 3y ago
  This is a perspective that’s not usually talked.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Small, incredibly niche businesses come up often when we talk about ads. Probably because they are one of the few sympathetic business models that benefit from hyper-targeted ads. It is nice that people can start these incredibly niche businesses, but we have to weigh that against the fact they we’ve built a massive surveillance apparatus and also the misinformation ecosystem that grew out of Facebook is screwing up politics around the world. But ya know, dog treats, I guess it is a hard choice.

jdjdndim 3y ago

> The Norwegian Data Protection Authority imposes a ban on Meta carrying out behavioural advertising based on the surveillance and profiling of users in Norway. I skimmed through the article, but what is behavioral advertising based on the surveillance and profiling of users defined as? Almost everything I know tracks their users and usage of products/services/apps e.g. websites, apps on your phone, your phone, laptop, car etc. Even this website has the pop up about cookie tracking etc. Does this mean they are ok with collecting data on the users but not using it for advertising (or selling the data)? Are all companies involved with such business models affected or just one company singled out? Can a business offer a 10% off on first purchase or when you signup deal? If I visit Amazon or any shopping website, is it not ok to have the home page search results based on purchase and search history or it should be a static page/search results always? Can my book review blog have affiliate links to purchase the book? Are content recommendations based on usage history/likes on YouTube/Netflix/Spotify legal?

hunter2_ 3y ago
> The decision does not for example stop Meta from targeting advertising based on information a user put in their bio, such as place of residence, gender and age, or based on interests a user has provided themselves. I haven't read the decision itself, but it seems like it comes down to whether the input element in the UI is designed to convey persistence or not. When you type into a text input labeled "interests" and then whatever you entered continues to be shown when you look at that field again in perpetuity, persistence is sufficiently conveyed, so it can be used for advertising. When you type into a text input labeled "search" and then whatever you entered is echoed back only in that particular SERP never to be seen again after that, the UI doesn't convey persistence and therefore it can't be used for advertising purposes. If search history is conspicuous, then maybe? But as for links, I don't see how persistence could be conspicuous enough. They cause a GET rather than a POST, for one thing, which semantically means not changing state beyond access logs used for sysadmin troubleshooting. The pattern I personally hate is when nearly every item in a list has a "read more" option that merely reveals the last 5% of the content. The truncation was clearly applied only to measure read rates based on these "read more" clicks, not for lack of real estate, and therefore to gather behavioral data with some plausible deniability.

quicon 3y ago

I wonder if it would be possible to make unsolicited advertisement illegal. Something difficult to imagine in the world we live in, but I believe it could be possible: - no ads in the public space - magazines and newspapers with 2 versions: with ads (lower price) and without ads (higher price) - TV and radio: special channels only for ads - internet: banners are blank and marked as Ad, you can only see them if you click on them. Wishful thinking?

remedan 3y ago
The Amazon Kindle does a version of this. They offer a more expensive ad-free version and a cheaper one that displays ads on the lock screen. I have already chosen twice to pay more for the ad-free model, and I'm glad to have been given the choice.
- LeafItAlone 3y ago
  FWIW, I have one of the the ad version Kindles and rarely notice the ads. And the ones I have seen are not even close to anything I would want.
user3939382 3y ago
As far as public ads they're doing exactly that in Sao Paulo Brazil. I love the idea.
idiotsecant 3y ago
'no ads in the public space' seems to me like one of those well-intentioned ideas that sounds good but has a lot of edge cases. What about if I am a plumber and I have my business logo on the side of my truck. Is that advertising? What if I have a sign in front of my shop? If someone really likes skittles and they mention that (unpaid) on a TV show is that advertising? What if skittles sends me some free skittles after, is it retroactively advertising now? What if I have a negative experience with one provider that ends up driving business to a different provider when I relay it. Is that advertising? It seems like instead of starting from an overly broad position the best thing to do would be to start specifically. We could start by moving content online back into being protocol-based instead of walled gardens. Let me subscribe or not subscribe to whatever content I want without being beholden to a platform.

siraben 3y ago

If you set your VPN location to Norway now, is this likely to force your ads to not be based on behavioral advertising?

Pxtl 3y ago

Honestly, I'm surprised that sites invest so heavily in this approach because it leads to your advertisers trolling your users, and is basically sacrificing the actual experience of the site and the access to advertisers that the users might actually possibly buy products from. "Here's a long weird video that promises a big payoff in the end... and then fails to deliver. The user is interested because they want to see how it ends, but they didn't actually like it. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that." "Here's an incredibly confusing graphic. The user paused to figure out what the hell is going on. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that." "Here's a poorly cropped image of something possibly very strange. The user clicks through to find nothing related to that image after the clickthrough. Clearly the user enjoys this content and we should show them more of that."

dcsommer 3y ago

I'm just as concerned about behavioral targeting for non-advertising content. It seems weird to disallow targeting for one type of content and not another. Behavioral targeting of the majority of content (advertising is a minority) is increasingly the norm, and it is what is making society more stratified and balkanized.

michaelcampbell 3y ago

...in Norway.

cdme 3y ago

If you look at the information collected by any of Meta’s apps do they really need more information on their users than their users’ local tax authority, for example, might have?

ineedasername 3y ago

>[regarding personal information e.g., demographics, political beliefs] ...the mere fact that a user visits websites or apps that may reveal such information does not in any way mean that the user manifestly makes public his or her data Part of the underlying reasoning, given in the court decision that prompted this ban[1]. I think this gets at the core of what makes such data collection & utilization in targeted advertisements so problematic. Also of interest from the same, regarding processing of any data in general without explicit consent: >only on condition that the data processing is objectively indispensable such that the main subject matter of the contract cannot be achieved... Where subject matter means the purpose for which the user is using the site. And then this: >the personalised advertising by which the online social network Facebook finances its activity, cannot justify [data processing] ...in the absence of the data subject’s consent Basically, "But that's how we keep the lights on" is not sufficient to justify using this data without consent. I can't easily think of a product or service that could not function, as a matter of practicality, unless it used my data without my consent. If a product or service cannot function without such data, it seems like that would be pretty clear by the nature of the product? Are there counter examples to this where the exception might apply? [1] https://www.datatilsynet.no/en/news/aktuelle-nyheter-2023/temporary-ban-of-behavioural-advertising-on-facebook-and-instagram/ https://www.datatilsynet.no/en/news/aktuelle-nyheter-2023/te...

jsnell 3y ago
> Are there counter examples to this where the exception might apply? The "legitimate interest" basis for processing data is meant for things like security, fraud prevention, etc. So more concretely, credit card buyers can't to opt out of data processing for fraud prevention, because that's what every fraudster would do. Or as another example, sites need to be able to log data like IP addresses for a reasonable time to figure out if they're under a Dos attack, or a password stuffing attack, etc, and to block abusive IPs. These can't require consent, because an attacker will not give consent. (And you can't just block everyone that withholds consent either.) Legitimate interest is definitel not supposed to be used as "it's our legitimate interest to make as much money as possible", and it's kind of crazy how many companies have tried that. There's just no ambiguity to that. But there is various interesting and ambiguous middle ground. Is a site allowed to claim legitimate interest in order to use Recaptcha to protect their login form? It is necessary to protect that login page one way or another. But there could be other ways to protect it with a smaller data footprint. Those ways might not be as effective, or they might not be more expensive, but obviously the law doesn't specify any kind of crisp criteria for just what tradeoffs are acceptable.

beginning_end 3y ago

Am I the only one who thinks ads (including non-tracking/privacy-respecting ads) are universally bad & should be regulated much harder than today? And mostly helps bad products and large companies?