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> The Norwegian Data Protection Authority imposes a ban on Meta carrying out behavioural advertising based on the surveillance and profiling of users in Norway.

> 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.

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.