zlacker

Ads are not the discussion. It’s tracking.

Some will say that ads hijack your attention and therefore should be blocked by default. This is a different question. But since ad companies wanted to track ROI it became a problem, because it’s pretty easy for them to do that on the internet. That’s why more people are opposed to ads on the internet but not on a busstop.

If the busstop ads start taking retina scans to show you more personal ads while you travel around town, people will be opposed to that too.

You don’t need to track every user and every click to show ads and make money. But as ad companies like meta can make more money by tracking your every step they will just do that.

There were ads on the internet before tracking became a thing. And people made money off of those ads.

>>deutsc+(OP)
Ads are significantly more useful with tracking. Non-personalized ads are effectively spam and we would be better off without those entirely. Personalized ads can often be as good as the content you're looking for in the first place, if not even better.

>>avarun+lR1
I value privacy above the marginal usefulness of targeted ads. You should be free to opt-in to tracking and personalization if that's what you want. But we shouldn't all be caught in a surveillance dragnet by default.

>>deutsc+(OP)
Funny reading that from someone with your nickname :-)

The Deutsche Post, or DHL is sort of tracking too, since a looong time. By having their delivery minions gather information about the circumstances people live in, and selling that information to interested parties.

>>ryanbl+BZ1
> You should be free to opt-in to tracking and personalization if that's what you want.

Agreed. So why is the EU making that illegal? I want to be able to use products for free by opting in to personalized ads so that businesses can make enough revenue to justify having an ad-supported free version of their product.

The incompetent bureaucrats at the EU won't allow Meta to offer that.

>>avarun+lR1
Let's clarify - 3rd party tracking is the issue. Tracking me on your site is fine... it's expected. Spotify should build a profile of my musical tastes. But my profile on your site should be relegated to your site. Facebook not only tracks you off their site, they sell your information to literally anyone willing to pay. It's ludicrous that we've allowed this, and the EU is finally stepping in.

>>avarun+c92
Because Meta has proven year after year that they can't be trusted with our data. It's a sanction on their gross negligence and complete lack of morals

>>cush+hh2
> Facebook not only tracks you off their site, they sell your information to literally anyone willing to pay.

This is just blatantly incorrect. Please inform yourself about topics before choosing to comment on them. https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583

>>avarun+lR1
Even without pervasive tracking, ads can still be targeted based on the content you are looking at. That's probably still quite useful in most cases.

And if you want more, you can opt in to one of the many schemes that would have popped up if the entire ad industry didn't just decide to ignore GDPR and the DPAs didn't decide to ignore those violations.

>>avarun+hl2
Sure. Facebook is still the data custodian, but it's been proven that the granularity of their targeting is so small that it's possible to target individuals - a la Cambridge Analytica and a few other studies. They're selling the use of your profile, not the profile itself. It's gross.

>>LargoL+i02
Any proofs?

>>fsflov+uD3
I'd like to deliver, but it seems what I've read long ago is lost now, or buried under more recent and digital things which don't directly apply to the specific gathering in person by their delivery personnel. With the exception of the first part of the Spiegel.de article which mentions 'Lebensweise'. Unfortunately the link from there to the source is rotten, and isn't archived/cached anywhere.

I'm sure I've read much more about that, some 20 years ago, and after. Some small blips in the press, several fora. Sometimes even from people who claimed to be, or have been working as postman, and described what they had to look for (like house being renovated, new windows, nice garden, door, car, or in appartment houses clean floors, door mats, no trash, graffiti, what 'sort' of people) how to write it down in forms, and so on. Which annoyed them, because it was a hassle, unrelated to their job/task.

Anyways, they do have that data, gathered by whichever means, and sell them. As is obvious from their own sites.

It may be that they changed parts of that recently, because incompatible with EU-Law, DSGVO/GDPR, whatnot, but they did it.

[German] https://www.deutschepost.de/de/d/deutsche-post-direkt.html

https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/netzwelt-ticker-deutsche...

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/faq-post-daten-101.html

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/datenverkauf-an-cdu-und-fdp-d...

[English] https://www.deutschepost.com/en/business-customers/dialogue-...

---------------------- Letter is lost. Shrug.