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... for no reason , to no effect, except the destruction of the entire eu online advertising industry
by seydor 3y ago
... for no reason , to no effect, except the destruction of the entire eu online advertising industry
- jacquesm 3y agoThat sounds like an ok reason to me. But I'll settle for 'damage them to the point that they come to their senses'.
- brap 3y agoEU is a huge fan of shooting itself in the foot with useless regulations, unable to think 1-2 steps ahead. Waiting for someone to tell you why "the destruction of the entire eu online advertising industry" is actually a good thing in their view.
- Pannoniae 3y agoWell, it would be a net positive for society if the advertising industry disappeared, so at least this move is not short-sighted at all.
- ponderings 3y agoWe wouldn't know which products to buy! We would all be standing there at the entrance of the supermarket, hungry but not knowing what to buy. We would wait for that old lady then follow her around talking amongst our own (on our phone ofc), what is she doing? What would she be up to with that? Chat GPT would have to baby us though the apple pie from scratch as the only one who remembers all those marvels of SEO recipe websites from back in the days.
- EMIRELADERO 3y agoIt's not "online advertising", it's just behavioral. There's nothing preventing corporations from advertising the old-fashioned way, like they did on TV, radio, newspapers, etc. Online != behavioral
- seydor 3y agoall advertising was (and is) always behavioral
- EMIRELADERO 3y agoNot to the extent where advertisers had this level of fine-grained information about their target though, which is the whole point of contention.
- seydor 3y agothey always did, to the extent that was allowed by the tech of the time
- EMIRELADERO 3y agoAnd the tech changed and suddenly there was the privacy issue. That's... the whole point. Quantitative changes enabled by technology can present qualitative problems.
- nobody9999 3y ago>they always did, to the extent that was allowed by the tech of the time As someone who spent five years doing advertising market research, and whose parents each spent 30+ years doing the same prior to ubiquitous internet use, I call bullshit on that statement. While there certainly were efforts (with millions spent collecting data) to identify market segments and emotional triggers to better target market products/services (cf. BSB GlobalScan as an example), the idea that it was the right of ad sellers to monitor everyone's activities as their right in order to "target" advertising was never an option, nor was there ever any push to do so. Convincing folks to participate in telephone/mall intercept/door-to-door surveys was used to identify consumer preferences and advertising efficacy. No one ever asked (or did so without asking) to go through a consumer's mail, personal communications or effects as a method to determine how to target ads. Since all those things are pretty much de rigueur these days, I'd say that's not a just difference of degree, but a completely different mechanism for gathering information about consumers. And just because it wasn't possible to snoop through (without a potential breaking/entering and/or burglary charge) the private documents and communications of consumers, doesn't mean those folks would have done so if they could. So yes, there's a big difference between the market research (surveys, focus groups, etc.) done in the past and the blatant spying/snooping on people's private documents and communications we see now. You're making an assertion which doesn't match the facts. Feel free to disagree, but I was there, and that business paid for my housing, food, clothes and everything else for more than twenty-five years -- both as the child of marketers and as a marketer myself. I'd also point out that the Advertising Market Research industry was a very small group of people (perhaps a thousand employed by ad agencies/large corporations and a few thousand more employed by market research supply houses and interviewing/focus group companies.) and, as such, if there was a market for breaking into people's houses and rifling through their papers/mail, wiretapping their phones, etc., I'd know about it.
- seydor 3y agoyou didnt have to wait long
- laserdancepony 3y agoThat's what you get for making the world a worse place.
- master-lincoln 3y agoIsn't the destruction of advertising (not just online) a good thing? It's skewing markets by creating demands that were not there before, but only for the big players who can afford to be in peoples faces everywhere. Advertising is often misinforming (or not informing) people about the products/services. It promotes a throwaway society where resources are wasted.
- someplaceguy 3y agoExactly... As a general rule, all other things being equal, the more informed the participants in a market are, the better the efficiency of the market. Advertising negatively affects markets because it leads people to make decisions based on things that are not necessarily in their interests, i.e. it leads people to make more uninformed (or misinformed) decisions. In effect, it's basically exploiting a market externality: vulnerabilities in human psychology. I mean, this is not always true. Sometimes, you might become aware of a great product or service due to advertising. But I am entirely convinced that, in general, the negative effects hugely, hugely outweigh the occasional benefit, just by observing how people usually make their buying decisions in their day-to-day lives (including me, I'm not immune to that!).
- seydor 3y agoIt s surreal to read this comment in a SV VC supported forum Like anti smoking posters in a phillip morris factory
- piaste 3y agoThat's a brilliant analogy in a way you probably didn't intend.
- pohuing 3y agoSounds great!
- throw9away6 3y agoYeah but probably an industry we can live without
- someplaceguy 3y ago> except the destruction of the entire eu online advertising industry Yes, but what are the negative effects?
- seydor 3y agoi mentioned the destruction of the eu advertising market. as a consequence tech in europe remains unfunded and therefore nonexistent (because the silicon valley machine literally runs on advertising money)
- mdhb 3y agoAlmost like they are trying to find alternative funding models for the web here… I fail to see that as anything other than a positive.
- seydor 3y agohint: there aren't . the web is like all the media before it
- tsimionescu 3y agoAll the media that never tracked its users, yes.
- seydor 3y agopeople should remember that advertising was equally vilified at all times , whether it was on TV or print or radio. But at the time the EU was wise enough not to destroy its media economy. This time it's different
- simiones 3y agoSure, and rightly so, but still there needs to be some limit to how much the advertising industry is permitted to do.
- bckygldstn 3y agoTo make life better for people: the end to which economic prosperity is the means.
- EMIRELADERO 3y agoWhat do you mean "no reason"? The reason is that the user's data privacy rights come first. If interests collide, privacy must come out on top. I'm curious on how you could have missed this ideological position that powers those regulations after years of headlines after headlines about the topic.
- seydor 3y agoeuropeans did not go to the streets because they were afraid of advertising. politicians ran with it because it sounds good instead they go to the streets because of the awful economy, unemployment, inaccessible housing. Still waiting for a pan-european affordable housing regulation (not gonna happen because EU is run by the boomers)
- EMIRELADERO 3y agoHousing is a local, or at least federal matter. EU is about interstate commerce. The advertising/consent regulations are about commerce so it makes sense. Pan-EU housing regulations wouldn't as those are typically in the domain of each country/locality.
- seydor 3y agoeu already affects the housing market with green regulations and housing standards, energy standards, policy on residence visas etc. and communications was not among its mandates either
- everdrive 3y agoYou’re really not in a position to speak for all Europeans. You’re painting a complex issue with a broad brush, and of course painting it in such a way that it supports your position.
- seydor 3y agoYou don't want to go there. EU is not in position to speak about all Europeans either.
- rolodato 3y agoGood riddance. Hope it extends beyond the EU as well.
- seydor 3y agoit will not, because that is unsustainable. but we can shove our head even deeper in the sand and hope so
- danbruc 3y agoWhy is it not sustainable?
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoBecause he probably works for a tech company who's main revenue is advertising.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tsimionescu 3y agoIt's unsustainable to do advertising while maintaing user privacy? Someone tell the whole advertising industry from 1950 to 2000 or so.
- FredPret 3y agoIt's much less efficient to do mass ads than targeted ads. Giving a huge advantage to entrenched firms, and cutting off small startups. I guess that's what the EU wants though - protecting it's existing elites through exorbitant income taxes and regulations like these that favours big companies.
- Barrin92 3y agoevery regulation favours big companies in the trivial sense that there's a non zero cost to comply with any rule. However this is hardly a reason to not have rules, we also don't let startup companies throw waste into the river. Smaller companies aren't somehow inherently virtuous, if they can only exist by violating user privacy even more so than large companies, I'd rather deal with large companies. Small companies aren't an end in itself. Banking is another good example of this. Canada has five big, heavily regulated banks and has not had one bank failure in a century. In the US tax payers bail out SV bank
- slater 3y agoFound the online marketing person! And there are plenty of reasons.
- seydor 3y agoif you re in tech your salary depends on advertising money somewhere along the chain
- someplaceguy 3y ago> if you re in tech your salary depends on advertising money somewhere along the chain You say that like it's a good thing.
- seydor 3y agowithout online media, computers would be in the sector of scientific instruments
- someplaceguy 3y ago> without online media, computers would be in the sector of scientific instruments Computers were already common household items before massive online advertising even existed. So forgive me if I don't find your arguments convincing (and it's not just because of this specific argument).
- JohnFen 3y agoSo your assertion is that there would be no online media in the absence of behavioral advertising? I rather suspect that's incorrect, for two reasons. We had plenty of online media before online advertising existed at all, and there are many ways of doing advertising without it being behavioral.
- seydor 3y agoNot plenty and nowhere near as popular
- dale_glass 3y agoI'm not seeing the benefit from behavioral advertising. I should be an easy person to target -- I buy techy stuff that fits into pretty neat categories. Yet Amazon seems to be completely unable to figure out some very simple patterns, like that if you're not a company, you're probably not looking to start a collection of printers, cell phones, UPSes or monitors, and that buying one is a sign of that you're done with the product category for a while.
- rollcat 3y agoI wouldn't mind that, especially wherever behavioural profiling is involved. You'd call a person wearing a tinfoil hat a crazy, yet we are tolerating what effectively could be considered an effort at mass scale, targeted mind control. It's obnoxious on the less competent end of the spectrum, and an outright violation on the other. I used to consider advertisements an intellectual equivalent of fast-food; I think it's gone far worse than that, and as individuals, we are poorly equipped to stand up to it. I do understand businesses rely on advertising to stay alive, but without regulation, there just seems to be no end to how much abuse adtech is ready to inflict upon us.
- bigbillheck 3y ago> the destruction of the entire eu online advertising industry Sounds like a good start to me.