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EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

697 points by pbrw 3y ago

jqpabc123 3y ago
Personalized advertising should never have been allowed without a specific opt-in. I know lots of advertisers think they can't live without it --- because promoters have told them so.
- thorncorona 3y ago
  Observationally, facebook ads are the best I’ve seen by a long shot.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Cambridge Analytica and countless scammers agree with you, but the world was just fine before facebook ads and there are plenty of other mediums through which people could continue to manipulate you if facebook ads went away entirely now. Limiting facebook to just non-personalized ads seems entirely harmless.
  - yoz-y 3y ago
    Instagram ads is why I started going to live concerts again. Were they not personalised it wouldn't have happened.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 3y ago
      I haven't seen any personalized ad for the past 5 years (at least) and yet I'm discovering great artists/bands every now and then. Advertising is a type of "content", and people like content-, but how one can say it's better than the content recommended by people not paid to promote it? One, the more people are used to get their content via ads (instead of share by friends), the least they'll be incentivize to share good content. Two, platforms that are paid by advertisers are certainly incentivize to have the best content in ads vs non ads. Why feature a video in your feed but they can be paid to push the same content from an advertiser? There are so many reasons why "some ads are great" says nothing about ads being a good thing.
- mantas 3y ago
  Best one I heard was people claiming products will be more expensive if personalized advertising is banned. Because then it’ll cost more to promote them.
  - repelsteeltje 3y ago
    Interesting line of reasoning. :-) That would imply, that (globally) we spent significantly [EDIT: remove -less-, insert:] more on advertising before the advent of personalized targeting.
    - smeej 3y ago
      I think it's the other way around. If we go back to the situation in the past, price goes up, not down.
      - repelsteeltje 3y ago
        Correct, my bad. Got confused while writing by the observation that ad expenditure is rising year after year. So clearly, the "savings" allegedly attributed to personalized targeting have not translated to advertisers.
    - spacebanana7 3y ago
      Not necessarily, cost reductions can increase, decrease or have no effect the total expenditure on goods. The total effect is quite ambiguous depending on the income and substitution effects.
      - aesh2Xa1 3y ago
        I agree. I've always heard "charge what the market will bear." Why would a reduction in advertising costs equate to lower consumer pricing — if there's a better margin to be had instead?
        hirako2000 3y ago
- repelsteeltje 3y ago
  > Personalized advertising should never have been allowed without a specific opt-in. As a thought experiment, let's go back to the time when the internet existed, adds existed, but targeted adds were in their infancy. Now let's imagine they were launched as some sort of op-in Google BETA this in early 0s fashion. Assuming, for a moment that the targeting quality was on part — would that have been a success? Ie. would the user adoption have been significantly higher Apple's Tracking Transparancy Policy? (Considering that consent was involved before distrust accumulated in the following decades as result of forcefully surveiling, fingerprinting, third-party cookiea, facebook shenanigans, appstore malware, supercookies, etc.)
  - smeej 3y ago
    I don't think it would have been this "successful," but remember how long ago Facebook came out. In 2004, if someone had said something on the internet could "magically" surface all the stuff you really might be interested in, just by opting in and clicking a button? And it had worked really well? I think tons of people would have opted in. Back then, before smartphones, before carrying a device in your pocket that can track your every move, it wouldn't have seemed nearly as creepy. It's actually kind of amusing to me that Apple is the one acting like it's protecting people's data. Without Apple's invention of the iPhone, which doesn't have to be built to collect as much data about its use as it does, there wouldn't be nearly as much data for these apps to collect!
    - wh0knows 3y ago
      Apple conveniently takes the public stance of user protection, but their real position is that they want to be the only ones who can collect and use their users data.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    Early 0s? Presumably not since at the time, doubleclick (now Google) had the same reputation Google has now. At the time, adware and spyware were malware, and there was an industry around anti-malware tools like adaware and spybot: search and destroy. Among other things, IIRC those tools would delete your doubleclick cookies. The distrust was immediate, and if anything people have given up and grown used to malware being part of the OS now.
- diego_sandoval 3y ago
  You specifically opt-in when you create your account on IG/FB.
  - xxs 3y ago
    this is not the case in the EU at any rate whatsoever
  - RamblingCTO 3y ago
    No you don't. They track you even without an account. See the person reconstructing this with his wife a few comments up.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  > because promoters have told them so. No, it's because they want to make as much money as possible. If promoters told them to turn off all ads, they wouldn't. They don't care about promoters. They care about money.
  - jqpabc123 3y ago
    They don't care about promoters. They care about money. The promoters of personalized advertising care about money too. The auction systems they promote can be easily manipulated to maximize profits. And since these systems are "black boxes", advertisers themselves really have no way to know if they are being manipulated or not. The only insight they have is what the promoters tell them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
thorncorona 3y ago
Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads. Lots of websites have marginal utility, but can be paid for with ads. And those websites will disappear when CPM rates go down the drain.
- buro9 3y ago
  but yet, when we pay for services (Google Suite) and websites... we still get adverts we're not incentivised to pay as our data is mined and sold anyway, our attention still fought for
  - thorncorona 3y ago
    For larger companies I think that’s a fair assessment, but there’s a lot of small websites that I only use one or twice a year which are very useful, like camerasize.com, which otherwise I wouldn’t pay for.
    - vextea 3y ago
      Sites like camerasize could feasibly target based on the niche they fill rather than showing generic "personalized" ads. There are ad networks out there that do this, e.g. Carbon.
- goodpoint 3y ago
  > And those websites will disappear when CPM rates go down the drain. Good!
- Barrin92 3y ago
  >Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads pretty easy if you publicly fund it. My vision of Europe is every town, every city putting some money into building out federated and decentralized systems, supported by small and middle-sized business. Effectively the same way radio or public broadcasting is already supported in say Germany or the UK. We should go all the way and just rid ourselves of Meta, Tencent et al, sadly there's probably not enough vision for something like it.
leksak 3y ago
> Meta has stated that it had already announced plans to provide users in the EU and EEA with an opportunity to provide consent and will introduce a subscription model in November to comply with regulatory requirements This effectively means then that if you are in the EU and you'd want to use either Facebook or Instagram you'd have to pay for a subscription then because they presumably won't offer the free-service without personalized ads and since the law prohibits them from doing that then the only way to use either service will be to pay for it..?
- startages 3y ago
  Exactly, and I personally don't see anything wrong with this approach. You can't offer a free service if you can't make money from it somehow.
  - contravariant 3y ago
    Though it'd be interesting to see what wins out, whether people are really willing to pay Facebook enough to replace the ad funds, or if something else wins out. To some extent easy ad revenue has given some of these companies a version of Dutch disease, if this revenue falls away for whatever reason they'll need to win out in features or efficiency. Given that I'd be happy if facebook vanished from the face of the earth and that their website is the definition of bloat I'd say they're not doing too well in that regard.
  - latexr 3y ago
    They could still show ads without all the invasiveness. For example: advertisers could pay to place ads in specific Facebook groups and they would show to people visiting those pages. Like it has been done for decades in magazines and other physical media. The internet did not invent advertising.
    - geek_at 3y ago
      exactly and even if they didn't take "personalized data" into account, they can still serve you ads based on pages/profiles you liked
kwanbix 3y ago
I know in HN there is a big "personalized advertising" is bad sentiment, but I don't get what the problem is. I mean, if I am looking for a notebook, I rather have FB/IG (or Google or whatever), show me adds of a notebook that I might end up buying, instead of the generic poker/porn adds that we had on the beginning of the internet. It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads. So on one side, people want everything free, on the other side, we don't want ads, so there is a clear problem here. Can someone explain to me what the problem is? Honest question. Thanks.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >Also, it is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads Good. A well-functioning market might emerge instead.
  - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
    Somehow, by excluding poorer folks, you get a well-functioning market? I doubt it. Regulation is the best chance for well-functioning markets. I highly doubt we are going to be without advertisements.
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      This argument is flawed. Advertisers pay money to serve ads not out of the goodness of their hearts but because they want to earn back not only their initial investment for the ad but a profit on top. Since they keep buying ads, it means that they are able to achieve this. This means it should always be cheaper to pay for a service directly (avoiding all middlemen involved in the advertising industry) than to "pay" with ads. In the latter you'll not only still pay, but will have to pay more to cover the overheads of the advertising industry. If folks were truly poor then they would be denied service since nobody would pay to serve them ads. Advertisers paying to serve them ads means there's still money to be extracted out of them, money they're better off just paying directly for the service they use.
    - alkonaut 3y ago
kackiel 3y ago
Why do people hate personalized ads so much? I understand hating ads in general, but why something personalized is worse than just random spam? EDIT --- Ok, I get it now. Personalized ads = surveillance. Fair enough. Doesn't the whole GDPR already cover it though? You can opt out of the surveillance.
- beefield 3y ago
  I find it a bit hard to like the idea of letting professional manipulators try to manipulate me to do things that benefit them. Regardless if they are succesful or not.
- williamdclt 3y ago
  what people object to is the data gathering needed for personalized ads. I don't want all my behaviours and preferences to be collected, inferred and stored. If it can be used for personalized ads, it can be used for other even less desireable purposes.
- erremerre 3y ago
  If you are on your phone showing something to some person, and you get an ad for a new pressure cooking. Well, there it is a nice pressure cooking. Now if you have been looking for something else that you want to keep private (gay clubs, abortion clinics, or anything embarrassing) then your phone has betrayed you. There is also a point that if the ad is more useless, the quantity of ads should decrease because advertiser will not find them worth it.
  - kwanbix 3y ago
    Incognito mode?
    - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
      Does not work as imagined by most, and is easily detected by sites. So basically just a convenient way to have your cookies and other site storage deleted. But (meanwhile) basically useless because of other ways of 'fingerprinting' client browsers.
mc32 3y ago
Oh, yeah! Can’t come soon enough. Kneecap the need to datamine users. I totally want to see this happen even if that means they will have to charge money for their heretofore “free” services. This would be a big win for society, in my view.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  This isn't data mining users. It's just tracking an ID against likely preferences detected automatically. I think this topic becomes emotive because there are obviously ways to misuse data, but I struggle to see the actual harm in personalised advertising. If there's a data acquisition route that we all agree is bad, then we should ban that.
  - gatinsama 3y ago
    Personalized advertising is based on data, and there shouldn't be hard to see some ways in which misuse it, even with user consent. And no, saying "Yes, I consent to cookies and terms of use and data collection" doesn't fix this.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Would you also ban store loyalty cards for the same reason?
      - alkonaut 3y ago
        I wouldn't ban them, but with those I also have a pretty clear view of exactly what information is trading hands. I tell the store exactly what products I bought , in which store and at what time. And in return I might get a rebate or similar. In that situation I can choose NOT to show the loyalty card when the kickback isn't good enough or if I'm buying something I don't think should go in my "profile". (And for this reason, I hope stores wouldn't link these purchases using any other means I don't approve of, such as through the same credit card being used).
gatinsama 3y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. I hate that Europe leads in regulation and lags so much in innovation. At the same time, this is a step in the right direction. True, people don't care about privacy, but it's mostly because they don't understand the extent and implications of letting companies control your data.
- Garvi 3y ago
  If we had been smart, we would have banned Google, Facebook and Amazon on our continent and made our own like the Chinese did. It's telling how ridiculed they still are for this obvious move.
  - gatinsama 3y ago
    I used to think the Europe was mistaken by demanding that the user's data be processed in Europe and all that, but having read a bit more on history, it's a tactical disadvantage to let someone else have so much control over your society.
    - Kbelicius 3y ago
      > I used to think the Europe was mistaken by demanding that the user's data be processed in Europe AFAIK there is no such demand. The only demand is that if you want to process EU user's data outside of EU the place where you want to process that data needs to have privacy laws compatible with the EU ones.
      - gatinsama 3y ago
        Thanks for the distinction, I was not aware. However, in practice, isn't it the same thing?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- papichulo2023 3y ago
  Mostly agree but it is not like adtech is a innovation-pushing industry.
aloe_falsa 3y ago
Does anyone have any specific details on the ban, maybe a link to the legal document? The article seems to use "personalized advertising" and "behavioral advertising" interchangeably, and also mentions that using location for advertising is a breach of privacy - which would prevent any local business from advertising itself to people in the same city, as I see it. Was that the intent here?
- cowl 3y ago
  geographic location in internet means you are being tracked which is by definition part of what we want to stop. This is nothing like local advertising. Local advertising is contextual advertising not personalised one. The equivalent of that in internet would be for example a Gardening website showing adds for gardening tools or a tech website showin ads for notebooks etc. these are tied to the context and are fine. the distinction is that when i go away from that context i'm not followed by those ads. Location based ads in internet follow you around no matter where you are. Imagine how creepy would be for you if you go to vacation in Hawai for example and see a billboard advertising for something in your home town on the other side of the world.
  - aloe_falsa 3y ago
    So there are two different things here: you're talking about building an individual profile for someone and including their home address as part of it, and I meant tailoring the ads to the IP address location, regardless of the user identity. E.g., if I go to linustechtips and see an ad for cheap notebooks at Best Buy, that's pretty useless if Best Buy doesn't even ship to my country. I was just curious what the new regulation says about this.
    - cowl 3y ago
      new and old regulation says that you can't track Personal information (and the IP is considered personal information) without the user's explicit consent. And what is useful ad or not is very subjetive. it's useless to be at linustechtips talking for example the black friday deals and you get an add for your local store that is making a 10% discount when the content is talking about the 60-70% discounts available at BestBuy.
mrweasel 3y ago
Is there a reason as to why this is "on Facebook and Instagram" and not just a general ban on personalised advertising? Is there something specific that Meta does that others don't?
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  1. Regulators can't do sweeping statements, so it's individual assessments (that can inform "similar" cases). 2. Facebook and Instagram are household names, so the media picks up on that. 3. The DPA/Meta situation is going on for a couple of years by now, with rather interesting statements at times (e.g. Meta thinking aloud about ceasing operation in the EU)
pembrook 3y ago
Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger at the "evil American tech companies" while simultaneously doing the opposite when it comes to privacy from government...which is the real threat. I could point to many instances of this but the easiest one is the EU commission currently pushing a ban on encryption.
- ahoka 3y ago
  As the old saying goes: don’t lie, don’t steal: the government doesn’t like competition. Although I do believe that governments should be liable (is this the best word?) to people and in turn make companies liable too.
  - mcv 3y ago
    Accountable? Democratic governments are accountable to people. How well that works in practice varies of course; there's always room to improve democracy, but the basic principle is there. Companies are, according to some ideologies, only really accountable to their shareholders and to the law. If you want to hold them more accountable, the law is generally the way to do that. Autocratic governments are of course not accountable to the people, and autocratic parties in democracies go out of their way to undermine their accountability.
- gpderetta 3y ago
  Corporations can ruin your life just fine.
  - anfogoat 3y ago
    As long as they manage to somehow manipulate the government to help them do it.
cm2012 3y ago
So stupid. Will be regretted.
seydor 3y ago
You can't fight Gdpr, it's by design built like that. The only realizable outcome is to leave the market. Don't worry, nobody will spring up to replace you , because they'd have to do it for free as well.
mjburgess 3y ago
Comments here so far focus on personalised ads as the issue -- but that's a symptom of what's being banned, which is the mass collection of personal data. Personalised ads are beside the point. The issue is how they are personalised, namely by building a rich profile of user behaviour based on non-consensual tracking. It isnt even clear that there's a meaningful sense of 'consent' to what modern ad companies (ie., google, facebook, amazon, increasingly microsoft, etc.) do. There is both an individual harm, but a massive collective arm, to the infrastructure of behavioural tracking that has been built by these companies. This infrastructure should be, largely, illegal. The technology to end any form of privacy is presently deployed only for ads, but should not be deployed anywhere at all.
- mliker 3y ago
  Don’t forget Apple has a billion dollar ad business!
  - kibwen 3y ago
    Perhaps this is being downvoted because Apple's ad business is far larger than a measly billion. One can already detect the hint of fecal matter on the wind.
  - cm2012 3y ago
    They has grown enormously as Apple used its monopoly power to make every other advertiser less effective. Apple still uses the same user targeting they banned for every other advertiser, of course.
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      Do they track your activity in non-Apple apps in order to feed their ad selection algos? I really don't know, but I would guess not, and that's the thing they banned for others. (FWIW I find their move into ads alarming because it threatens to ruin everything I like about them)
      - 3y ago
hdhianao 3y ago
How is personalized advertising defined? Is it just one company singled out? Does this mean Netflix recommending x because I watched y is illegal? What about Spotify suggesting I consume another podcast or song because it of my listening history? Almost every business has some soft of loyalty program where they give you benefits/offers to entice you to transact more with them.
josephd79 3y ago
Couldn't they just put in the TOS that if you create an account or use any of their services then they can just collect all the data they want?
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  This is against the GDPR. Not that it would be a problem for Facebook - they obviously tried this and it was explicitly ruled illegal.
prmoustache 3y ago
At the same time EU wants to break SSL and facilitate man of the middle attacks. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/fr/policies/discover-eidas https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/fr/policies/discover-e... https://nce.mpi-sp.org/index.php/s/cG88cptFdaDNyRr https://nce.mpi-sp.org/index.php/s/cG88cptFdaDNyRr
- alkonaut 3y ago
  I think that's the work of a campaign within the EU (and from lobbyists). I don't think it represents a majority opinion neither by elected people or bureaucrats. If a proposal like this ever passes it will be because them and us didn't care enough to stop it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- rcMgD2BwE72F 3y ago
  What does this have to do with GDPR?
  - alkonaut 3y ago
    That both relate to privacy and the EU and one regulation is for more privacy, the other for less privacy. If you were new to the EU you might find that surprising.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
RamblingCTO 3y ago
The big problem a lot of people can't follow is this: they track you even without an account. You don't have a business relation with them. That's not ok. For users of their platform, whatever.
n_ary 3y ago
Disclaimer: Individual EU opinion not reflective of whole continent. I am very very happy to look at all the ads and even personalised ones, as long as those are not overly obnoxious and mostly (obviously-)scammy. If I have to scroll through endless ocean of ad with my actual priority(friends and family posting something) drowned out at the very bottom of my feed, I will naturally stop clicking any ads. All we need is a balance, overwhelming and making my feeds/timeline flooded w/ random ads is not really helpful and as a sane person, I am very happy to text my freinds and family and create whatsapp group to keep in contact.
- amelius 3y ago
  Perhaps you can install a browser extension that will send all your data to any ad companies that you want to receive personalized ads from? And then login on their website to view said ads? This sounds like the best solution since it will not bother the rest of us who don't want to be tracked.
- jeppester 3y ago
  non-personalised ads != random ads It is still perfectly possible to place ads in meaningful contexts.
  - hirako2000 3y ago
    While possible, fb is in the business of high margin and hyperscale. I would add that personalised ads != less random ads. Mapping the context to the ads is likely far superior in convertion. But once again, fb is in the business of high margin and already figured out personalised ads based on profiling is the most profitable strategy.
yason 3y ago
Paper ads in magazines of interests were highly interesting, often useful and in sometimes better than the actual content in the magazine itself. I remember early, search keywords-based textual Google ads still being somewhat interesting, and if not necessarily useful at least comprehensibly relevant. Whatever slips past my adblocker these days is absolute junk. Internet doesn't effectively exist without an adblocker. It seems we reached a high-peak in the 90's on so many things.
bluelu 3y ago
I don't understand why this only applies for Facebook then. 2 1/2 years, ago they opened up a loop hole for newspapers that they are explicitly allowed to do it (Either you pay, or when you use their free version, you must accept to be tracked for behavioural advertising). Are they any better than facebook? Some example news sites: www.zeit.de, www.spiegel.de More information on this: https://www.heise.de/news/E-Privacy-Verordnung-EU-Rat-fuer-Vorratsdatenspeicherung-und-Cookie-Walls-5051963.html https://www.heise.de/news/E-Privacy-Verordnung-EU-Rat-fuer-V... (german) And https://www.consilium.europa.eu/de/press/press-releases/2021/02/10/confidentiality-of-electronic-communications-council-agrees-its-position-on-eprivacy-rules/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/de/press/press-releases/2021... Look here (referenced pdf in the above url): https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-6087-2021-INIT/en/pdf https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-6087-2021-I... (21aa) In some cases the use of processing and storage capabilities of terminal equipment and the collection of information from end-users' terminal equipment may also be necessary for providing a service, requested by the enduser, such as services provided in accordance with the freedom of expression and information including for journalistic purposes, e.g. online newspaper or other press publications as defined in Article 2 (4) of Directive (EU) 2019/790, that is wholly or mainly financed by advertising provided that, in addition, the end-user has been provided with clear, precise and user-friendly information about the purposes of cookies or similar techniques and has accepted such use.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
  > I don't understand why this only applies for Facebook then. It doesn't.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    Can you elaborate? That's not how the article makes it sound. > The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has instructed the Irish data regulator, where Meta’s European headquarters are located, to impose a permanent ban on Meta’s use of behavioural advertising within two weeks. The EDPB states that its decision is an urgent binding instruction to enforce the ban across the EEA. Is the same happening at the newspapers?
jerrac 3y ago
I would love to see a regulation put in place requiring companies to notify their users every time they transfer data about their users to another organization. If the data is "anonymized", the company should have to notify all their users. If the company has contact info for the user, it should send the user a notification via that contact info. Even if that means having to send a physical letter. The company should also keep a public record of transfers, something like a page on their website listing when they've transferred data, why it was transferred, and what kind of data was transferred. That would cover anonymous users. There would need to be something in there covering data transfer as part of what the company's business is. Maybe a list of businesses that access your data as part of the provided services and are covered by the company's terms? Even better would be to force companies that make money selling your data to share the profits with every person they just sold data on.
- theptip 3y ago
  GDPR does this. Look at the sections around Subprocessors.
- alkonaut 3y ago
  Why would anyone worry about anonymized data? That bit sounds strange. If it’s truly anonymous then how can there be harm in it? E.g would a site telling its owner they had 400 unique users (an anonymous piece of data since it’s an aggregate) have to notify its 400 users they were counted?
  - highwind 3y ago
    > Why would anyone worry about anonymized data? I guess company wouldn't care, but I'd like to know if statistics that I'm part of is now also owned by someone else. I don't know why but it'll be nice to know.
jklinger410 3y ago
Facebook and all other ad networks using personalized advertising will pull out from the EU, then.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  Don't threaten me with a good time.
  - quest88 3y ago
    I don't know how much better it would actually be! We'll have ads no matter what. And honestly, I prefer the relevant and targeted ads compared to what we had before.
    - manuelabeledo 3y ago
      > And honestly, I prefer the relevant and targeted ads compared to what we had before. I don't mind ads that are relevant, according to the context. I mind ads that are generated based on a profile one or more companies have built about me. Yeah, let's see ads about RC models in a forum about RC models, or ads about Bluetooth modules in a website about microelectronics. That's fine. They will still make money, and the ads would still be somehow targeted. I don't need to see ads relevant to my Google searches about grieving, when I browse the news.
      - quest88 3y ago
        I agree with you that it would be favorable experience. But sites are going to offer you the ads that make them the most money if their goal is to make money. This may mean if it's between an RC car or viagra ads, you're gonna get the viagra ads (or insert non-context ad in place of viagra). With kindness, I guess pay for the news then? In a more general sense, if one doesn't want to see so many ads then one should spend less time online, or try to visit sources that don't depend on ads. But for some reason people don't want to pay for the things they value.
anon291 3y ago
While I could care less about Meta and Alphabet, I find it difficult not to basically see this as a form of economic warfare between the United States and the EU. The latter simply being jealous of the former's technological superiority, both economically and technically.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  How is it warfare? I just see it as a rule to follow....hardly international "shots fired", like US/ China trade bollocks [etc]. I'd ask that you remember: the rest of the world isn't quite on the side of the advertiser, and nor should the relationship be abusive and one-sided. What technical superiority? And, for what it is, i bet it's for sale.
bad_user 3y ago
2018 — "GDPR doesn't work, says tech bros"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
DudeOpotomus 3y ago
Nice to read this. Its not the medium, nor the media, its the business model that is the problem. The incentives are perverted and the outcome imbalanced. The entire ad tech universe is built on false metrics, lies and fraud. Burn it all down.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
artursapek 3y ago
Oooooohhhhh I'm regulaaaaaating
germandiago 3y ago
I am an european and I am pretty sure that some day in the EU they will regulate even the position to go to po... Also, we are pretty broke now so get ready for looking for gold even underground... In the meantime... these people do not do more important homework...
- lock-the-spock 3y ago
  Personally I find this quite an important issue. Whether you don't care is your own choice, but not all us are happy to live in a panopticon. And the EU is in fact mainly a trade body, setting standards and categorisations, so there are likely some rules on toilets already in EU acquis on health and safety at the workplace, etc. I doubt they oblige a specific position though, you can rest in peace on the piece
  - germandiago 3y ago
    I care, but they spend a lifetime fining citizens and companies and later at the same time they tell you that with digital euro, anonimity... no. Want to make physical money disappear over time, restrict to 1000 euros cash transactions... (Spain case) They are so special. I thought common human beings work for public institutions also so they should be audited by the same rules. Or for example they prepare a law to be able to get journalist sources (which is even illegal in my constitution!). I do not think it is a fair position. They are increasingly telling us: you do all this and we... we have superpowers we do not need to do it. I do not agree with that vision.
eschewingmycud 3y ago
This is not a ban on personalized/behaviorial advertising. If a user consents, behavior advertising is still allowed. From the press release (https://edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/edpb-urgent-binding-decision-processing-personal-data-behavioural-advertising-meta_en https://edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/edpb-urgent-binding-de...): "On 27 October, the EDPB adopted an urgent binding decision ... to impose a ban on the processing of personal data for behavioural advertising on the legal bases of contract and legitimate interest ..." Under GDPR Article 6, all processing of personal data requires one of the following lawful bases: consent, contractual obligation, legal obligation, vital interests of a person, public interest, or legitimate interests of the controller. The ban says that Meta can't use two of these as bases---contract, legitimate interest---for behavior advertising. Behavior advertising that is consented to is a-okay.
jacquesm 3y ago
Good. Now do Google.
DrScientist 3y ago
The issues isn't just about the information that is captured and traded about you. The issue is how is that data put to use - how that affects your life and whether those decisions were made with flawed algorithms or indeed flawed data. And quite possibly, the whole process being so opaque that nobody understands how it works, or why certain things happened. And, in my view, a lot of it comes back to a lot of these internet businesses scale only if they leave an element of fairness behind. For example, if you are randomly banned from youtube by an algorithm, it's not economically worth it for Google to fund a process of proper appeal - because proper appeal process needs people. You then have a choice - dispense with fairness and justice or dispense with a business model that doesn't scale in a fair and just way.
jonahhorowitz 3y ago
I really hope they make the subscription option available in the US. I'd happily pay $25/mo to opt out of ads on both platforms. I was going to sign up for their "verified" option until I saw that it didn't remove the Ads.
Andrew018 3y ago
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jokoon 3y ago
I'm using firefox containers for youtube, so I don't login, don't have cookies etc, and yet youtube still suggests videos that are related to what I watched previously. So they even build profiles of people who evade tracking techniques. I don't understand how they can think it won't tarnish their image or backfire. It's funny because on one hand, we don't want government surveillance, but yet people criticize the GDPR or the EU or defend the advertising industry, which is probably a very efficient proxy for government surveillance.
seydor 3y ago
Whenever EU services "ban" facebook, i like to remember that European commission and parliament are among the biggest public spenders of ads on facebook, in most EU countries: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/
- Timon3 3y ago
  You're misrepresenting things quite drastically by leaving out that it's only "ads about social issues, elections or politics", not all ads.
  - seydor 3y ago
    yes of course, i used 'public' because government did not match either. The point is , EU administration is using those personalization features to target their advertising. I still find it odd that EC & EP outspend local politicians
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
It's unclear to me, honestly, why targeting ads is bad. Is random useless ads better. To compensate, they'll need even MORE ads.
em1sar 3y ago
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redder23 3y ago
Fuck yeah! I have no clue how it came this far, they really banned it. Not just mandated to be default and opt-in? That is crazy, and I honestly fail to understand why they are doing this, I mean do not get me wrong, I like it, I just do not trust the EU AT ALL. They are so in with big business, what do they gain from this? And do not tell me they are doing this "for the people". Probably because it's American companies and they want to push EU companies.
Zetobal 3y ago
I am so glad someone finally called their "we gonna leave" bluff.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lfnoise 3y ago
How will compliance be verified?
- geniium 3y ago
  The ads tools will change and not allow same target options
asylteltine 3y ago
Can they ban Facebook and instagram?
- interactivecode 3y ago
  If they have reason to, yes. Same as the USA banning tiktok (if they had gone through with it)
neaumusic 3y ago
private data should be illegal, public behavioral data should be public, censorship is pretty much always wrong
EchoReflection 3y ago
so far everyone's comments here are awesome
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
arbuge 3y ago
I might be in the minority here but I personally find personalized ads useful, and am far more annoyed by ads recommending products and services completely irrelevant to my interests and/or needs. (The latter still account for the ads I see most of the time, unfortunately.)
- imafish 3y ago
  Sure. As long as I don’t have to deliver (all) my private data to get those relevant ads.
  - arbuge 3y ago
    ALL your private data sounds rather extreme. That could certainly mean a lot of things! Some examples of what I'm fine with: if I visit a hardware store's online website and am then retargeted by their ads, or I visit a hardware magazine's website and am then targeted by hardware ads.
    - ta1243 3y ago
      So you'll be happy to opt in and disable the 'do-not-track' option in your browser, etc.
    - aalimov_ 3y ago
      > ALL your private data sounds rather extreme. How so? Ad tech wants to eat as much of your data as possible. They’ll use everything they have to make inferences about things you want, things you believe, things you might believe later. I think you could go as far as saying they want ALL your data and then some..
    - fahhem 3y ago
      The ads can be targeted to the publisher, so the hardware magazine's ads will likely all be hardware related, instead of related to whatever website you visited before it
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      My clarification then, targeted ads are fine if ai don't have to provide ANY of my private data. The site showing an ad knows the context of what I'm looking at, whether that's a specific news article or the weather. That's enough info for a reasonably targeted ad without needing to match back to my browsing history, who I bank with, my likely religious views or sexual orientation, etc
hereme888 3y ago
The debt of countries keeps increasing. Wars from greed and for power, derivatives market, and data thieves. They can all burn for all I care. They should have never existed in the first place.
dang 3y ago
Url changed from https://dig.watch/updates/eu-data-regulator-decided-to-ban-personalised-advetising-on-facebook-and-instagram https://dig.watch/updates/eu-data-regulator-decided-to-ban-p..., which points to this. Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
The choices will be (a) consent to personalised ads (b) subscribe (c) do nothing Will Meta block people from using its websites if they refuse to consent to personalised ads, i.e., option (c). That would seem quite stupid. Meta would lose the traffic. If millions of people consent, i.e., choose option (a), it defeats the purpose of GDPR. Meta scores a victory against privacy. They may even succeed in complying before the ban comes into effect. If millions of people choose (c), i.e., to retain their rights under GDPR, then Meta is fscked. EU is forcing the issue, but Meta will only present this choice of options to people over 18. Quite a large carveout. Users in the EU should choose (c) and call Meta's bluff. There is no sensible reason that Meta would block users who do not consent to personalised ads. If a user wants personalised ads, they can opt-in. Users who find personalised ads useful, such as the lone outlier commenter at the top of this thread, can opt-in.
James752 3y ago
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697 points by pbrw 3y ago

Personalized advertising should never have been allowed without a specific opt-in. I know lots of advertisers think they can't live without it --- because promoters have told them so.

thorncorona 3y ago
Observationally, facebook ads are the best I’ve seen by a long shot.
- autoexec 3y ago
  Cambridge Analytica and countless scammers agree with you, but the world was just fine before facebook ads and there are plenty of other mediums through which people could continue to manipulate you if facebook ads went away entirely now. Limiting facebook to just non-personalized ads seems entirely harmless.
- yoz-y 3y ago
  Instagram ads is why I started going to live concerts again. Were they not personalised it wouldn't have happened.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 3y ago
    I haven't seen any personalized ad for the past 5 years (at least) and yet I'm discovering great artists/bands every now and then. Advertising is a type of "content", and people like content-, but how one can say it's better than the content recommended by people not paid to promote it? One, the more people are used to get their content via ads (instead of share by friends), the least they'll be incentivize to share good content. Two, platforms that are paid by advertisers are certainly incentivize to have the best content in ads vs non ads. Why feature a video in your feed but they can be paid to push the same content from an advertiser? There are so many reasons why "some ads are great" says nothing about ads being a good thing.
mantas 3y ago
Best one I heard was people claiming products will be more expensive if personalized advertising is banned. Because then it’ll cost more to promote them.
- repelsteeltje 3y ago
  Interesting line of reasoning. :-) That would imply, that (globally) we spent significantly [EDIT: remove -less-, insert:] more on advertising before the advent of personalized targeting.
  - smeej 3y ago
    I think it's the other way around. If we go back to the situation in the past, price goes up, not down.
    - repelsteeltje 3y ago
      Correct, my bad. Got confused while writing by the observation that ad expenditure is rising year after year. So clearly, the "savings" allegedly attributed to personalized targeting have not translated to advertisers.
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    Not necessarily, cost reductions can increase, decrease or have no effect the total expenditure on goods. The total effect is quite ambiguous depending on the income and substitution effects.
    - aesh2Xa1 3y ago
      I agree. I've always heard "charge what the market will bear." Why would a reduction in advertising costs equate to lower consumer pricing — if there's a better margin to be had instead?
      - hirako2000 3y ago
repelsteeltje 3y ago
> Personalized advertising should never have been allowed without a specific opt-in. As a thought experiment, let's go back to the time when the internet existed, adds existed, but targeted adds were in their infancy. Now let's imagine they were launched as some sort of op-in Google BETA this in early 0s fashion. Assuming, for a moment that the targeting quality was on part — would that have been a success? Ie. would the user adoption have been significantly higher Apple's Tracking Transparancy Policy? (Considering that consent was involved before distrust accumulated in the following decades as result of forcefully surveiling, fingerprinting, third-party cookiea, facebook shenanigans, appstore malware, supercookies, etc.)
- smeej 3y ago
  I don't think it would have been this "successful," but remember how long ago Facebook came out. In 2004, if someone had said something on the internet could "magically" surface all the stuff you really might be interested in, just by opting in and clicking a button? And it had worked really well? I think tons of people would have opted in. Back then, before smartphones, before carrying a device in your pocket that can track your every move, it wouldn't have seemed nearly as creepy. It's actually kind of amusing to me that Apple is the one acting like it's protecting people's data. Without Apple's invention of the iPhone, which doesn't have to be built to collect as much data about its use as it does, there wouldn't be nearly as much data for these apps to collect!
  - wh0knows 3y ago
    Apple conveniently takes the public stance of user protection, but their real position is that they want to be the only ones who can collect and use their users data.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  Early 0s? Presumably not since at the time, doubleclick (now Google) had the same reputation Google has now. At the time, adware and spyware were malware, and there was an industry around anti-malware tools like adaware and spybot: search and destroy. Among other things, IIRC those tools would delete your doubleclick cookies. The distrust was immediate, and if anything people have given up and grown used to malware being part of the OS now.
diego_sandoval 3y ago
You specifically opt-in when you create your account on IG/FB.
- xxs 3y ago
  this is not the case in the EU at any rate whatsoever
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  No you don't. They track you even without an account. See the person reconstructing this with his wife a few comments up.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> because promoters have told them so. No, it's because they want to make as much money as possible. If promoters told them to turn off all ads, they wouldn't. They don't care about promoters. They care about money.
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  They don't care about promoters. They care about money. The promoters of personalized advertising care about money too. The auction systems they promote can be easily manipulated to maximize profits. And since these systems are "black boxes", advertisers themselves really have no way to know if they are being manipulated or not. The only insight they have is what the promoters tell them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

thorncorona 3y ago

Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads. Lots of websites have marginal utility, but can be paid for with ads. And those websites will disappear when CPM rates go down the drain.

buro9 3y ago
but yet, when we pay for services (Google Suite) and websites... we still get adverts we're not incentivised to pay as our data is mined and sold anyway, our attention still fought for
- thorncorona 3y ago
  For larger companies I think that’s a fair assessment, but there’s a lot of small websites that I only use one or twice a year which are very useful, like camerasize.com, which otherwise I wouldn’t pay for.
  - vextea 3y ago
    Sites like camerasize could feasibly target based on the niche they fill rather than showing generic "personalized" ads. There are ad networks out there that do this, e.g. Carbon.
goodpoint 3y ago
> And those websites will disappear when CPM rates go down the drain. Good!
Barrin92 3y ago
>Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads pretty easy if you publicly fund it. My vision of Europe is every town, every city putting some money into building out federated and decentralized systems, supported by small and middle-sized business. Effectively the same way radio or public broadcasting is already supported in say Germany or the UK. We should go all the way and just rid ourselves of Meta, Tencent et al, sadly there's probably not enough vision for something like it.

leksak 3y ago

> Meta has stated that it had already announced plans to provide users in the EU and EEA with an opportunity to provide consent and will introduce a subscription model in November to comply with regulatory requirements This effectively means then that if you are in the EU and you'd want to use either Facebook or Instagram you'd have to pay for a subscription then because they presumably won't offer the free-service without personalized ads and since the law prohibits them from doing that then the only way to use either service will be to pay for it..?

startages 3y ago
Exactly, and I personally don't see anything wrong with this approach. You can't offer a free service if you can't make money from it somehow.
- contravariant 3y ago
  Though it'd be interesting to see what wins out, whether people are really willing to pay Facebook enough to replace the ad funds, or if something else wins out. To some extent easy ad revenue has given some of these companies a version of Dutch disease, if this revenue falls away for whatever reason they'll need to win out in features or efficiency. Given that I'd be happy if facebook vanished from the face of the earth and that their website is the definition of bloat I'd say they're not doing too well in that regard.
- latexr 3y ago
  They could still show ads without all the invasiveness. For example: advertisers could pay to place ads in specific Facebook groups and they would show to people visiting those pages. Like it has been done for decades in magazines and other physical media. The internet did not invent advertising.
  - geek_at 3y ago
    exactly and even if they didn't take "personalized data" into account, they can still serve you ads based on pages/profiles you liked

kwanbix 3y ago

I know in HN there is a big "personalized advertising" is bad sentiment, but I don't get what the problem is. I mean, if I am looking for a notebook, I rather have FB/IG (or Google or whatever), show me adds of a notebook that I might end up buying, instead of the generic poker/porn adds that we had on the beginning of the internet. It is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads. So on one side, people want everything free, on the other side, we don't want ads, so there is a clear problem here. Can someone explain to me what the problem is? Honest question. Thanks.

thfuran 3y ago
>Also, it is almost impossible to have a free internet without ads Good. A well-functioning market might emerge instead.
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  Somehow, by excluding poorer folks, you get a well-functioning market? I doubt it. Regulation is the best chance for well-functioning markets. I highly doubt we are going to be without advertisements.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    This argument is flawed. Advertisers pay money to serve ads not out of the goodness of their hearts but because they want to earn back not only their initial investment for the ad but a profit on top. Since they keep buying ads, it means that they are able to achieve this. This means it should always be cheaper to pay for a service directly (avoiding all middlemen involved in the advertising industry) than to "pay" with ads. In the latter you'll not only still pay, but will have to pay more to cover the overheads of the advertising industry. If folks were truly poor then they would be denied service since nobody would pay to serve them ads. Advertisers paying to serve them ads means there's still money to be extracted out of them, money they're better off just paying directly for the service they use.
  - alkonaut 3y ago

kackiel 3y ago

Why do people hate personalized ads so much? I understand hating ads in general, but why something personalized is worse than just random spam? EDIT --- Ok, I get it now. Personalized ads = surveillance. Fair enough. Doesn't the whole GDPR already cover it though? You can opt out of the surveillance.

beefield 3y ago
I find it a bit hard to like the idea of letting professional manipulators try to manipulate me to do things that benefit them. Regardless if they are succesful or not.
williamdclt 3y ago
what people object to is the data gathering needed for personalized ads. I don't want all my behaviours and preferences to be collected, inferred and stored. If it can be used for personalized ads, it can be used for other even less desireable purposes.
erremerre 3y ago
If you are on your phone showing something to some person, and you get an ad for a new pressure cooking. Well, there it is a nice pressure cooking. Now if you have been looking for something else that you want to keep private (gay clubs, abortion clinics, or anything embarrassing) then your phone has betrayed you. There is also a point that if the ad is more useless, the quantity of ads should decrease because advertiser will not find them worth it.
- kwanbix 3y ago
  Incognito mode?
  - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
    Does not work as imagined by most, and is easily detected by sites. So basically just a convenient way to have your cookies and other site storage deleted. But (meanwhile) basically useless because of other ways of 'fingerprinting' client browsers.

mc32 3y ago

Oh, yeah! Can’t come soon enough. Kneecap the need to datamine users. I totally want to see this happen even if that means they will have to charge money for their heretofore “free” services. This would be a big win for society, in my view.

robertlagrant 3y ago
This isn't data mining users. It's just tracking an ID against likely preferences detected automatically. I think this topic becomes emotive because there are obviously ways to misuse data, but I struggle to see the actual harm in personalised advertising. If there's a data acquisition route that we all agree is bad, then we should ban that.
- gatinsama 3y ago
  Personalized advertising is based on data, and there shouldn't be hard to see some ways in which misuse it, even with user consent. And no, saying "Yes, I consent to cookies and terms of use and data collection" doesn't fix this.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Would you also ban store loyalty cards for the same reason?
    - alkonaut 3y ago
      I wouldn't ban them, but with those I also have a pretty clear view of exactly what information is trading hands. I tell the store exactly what products I bought , in which store and at what time. And in return I might get a rebate or similar. In that situation I can choose NOT to show the loyalty card when the kickback isn't good enough or if I'm buying something I don't think should go in my "profile". (And for this reason, I hope stores wouldn't link these purchases using any other means I don't approve of, such as through the same credit card being used).

gatinsama 3y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. I hate that Europe leads in regulation and lags so much in innovation. At the same time, this is a step in the right direction. True, people don't care about privacy, but it's mostly because they don't understand the extent and implications of letting companies control your data.

Garvi 3y ago
If we had been smart, we would have banned Google, Facebook and Amazon on our continent and made our own like the Chinese did. It's telling how ridiculed they still are for this obvious move.
- gatinsama 3y ago
  I used to think the Europe was mistaken by demanding that the user's data be processed in Europe and all that, but having read a bit more on history, it's a tactical disadvantage to let someone else have so much control over your society.
  - Kbelicius 3y ago
    > I used to think the Europe was mistaken by demanding that the user's data be processed in Europe AFAIK there is no such demand. The only demand is that if you want to process EU user's data outside of EU the place where you want to process that data needs to have privacy laws compatible with the EU ones.
    - gatinsama 3y ago
      Thanks for the distinction, I was not aware. However, in practice, isn't it the same thing?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
papichulo2023 3y ago
Mostly agree but it is not like adtech is a innovation-pushing industry.

aloe_falsa 3y ago

Does anyone have any specific details on the ban, maybe a link to the legal document? The article seems to use "personalized advertising" and "behavioral advertising" interchangeably, and also mentions that using location for advertising is a breach of privacy - which would prevent any local business from advertising itself to people in the same city, as I see it. Was that the intent here?

cowl 3y ago
geographic location in internet means you are being tracked which is by definition part of what we want to stop. This is nothing like local advertising. Local advertising is contextual advertising not personalised one. The equivalent of that in internet would be for example a Gardening website showing adds for gardening tools or a tech website showin ads for notebooks etc. these are tied to the context and are fine. the distinction is that when i go away from that context i'm not followed by those ads. Location based ads in internet follow you around no matter where you are. Imagine how creepy would be for you if you go to vacation in Hawai for example and see a billboard advertising for something in your home town on the other side of the world.
- aloe_falsa 3y ago
  So there are two different things here: you're talking about building an individual profile for someone and including their home address as part of it, and I meant tailoring the ads to the IP address location, regardless of the user identity. E.g., if I go to linustechtips and see an ad for cheap notebooks at Best Buy, that's pretty useless if Best Buy doesn't even ship to my country. I was just curious what the new regulation says about this.
  - cowl 3y ago
    new and old regulation says that you can't track Personal information (and the IP is considered personal information) without the user's explicit consent. And what is useful ad or not is very subjetive. it's useless to be at linustechtips talking for example the black friday deals and you get an add for your local store that is making a 10% discount when the content is talking about the 60-70% discounts available at BestBuy.

mrweasel 3y ago

Is there a reason as to why this is "on Facebook and Instagram" and not just a general ban on personalised advertising? Is there something specific that Meta does that others don't?

pgeorgi 3y ago
1. Regulators can't do sweeping statements, so it's individual assessments (that can inform "similar" cases). 2. Facebook and Instagram are household names, so the media picks up on that. 3. The DPA/Meta situation is going on for a couple of years by now, with rather interesting statements at times (e.g. Meta thinking aloud about ceasing operation in the EU)

pembrook 3y ago

Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger at the "evil American tech companies" while simultaneously doing the opposite when it comes to privacy from government...which is the real threat. I could point to many instances of this but the easiest one is the EU commission currently pushing a ban on encryption.

ahoka 3y ago
As the old saying goes: don’t lie, don’t steal: the government doesn’t like competition. Although I do believe that governments should be liable (is this the best word?) to people and in turn make companies liable too.
- mcv 3y ago
  Accountable? Democratic governments are accountable to people. How well that works in practice varies of course; there's always room to improve democracy, but the basic principle is there. Companies are, according to some ideologies, only really accountable to their shareholders and to the law. If you want to hold them more accountable, the law is generally the way to do that. Autocratic governments are of course not accountable to the people, and autocratic parties in democracies go out of their way to undermine their accountability.
gpderetta 3y ago
Corporations can ruin your life just fine.
- anfogoat 3y ago
  As long as they manage to somehow manipulate the government to help them do it.

cm2012 3y ago

So stupid. Will be regretted.

seydor 3y ago

You can't fight Gdpr, it's by design built like that. The only realizable outcome is to leave the market. Don't worry, nobody will spring up to replace you , because they'd have to do it for free as well.

mjburgess 3y ago

Comments here so far focus on personalised ads as the issue -- but that's a symptom of what's being banned, which is the mass collection of personal data. Personalised ads are beside the point. The issue is how they are personalised, namely by building a rich profile of user behaviour based on non-consensual tracking. It isnt even clear that there's a meaningful sense of 'consent' to what modern ad companies (ie., google, facebook, amazon, increasingly microsoft, etc.) do. There is both an individual harm, but a massive collective arm, to the infrastructure of behavioural tracking that has been built by these companies. This infrastructure should be, largely, illegal. The technology to end any form of privacy is presently deployed only for ads, but should not be deployed anywhere at all.

mliker 3y ago
Don’t forget Apple has a billion dollar ad business!
- kibwen 3y ago
  Perhaps this is being downvoted because Apple's ad business is far larger than a measly billion. One can already detect the hint of fecal matter on the wind.
- cm2012 3y ago
  They has grown enormously as Apple used its monopoly power to make every other advertiser less effective. Apple still uses the same user targeting they banned for every other advertiser, of course.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    Do they track your activity in non-Apple apps in order to feed their ad selection algos? I really don't know, but I would guess not, and that's the thing they banned for others. (FWIW I find their move into ads alarming because it threatens to ruin everything I like about them)
    - 3y ago

hdhianao 3y ago

How is personalized advertising defined? Is it just one company singled out? Does this mean Netflix recommending x because I watched y is illegal? What about Spotify suggesting I consume another podcast or song because it of my listening history? Almost every business has some soft of loyalty program where they give you benefits/offers to entice you to transact more with them.

josephd79 3y ago

Couldn't they just put in the TOS that if you create an account or use any of their services then they can just collect all the data they want?

Nextgrid 3y ago
This is against the GDPR. Not that it would be a problem for Facebook - they obviously tried this and it was explicitly ruled illegal.

prmoustache 3y ago

At the same time EU wants to break SSL and facilitate man of the middle attacks. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/fr/policies/discover-eidas https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/fr/policies/discover-e... https://nce.mpi-sp.org/index.php/s/cG88cptFdaDNyRr https://nce.mpi-sp.org/index.php/s/cG88cptFdaDNyRr

alkonaut 3y ago
I think that's the work of a campaign within the EU (and from lobbyists). I don't think it represents a majority opinion neither by elected people or bureaucrats. If a proposal like this ever passes it will be because them and us didn't care enough to stop it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
rcMgD2BwE72F 3y ago
What does this have to do with GDPR?
- alkonaut 3y ago
  That both relate to privacy and the EU and one regulation is for more privacy, the other for less privacy. If you were new to the EU you might find that surprising.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

RamblingCTO 3y ago

The big problem a lot of people can't follow is this: they track you even without an account. You don't have a business relation with them. That's not ok. For users of their platform, whatever.

n_ary 3y ago

Disclaimer: Individual EU opinion not reflective of whole continent. I am very very happy to look at all the ads and even personalised ones, as long as those are not overly obnoxious and mostly (obviously-)scammy. If I have to scroll through endless ocean of ad with my actual priority(friends and family posting something) drowned out at the very bottom of my feed, I will naturally stop clicking any ads. All we need is a balance, overwhelming and making my feeds/timeline flooded w/ random ads is not really helpful and as a sane person, I am very happy to text my freinds and family and create whatsapp group to keep in contact.

amelius 3y ago
Perhaps you can install a browser extension that will send all your data to any ad companies that you want to receive personalized ads from? And then login on their website to view said ads? This sounds like the best solution since it will not bother the rest of us who don't want to be tracked.
jeppester 3y ago
non-personalised ads != random ads It is still perfectly possible to place ads in meaningful contexts.
- hirako2000 3y ago
  While possible, fb is in the business of high margin and hyperscale. I would add that personalised ads != less random ads. Mapping the context to the ads is likely far superior in convertion. But once again, fb is in the business of high margin and already figured out personalised ads based on profiling is the most profitable strategy.

yason 3y ago

Paper ads in magazines of interests were highly interesting, often useful and in sometimes better than the actual content in the magazine itself. I remember early, search keywords-based textual Google ads still being somewhat interesting, and if not necessarily useful at least comprehensibly relevant. Whatever slips past my adblocker these days is absolute junk. Internet doesn't effectively exist without an adblocker. It seems we reached a high-peak in the 90's on so many things.

bluelu 3y ago

I don't understand why this only applies for Facebook then. 2 1/2 years, ago they opened up a loop hole for newspapers that they are explicitly allowed to do it (Either you pay, or when you use their free version, you must accept to be tracked for behavioural advertising). Are they any better than facebook? Some example news sites: www.zeit.de, www.spiegel.de More information on this: https://www.heise.de/news/E-Privacy-Verordnung-EU-Rat-fuer-Vorratsdatenspeicherung-und-Cookie-Walls-5051963.html https://www.heise.de/news/E-Privacy-Verordnung-EU-Rat-fuer-V... (german) And https://www.consilium.europa.eu/de/press/press-releases/2021/02/10/confidentiality-of-electronic-communications-council-agrees-its-position-on-eprivacy-rules/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/de/press/press-releases/2021... Look here (referenced pdf in the above url): https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-6087-2021-INIT/en/pdf https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-6087-2021-I... (21aa) In some cases the use of processing and storage capabilities of terminal equipment and the collection of information from end-users' terminal equipment may also be necessary for providing a service, requested by the enduser, such as services provided in accordance with the freedom of expression and information including for journalistic purposes, e.g. online newspaper or other press publications as defined in Article 2 (4) of Directive (EU) 2019/790, that is wholly or mainly financed by advertising provided that, in addition, the end-user has been provided with clear, precise and user-friendly information about the purposes of cookies or similar techniques and has accepted such use.

the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
> I don't understand why this only applies for Facebook then. It doesn't.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Can you elaborate? That's not how the article makes it sound. > The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has instructed the Irish data regulator, where Meta’s European headquarters are located, to impose a permanent ban on Meta’s use of behavioural advertising within two weeks. The EDPB states that its decision is an urgent binding instruction to enforce the ban across the EEA. Is the same happening at the newspapers?

jerrac 3y ago

I would love to see a regulation put in place requiring companies to notify their users every time they transfer data about their users to another organization. If the data is "anonymized", the company should have to notify all their users. If the company has contact info for the user, it should send the user a notification via that contact info. Even if that means having to send a physical letter. The company should also keep a public record of transfers, something like a page on their website listing when they've transferred data, why it was transferred, and what kind of data was transferred. That would cover anonymous users. There would need to be something in there covering data transfer as part of what the company's business is. Maybe a list of businesses that access your data as part of the provided services and are covered by the company's terms? Even better would be to force companies that make money selling your data to share the profits with every person they just sold data on.

theptip 3y ago
GDPR does this. Look at the sections around Subprocessors.
alkonaut 3y ago
Why would anyone worry about anonymized data? That bit sounds strange. If it’s truly anonymous then how can there be harm in it? E.g would a site telling its owner they had 400 unique users (an anonymous piece of data since it’s an aggregate) have to notify its 400 users they were counted?
- highwind 3y ago
  > Why would anyone worry about anonymized data? I guess company wouldn't care, but I'd like to know if statistics that I'm part of is now also owned by someone else. I don't know why but it'll be nice to know.

jklinger410 3y ago

Facebook and all other ad networks using personalized advertising will pull out from the EU, then.

manuelabeledo 3y ago
Don't threaten me with a good time.
- quest88 3y ago
  I don't know how much better it would actually be! We'll have ads no matter what. And honestly, I prefer the relevant and targeted ads compared to what we had before.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    > And honestly, I prefer the relevant and targeted ads compared to what we had before. I don't mind ads that are relevant, according to the context. I mind ads that are generated based on a profile one or more companies have built about me. Yeah, let's see ads about RC models in a forum about RC models, or ads about Bluetooth modules in a website about microelectronics. That's fine. They will still make money, and the ads would still be somehow targeted. I don't need to see ads relevant to my Google searches about grieving, when I browse the news.
    - quest88 3y ago
      I agree with you that it would be favorable experience. But sites are going to offer you the ads that make them the most money if their goal is to make money. This may mean if it's between an RC car or viagra ads, you're gonna get the viagra ads (or insert non-context ad in place of viagra). With kindness, I guess pay for the news then? In a more general sense, if one doesn't want to see so many ads then one should spend less time online, or try to visit sources that don't depend on ads. But for some reason people don't want to pay for the things they value.

anon291 3y ago

While I could care less about Meta and Alphabet, I find it difficult not to basically see this as a form of economic warfare between the United States and the EU. The latter simply being jealous of the former's technological superiority, both economically and technically.

InCityDreams 3y ago
How is it warfare? I just see it as a rule to follow....hardly international "shots fired", like US/ China trade bollocks [etc]. I'd ask that you remember: the rest of the world isn't quite on the side of the advertiser, and nor should the relationship be abusive and one-sided. What technical superiority? And, for what it is, i bet it's for sale.

bad_user 3y ago

2018 — "GDPR doesn't work, says tech bros"

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DudeOpotomus 3y ago

Nice to read this. Its not the medium, nor the media, its the business model that is the problem. The incentives are perverted and the outcome imbalanced. The entire ad tech universe is built on false metrics, lies and fraud. Burn it all down.

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artursapek 3y ago

Oooooohhhhh I'm regulaaaaaating

germandiago 3y ago

I am an european and I am pretty sure that some day in the EU they will regulate even the position to go to po... Also, we are pretty broke now so get ready for looking for gold even underground... In the meantime... these people do not do more important homework...

lock-the-spock 3y ago
Personally I find this quite an important issue. Whether you don't care is your own choice, but not all us are happy to live in a panopticon. And the EU is in fact mainly a trade body, setting standards and categorisations, so there are likely some rules on toilets already in EU acquis on health and safety at the workplace, etc. I doubt they oblige a specific position though, you can rest in peace on the piece
- germandiago 3y ago
  I care, but they spend a lifetime fining citizens and companies and later at the same time they tell you that with digital euro, anonimity... no. Want to make physical money disappear over time, restrict to 1000 euros cash transactions... (Spain case) They are so special. I thought common human beings work for public institutions also so they should be audited by the same rules. Or for example they prepare a law to be able to get journalist sources (which is even illegal in my constitution!). I do not think it is a fair position. They are increasingly telling us: you do all this and we... we have superpowers we do not need to do it. I do not agree with that vision.

eschewingmycud 3y ago

This is not a ban on personalized/behaviorial advertising. If a user consents, behavior advertising is still allowed. From the press release (https://edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/edpb-urgent-binding-decision-processing-personal-data-behavioural-advertising-meta_en https://edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/edpb-urgent-binding-de...): "On 27 October, the EDPB adopted an urgent binding decision ... to impose a ban on the processing of personal data for behavioural advertising on the legal bases of contract and legitimate interest ..." Under GDPR Article 6, all processing of personal data requires one of the following lawful bases: consent, contractual obligation, legal obligation, vital interests of a person, public interest, or legitimate interests of the controller. The ban says that Meta can't use two of these as bases---contract, legitimate interest---for behavior advertising. Behavior advertising that is consented to is a-okay.

jacquesm 3y ago

Good. Now do Google.

DrScientist 3y ago

The issues isn't just about the information that is captured and traded about you. The issue is how is that data put to use - how that affects your life and whether those decisions were made with flawed algorithms or indeed flawed data. And quite possibly, the whole process being so opaque that nobody understands how it works, or why certain things happened. And, in my view, a lot of it comes back to a lot of these internet businesses scale only if they leave an element of fairness behind. For example, if you are randomly banned from youtube by an algorithm, it's not economically worth it for Google to fund a process of proper appeal - because proper appeal process needs people. You then have a choice - dispense with fairness and justice or dispense with a business model that doesn't scale in a fair and just way.

jonahhorowitz 3y ago

I really hope they make the subscription option available in the US. I'd happily pay $25/mo to opt out of ads on both platforms. I was going to sign up for their "verified" option until I saw that it didn't remove the Ads.

Andrew018 3y ago

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jokoon 3y ago

I'm using firefox containers for youtube, so I don't login, don't have cookies etc, and yet youtube still suggests videos that are related to what I watched previously. So they even build profiles of people who evade tracking techniques. I don't understand how they can think it won't tarnish their image or backfire. It's funny because on one hand, we don't want government surveillance, but yet people criticize the GDPR or the EU or defend the advertising industry, which is probably a very efficient proxy for government surveillance.

seydor 3y ago

Whenever EU services "ban" facebook, i like to remember that European commission and parliament are among the biggest public spenders of ads on facebook, in most EU countries: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/

Timon3 3y ago
You're misrepresenting things quite drastically by leaving out that it's only "ads about social issues, elections or politics", not all ads.
- seydor 3y ago
  yes of course, i used 'public' because government did not match either. The point is , EU administration is using those personalization features to target their advertising. I still find it odd that EC & EP outspend local politicians

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

It's unclear to me, honestly, why targeting ads is bad. Is random useless ads better. To compensate, they'll need even MORE ads.

em1sar 3y ago

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redder23 3y ago

Fuck yeah! I have no clue how it came this far, they really banned it. Not just mandated to be default and opt-in? That is crazy, and I honestly fail to understand why they are doing this, I mean do not get me wrong, I like it, I just do not trust the EU AT ALL. They are so in with big business, what do they gain from this? And do not tell me they are doing this "for the people". Probably because it's American companies and they want to push EU companies.

Zetobal 3y ago

I am so glad someone finally called their "we gonna leave" bluff.

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lfnoise 3y ago

How will compliance be verified?

geniium 3y ago
The ads tools will change and not allow same target options

asylteltine 3y ago

Can they ban Facebook and instagram?

interactivecode 3y ago
If they have reason to, yes. Same as the USA banning tiktok (if they had gone through with it)

neaumusic 3y ago

private data should be illegal, public behavioral data should be public, censorship is pretty much always wrong

EchoReflection 3y ago

so far everyone's comments here are awesome

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arbuge 3y ago

I might be in the minority here but I personally find personalized ads useful, and am far more annoyed by ads recommending products and services completely irrelevant to my interests and/or needs. (The latter still account for the ads I see most of the time, unfortunately.)

imafish 3y ago
Sure. As long as I don’t have to deliver (all) my private data to get those relevant ads.
- arbuge 3y ago
  ALL your private data sounds rather extreme. That could certainly mean a lot of things! Some examples of what I'm fine with: if I visit a hardware store's online website and am then retargeted by their ads, or I visit a hardware magazine's website and am then targeted by hardware ads.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    So you'll be happy to opt in and disable the 'do-not-track' option in your browser, etc.
  - aalimov_ 3y ago
    > ALL your private data sounds rather extreme. How so? Ad tech wants to eat as much of your data as possible. They’ll use everything they have to make inferences about things you want, things you believe, things you might believe later. I think you could go as far as saying they want ALL your data and then some..
  - fahhem 3y ago
    The ads can be targeted to the publisher, so the hardware magazine's ads will likely all be hardware related, instead of related to whatever website you visited before it
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    My clarification then, targeted ads are fine if ai don't have to provide ANY of my private data. The site showing an ad knows the context of what I'm looking at, whether that's a specific news article or the weather. That's enough info for a reasonably targeted ad without needing to match back to my browsing history, who I bank with, my likely religious views or sexual orientation, etc

hereme888 3y ago

The debt of countries keeps increasing. Wars from greed and for power, derivatives market, and data thieves. They can all burn for all I care. They should have never existed in the first place.

dang 3y ago

Url changed from https://dig.watch/updates/eu-data-regulator-decided-to-ban-personalised-advetising-on-facebook-and-instagram https://dig.watch/updates/eu-data-regulator-decided-to-ban-p..., which points to this. Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

The choices will be (a) consent to personalised ads (b) subscribe (c) do nothing Will Meta block people from using its websites if they refuse to consent to personalised ads, i.e., option (c). That would seem quite stupid. Meta would lose the traffic. If millions of people consent, i.e., choose option (a), it defeats the purpose of GDPR. Meta scores a victory against privacy. They may even succeed in complying before the ban comes into effect. If millions of people choose (c), i.e., to retain their rights under GDPR, then Meta is fscked. EU is forcing the issue, but Meta will only present this choice of options to people over 18. Quite a large carveout. Users in the EU should choose (c) and call Meta's bluff. There is no sensible reason that Meta would block users who do not consent to personalised ads. If a user wants personalised ads, they can opt-in. Users who find personalised ads useful, such as the lone outlier commenter at the top of this thread, can opt-in.

James752 3y ago

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