Ban surveillance-based advertising
-
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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@code3 , that is what I do.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
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
-
@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. -
@jtid: , The digital ad industry is not 10 years old. It is more like 25-30 year old. DoubleClick was founded in 1995, for example, and they were the leaders in the field for a long time, until Google bought them. All of this was really working pretty well for a long time really. Yes, there were problems. Popup ads were a pain and were pretty quickly blocked. The real problem, however, is the tracking. IMHO there is no such thing as non-creepy tracking, when it comes to ads.
With context sensitive ads, I think advertisers were getting more value in general. The ads were shown in better places. I think one big change with the surveillance-based ads is that it reduced the difference in placement cost, at the detriment of quality placements. As the ads follows the users, they would be placed wherever the user might be. This clearly opens up to a lot of bad behavior and a lot of scams.
So bigger inventory means more revenue for the brokers, but not necessarily better value for advertisers. In many ways the only winners have been the Big Tech ad brokers. They have had more inventory to sell, a lot of it being low quality.
-
So to be clear, the digital ad industry is 25-30 years old, while the creepy surveillance-based ad industry is likely about 10 years old. That industry needs to be stopped. Just like Asbestos, it needs to be banned and the sooner, the better, as the damage it does over time is just too significant. When you look at how much damage it has done in 10 years, how much damage can it do in another 10?
-
@jon Say we get rid of personalized ads. Completely.
How do we prevent fraud? Trust Tokens maybe?
-
@code3: , the online ad industry worked just fine for 15 years, before the introduction of surveillance-based advertising. There is no need to track individuals or groups of individuals for the ad systems to work.
The introduction of the surveillance-based ad industry has likely led to a lot more fraud. The systems are fragile.
-
@jon I'm not saying you're wrong in theory, but in practice, what will actually happen? Will google (and other adtech companies) say "we give up on this ad serving, let's go back to the way things used to be" when surveillance ads are banned? I think they'll just serve contextual ads, like they already do for certain users for GDPR compliance. Still, even Google Adsense Contextual would be better than what we have now. They're not the kind of ethical ads I would opt to see, though.
-
@code3: Not sure what you mean to imply here. That Google will not follow the law? Basically if surveillance-based ads are banned, the parties need to comply. There will then be other ads instead. Typically contextual ads, just like we had before the introduction of surveillance-based ads and like we do still in most other cases. TV ads are still mostly contextual. Print ads are contextual. By going back to using the same system for digital as as other forms, with some benefits still as you can use location, for example, you will in practice have a better ad system that is not based on disrespecting the users and messing up society.
-
@jon No, I'm saying that when you compare contextual vs surveillance you seem to actually be comparing before (Contextual + Individual ad deals) vs now (Personalized + Mass ad networks). After banning surveillance ads we will have contextual ads but will likely still have mass ad networks such as Adsense. It won't be the same as it used to be. But it will be better than personalized ads.
On another note, how should companies that want to sign the letter go about doing so? Email you?
-
@code3 , you seem to misunderstand what I write at times and when you represent what I write, it is quite often not fully accurate. Please do not put words in my mouth. I can represent my views.
DoubleClick was an ad network. Big one. Ad sense used to be contextual, based on the text on the page. You can still have ad networks. In reality, I think this opens up to more ad networks and more direct advertising on location, but we have to see. Clearly when you take the surveillance out of the system, things change.
I wish you would stop using the term "personalized ads". It is highly misleading and the reason why Big Tech invented the term. It is surveillance-based ads. That is the correct term, IMHO.
If companies send us a message, we will try to get them onto the list as well as we can. I think we should try to create a form for that purpose.
-
@jon , I think it is also important to educate users not to turn 'I have read and I accept' into a lie, because many pages intentionally turn the reading of TOS and PP into a tedious, long reading of several pages in legal jargon, apart almost always not translated. This also needs a mandatory change, since apart from this request, the most efficient way that large companies stop these practices is that people stop using their services, because they are aware of their abusive practices.
I'm already tired of talking to people who say 'if you want privacy, use FOSS, which of course nonsens, what will it do for them, if they have the script open, but they don't even bother to read the terms of use that this has.
Today comments regarding this letter that I published in Lemmy, which can be taken as an example of the misinformation of the people.Vivaldi is Trash
Vivaldi Chrome +Bloatware
I use FF, because it`s FOSS, if they track me, it financed the Coommunity(Facepalm) they don't even read the letter. A lot of work to do
-
@catweazle: there are plenty of things to work on, but for this particular matter, it really is about spreading the word. We need to get surveillance-ads banned. I think we need to stay focused on that. Discussing reading TOS and Privacy notices is not going to help. In reality, a clear ban can reduce the need for those cookie dialogs. They are no longer needed as what you can and cannot do is clear. There is no asking for permission, as you cannot ask for permission. Better for everyone.
There will always be people that will bash us. More as we grow. Not much we can do about that except to stay on topic and keep it civilized.