Ban surveillance-based advertising
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We did not have a lot of time to do this. We wanted to come out in support of the paper from the Norwegian Consumer Counsel and we wanted to do so before some key meetings in the EU. We did not contact a lot of companies, given the time and some we did not get an answer from in time. I am sure more will sign up moving forward. We will likely do some kind of follow-up a bit later.
We have tried to include only companies that do not actively engage in surveillance-based advertising.
We will discuss with our partners the next steps. Petitions are a good option.
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@jon , maybe the guys from SSuite are also good candidates to sign this paper. I can imagine that the effectiveness is greater when it is signed by companies and CEOs of websites and not by users.
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That is quite possible. We welcome more companies signing up. They can send us a message and we can get them involved. I guess we need to make that easier over time for companies to add their names to the list.
The people we need to influence are politicians. They need to feel that there is support for their actions. Not only by companies and institutions, but also by individuals. We need ways for all your voices to be heard!
Remember that you all can contribute as well by sharing this letter and trying to influence people around you. Some people do not understand what is happening. Some people do not understand the extent to the data collection. Some people think that given it is happening, it cannot be that bad. There is a fair amount of education needed here and we need to work together on getting the word out.
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@jon said in Ban surveillance-based advertising:
We have tried to include only companies that do not actively engage in surveillance-based advertising.
Why? In a previous thread you said that excluding people who have used or still use surveillance services shouldn’t be excluded from this movement.
I think an open petition as well as a way to contact you specifically to sign the letter for a company.
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@jon When searching change.org for a petition to ban personalized ads, I found a popular petition to do the opposite:
https://www.change.org/p/youtubers-and-viewers-unite-against-ftc-regulation
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I do see a difference between companies that are part of the overall eco-system that is available to them and those that are building the building blocks of the surveillance-based ad economy, but maybe you are right. If Google, Microsoft and Facebook had signed up on this, it would likely have been helpful, unless that was only to influence what the regulation would be. In fact, Facebook has been calling for regulation, although I fear it would not be this regulation.
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As you can imagine, Big Tech has a lot of resources and clearly they can find people to fight their cause. This is why it is so important for us to step up the fight our selves.
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@jon , I think the same, asking Google, FB & Cia to join this initiative, I think it will be an insider joke like the Do not Track option in Chrome.
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Yes, I am fearing that there will be push for regulation that does not work. Clearly that is in the interest of some of these companies. They can then point at the regulation, saying they are being regulated and that what they are doing is thus OK.
Google´s introduction of FLOC is a great example of this. They introduce something new that they claim is a privacy feature, while in reality it is the opposite. We need to be on the watch here.
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@jon Yes, but in this case the regulation is very clear: no more personalized ads.
I don’t think big tech will sign on directly, but maybe a subsidiary. For example, GitHub owned by Microsoft has committed to only using cookies necessary for the site’s operations, Edge owned by Microsoft has tracker blocking available. I don’t know of any google subsidiaries that are really committed to privacy, maybe Fitbit? Maybe Apple would consider it.
Then there are smaller companies like Brave and Mozilla that would probably sign, even if they use personalized ads.
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Well ... if they actually ask you, they could do personalized ads. I mean, I might prefer ads for stuff I find useful as opposed to womens clothing or diapers (referring to stuff I've seen on my Android tablet). Not that they shouldn't already have figured out I'm a single male.
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@sgunhouse Based on the last thread it sounds like Jon wants a ban on personalized ads, no matter what.
But if you’re not browsing a baby website you won’t see ads for diapers, in contextual ads.
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@code3 , I don't think so, the Do not Track option that have som browser is a bad joke, no tracking company respect this.
Brave has to change all their bitcoin policy to do this and Mozilla depends directly to the suport of Google. It's not so easy, but there are enough other companies, interested in this initiative.
The list of these in the blog are not all of the sites and persons, which support this, there are also a lot more, which you can see in the letter of the NCC
https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2021-06-23-letter-to-policymakers-surveillance-based-advertising.pdfThe named in the blog are apart to these.
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@catweazle said in Ban surveillance-based advertising:
Brave has to change all their bitcoin policy to do this
You mean BAT (which isn’t Bitcoin) which is given to users after seeing on-device personalized ads? I think Brave could do it without personalized ads. They would at least consider signing.
@catweazle said in Ban surveillance-based advertising:
Mozilla depends directly to the suport of Google
That doesn’t mean they don’t care about privacy. A lot of companies depend on the support of google. I think they would still sign this. I think it would be worthwhile to have them sign this.
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@catweazle said in Ban surveillance-based advertising:
The list of these in the blog are not all of the sites and persons, which support this, there are also a lot more, which you can see in the letter of the NCC
Nice! Now we need a way for independent people to sign. And we should also share the article.
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@code3 , that is what I do.
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@sgunhouse: I think this is part of the big misinformation campaign, which is why they like to use terms such as "personalized". So what did we have before surveillance-based ads? We had contextual ads. So if you visited a tech site, you would see tech ads. If you visited fashion sites, you would see fashion ads. Pretty simple. Also, if you would visit generic sites, they might have ads that are relevant in the country they are. I really think it worked better than the current ads, that stalk you.
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@jon , it's realy a joke when all privacy policy of these tracking webs started with the phrase "Your privacy is very important for us", since they know that this is the most that most users read, before clicking OK.
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Lots of opinions on this as I work in marketing (nice marketing) and I know that tracking can be very useful (not creepy tracking).
Once the creepy stuff stops being profitable for the two big ad agencies, Google & Facebook, they will stop... as long as it makes truck loads of money they will continue.
Brands do need to understand how much of their money is wasted... that makes G & F lots of cash.
Spoke to an economist the other day who specialises in digital advertising data analysis and he reckons 25% of Google ads revenue is brands experimenting as to what works !!! Just tests!!
He also ran a deep audit on a brand that was spending $100,000 a month on Google Ads. They got a return on this, they made good profit but... they found out $80,000 of the spend was wasted and driving zero results.
They could get the same profit and results spending $20,000 a month but Google didn't tell them and it took a data analyst and lots of time (and tracking) to work it out.
This is very wrong and needs regulating.
The other thing is that the digital ad industry is VERY new... I would say around 10 years old so it's got to make mistakes before it matures.
Could talk for hours on this
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@jtid , It might be a business, but I have several observations on it.Trafficking with data and meta-data of the users, is not only degrading the user to a mere merchandise and an intrusion into your privacy, but can also quickly become a real security risk, as has been seen in the past with hundreds of thousands of sensitive banking data and Medicines from Google and Facebook. Once in the hands of third parties, the user has no control over how they treat and protect this datas.
This is in addition to the reasons given in this letter.