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.
This might be hard to grok, but we can actually be aware of both threats without minimizing the seriousness of either.
Both can ruin your life, that's the issue.
> "The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap."
This only works for small companies.
We should also care about government surveillance. But, in this case, we are allies.
But, the government is the solution to when business gets too much power. You can't convince a profit motivated corporation to stop doing something evil as long as it's profitable, so it's the government's job to protect people from corporate governance.
Although I do believe that governments should be liable (is this the best word?) to people and in turn make companies liable too.
Even in good times, in countries with mostly balanced institutions, the government can lock you up in prison and throw away the key if you piss off the wrong people.
On the other hand, I can assure you the only thing Unilever is aspiring to do is get you to buy more toilet bowl cleaner.
And I know the rebuttal will be..."but stupid people (not me of course) will get duped into buying more toilet bowl cleaner than they actually need!"
While that is indeed a huge burden of responsibility to place upon all the people you think are less intelligent than you, I think they will be okay.
As history has shown, the real risk is the government telling me exactly how much toilet bowl cleaner I get to use.
EU data practices differ significantly from tech giants; they're governed by strict GDPR rules, requiring consent for personal data processing.
No EU nation systematically tracks citizens like tech companies do for ads.
It's difficult to compare the data collection practices of EU nations directly with those of large tech companies like Facebook or Google, there are some parallels and distinctions to be made.
The encryption debate is separate, focusing on balancing privacy with security.
My take (being in EU) is that with weaker encryption, the EU tries to balance privacy with law enforcement needs, aiming to curb illicit communications while raising privacy concerns.
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.
Except when they hire security contractors, and then that 3rd party assumes government powers - including police immunity - without the oversight. Which is what happens when cities ban technology uses such as facial recognition by the police - they just hire a 3rd party to do it with zero oversight. Same with large tourist events in non-tourist cities: those are not regular cops during the event, they are contractors with temporary police immunity and very little official oversight.
And everyone who even ever dares to come near them gets banned too, so employers don't want to risk hiring them either.
When the Nazis did Berufsverbote, that was an unusual and cruel punishment. When Google does it, that's just the free market baby!
Companies can destroy a life just fine.
I totally agree with this. But are personalized Facebook ads really an example of this?
And what's the solution when the government gets too much power? Especially in a "democracy," when the people have implicitly given approval for this by voting in the people who are attempting to consolidate power?
Yes:
Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health (tau.ac.il)
Facebook collecting people's data even when accounts are deactivated (digiday.com)
Facebook test asks users if they're worried a friend is 'becoming an extremist' (cnn.com)
Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall (house.gov)
Similar effects with money, though at least PayPal is no longer really a gatekeeper.
Without "companies & entrepreneurs", the government would have to build, fund and maintain their own surveillance infrastructure. This might be difficult since nobody would intentionally embed "NSAAnalytics.js" or use "NSABook", so covert methods will be necessary which are costlier and less effective at scale.
On the other hand, "companies & entrepreneurs" already built an industrial-scale, financially sustainable surveillance system that the government doesn't even have to pay for, and since it's not technically operated by the government, a lot of the legal protections against direct government surveillance also go out the window. Even better, while people may not use "NSABook" they happily do use "Facebook".
More importantly though, the real underlying enemy here has always been citizen apathy, ignorance and distraction about digital privacy (and more general about individual agency in the digital era).
Unfortunately in modern times active citizenship has degenerated into polarization and false dichotomies. Unless people are hit in the head with clear and present dangers they stand dazed and confused.
This behavior has been actively encouraged by governments worldwide for decades. E.g. they are all still actively promoting citizenry engagement in these platforms.
If a certain coalition of countries (for whatever reason) raises warnings about practices in the private sector this can only result in a more informed debate. A debate that has been largely absent so far.
BTW:
> The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap.
I don't know what companies exist in your world but in the real world a company can deny you entry to public transport, medical care, access to the financial system (banking and insurance) and salaried employment to name but a few "non-soap" issues.
A company can bar the exits, letting you burn to death [0]. A company can send private militias to force you to work [1] (or because you were sent the wrong set of MtG cards [2]). A company can improperly store pesticide, until the resulting explosion kills thousands [3]. A company can own every house and store in a town, managing your expenses to ensure you can't leave [4]. A company can bribe judges to provide them with child labor [5].
Some of these were illegal at the time they were done. Some of these were made illegal as a result of these events. All of them are within the nature of companies, optimizing in pursuit of profit regardless of the human cost. That nature is useful for improving lives, but must be carefully controlled to prevent it from trampling us all.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
[2] https://gizmodo.com/magic-the-gathering-leaks-wizards-wotc-p...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
Elections and courts. Compared to private entities, the government is very restricted in what it can do. When a company says, "We won't share your data with anyone," there's nothing you can do when they change their mind. But you can sue the government for damages.
Imagine being an evil dictator, who just got to power after years of trying... what's the easiest way to find your strongest opposition? Just buy data from social networks.
I mean... look at some stuck up countries with a lot of religious nuts, and some data, that you either bought a butt plug, googled a butt plug, went to an online buttplug store or worse... and it's just a bit of plastic.
The more European point of view is that companies are run by greedy people on who we have no control and we need the government to keep those in check. We have control over the governments and it's O.K. to take them down by force from time to time.
Mass protests are a thing and we vote quite often on who are those "government people", what control we have over the companies? It's very scary to let some businessmen to run the the stuff that our lives depend on. Why trust Musk, Gates, Tim Cook or any other magnate act in our benefit when they all show monopolistic tendencies, profit over human lives and rent seeking?
I don't know if the Europeans or Americans are right about it but overall it appears that the Europeans are having it better despite the stats about money showing smaller amounts of it.
I can’t vote out Google. Their customers are advertisers, not me. And I don’t know which apps on my phone send my information to Facebook or what they do with it.
In the post Snowden world it’s hard to imagine that any massive tech service isn’t hooked directly into the NSA or that it’s being used for what isn’t exactly illegal surveillance but sort of is.
Not that you’re wrong of course, but I think we should still work on both issues. Even if you look at the EU the agencies which are working to protect and destroy our privacy aren’t the same. So it’s very possible to support one and not the other. Similarly I think we should absolutely crack down on tech company surveillance. What I don’t personally get is why it stops with Meta. Let’s not pretend TikTok and the others aren’t doing the exact same thing. I also think we should keep in mind that the consumer agencies aren’t only doing it to protect our privacy, they are also doing it to protect our tech industry, so it’s not exactly black and white, but I really don’t think we should stop just because other parts of the EU are also evil.
I’m also not convinced that they are doing a good job distracting anyone. Within the EU NGOs there is far more focus on end-to-end encryption and keeping our privacy safe from governments, especially in countries like Germany.
The US is one of the oldest democracies on earth.
"You can give the government infinite power, we will do a revolution, no big deal."
Do you have any idea with how much suffering each revolution has been paid for?
And remind me again how the revolutionaries overthrew Nazi Germany?
The sowjet bloc created decades of suffering and blood but according to you that's fine because we can take them "down by force from time to time"?
Indeed. And due to the fact that such an industry basically doesn't exist, they are able to introduce such regulation.
It's just difference of attitudes. Europeans tend to trust the government more than the corporations.
No need for ridiculous examples, for every bad politician example there exist a bad corporation example. You say nazis, I say Bhopal disaster. No need for that, at least the Nazis payed dearly for it. Corporations are unaccountable.
>And remind me again how the revolutionaries overthrew Nazi Germany?
Remind me how the Nazis are doing these days?
Consider Oreo O's: a breakfast "food" with 11.5 g sugar and 1.3 g protein. Allegedly (according to the Wikipedia article), it was a very successful "food" and had approval from parents.
Now, if you ask someone whether it's appropriate to give your child a pile of sugar or cookies for breakfast, they'll probably tell you no, that's neglect. But somehow people have gotten it into their heads that products from Post or General Mills are acceptable, and weirdly enough now almost half of Americans are obese, and over 10% are diabetic, and how this could have come to be is a total mystery.
How did people come to the conclusion that something with marshmallows or cinnamon sugar swirls in every bite is appropriate to give your children every day? Or cans/bottles of sugar water? Something tells me the decades of endless advertising helped normalize it.
Look at the website for boxtops for education: big bold letters "YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR SCHOOLS" (by giving your child sugar for breakfast). You're making a difference! You're a good person! This kind of propaganda is profoundly evil, and this is without targeting messaging to individuals.
I don’t remember electing you to represent the point of view of “we the European people”.
I hope I was able to demystify this situation. You are welcome.
> The more European point of view
Its almost like you are discussing about objective facts.
In some countries the separation is unclear. Take ai for instance - regulation demands come from corporations to governments rather than the other way around. And thats happening in basically everything we do. Like in communism, the masses are employed in these massive enterprises that benefit from government money and friendly regulation, but regulation flows from corporations to governments while money flow the other way around (see bailouts and friendly policies). Furthermore politicians use corporations to influence our daily lives and to monitor our behaviour such that they know how to exploit our fears in order to gain and maintain power (see Cambridge analytica).
As such corporations are a tool of oppression, anti capitalism and anti freedom. Therefore you have to squeeze them out in order to be able to return to democratic capitalism.
May I introduce you to my good friend "lobbyism" ? He's very good at connecting people with money and people with political power.
Riots don't necessarily need to achieve an objective. It creates a political and economical cost to politicians. It means that you can't simply ignore the minority only because you currently have a majority, so it forces them to consider a compromise good enough. That's not always possible but it's essentially what separates France from Turkey. In Turkey, Erdogan wins the elections by %51 and completely ignores the %49 because they can't win an election and can't disrupt the public anymore.
>You are naive if you think Europeans have any semblance of control
Who do you think has control?
If you can avoid a company, the fact that there is an acceptable alternative itself says that the market is not monopolized and so there is less chance of abuse.
In the markets where abuse is possible there are often monopolies, or there is illusion of choice like a (colluding or copycatting)duopoly or one where all the "competing" brands being owned by the same parent conglomerate etc.
It is very difficult to participate in the modern economy/world while avoiding certain companies. It might be possible but there are both social and economical costs involved that majority cannot afford.
Why not both?
> The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap
No, the worst thing a company can do is to propagate the recorded data, willingly or otherwise (companies get hacked, forced by governments, etc.), to entities that won't be content with just using that data to sell more soap.
Oh, btw. Do you know who's in general VERY interested in all that sweet data such companies collect? That's right: Governments.
And politicians and governments, at least in all countries that I intend to live in, answer to the voter. Who do companies answer to?
Avoiding a company doesn't necessarily mean there's an acceptable alternative. I could use no social media and my life wouldn't be much worse or burdensome.
There's very little I can do to prevent the government from doing what it's doing by myself.
Companies can’t point guns at me and put me in a cage. They can’t go into my home without my permission and search my stuff. And if I don’t want to deal with a company, I can simply stop interacting with them. If I don’t want to deal with a government, I have to emigrate and renounce my citizenship.
It's the collection and dissemination of the data that is the real problem. Everyone deserves privacy and the right to remain private.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/14/tech/amazon-ring-police-f...
It turns out kids like sugar, incomes have been stagnant for decades, and food deserts exist. What's the cheapest, shelf stable food item on a per-meal basis that your children will voluntarily eat without a fight before work? Sugary cereal. Could any of those factors possibly be the root cause of the market success of sugary cereal? Or is it all because of the evil mind controlling advertisers tricking the stupid people (not you of course)?
The reality is, in a free society, at some point you have to give people responsibility over themselves. I know the impulse of the elite (and rich people on the internet) is always "let me protect you from your own stupidity, I'm smarter!" However, history has shown that impulse is wrong. Preventing businesses and customers with needs from efficiently reaching each other through targeted advertising is in fact a net negative for society.
This is false. May I introduce you to chat control or client side scanning on every device that you own?
That what is the proposal is currently. All the data would be funneled to Europol, which would have access to every text, every image , every thing you do on your messaging apps. Does that sound like consent to you?
> My take (being in EU) is that with weaker encryption, the EU tries to balance privacy with law enforcement needs, aiming to curb illicit communications while raising privacy concerns.
You can have encryption or no encryption. If the EU can read your messages, so can China, Russia, Iran and anybody else who either buys their way into the system or breaks in illegally.
> It's difficult to compare the data collection practices of EU nations directly with those of large tech companies like Facebook or Google, there are some parallels and distinctions to be made.
That's right at least with GDPR, companies have to delete my data after a certain amount of time but some governments of Europe don't have too. There is this thing called data retention:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
It's been illegal for some time now but some governments in Europe (France for example) have decided that they don't care and keep doing it. Welcome to the land of privacy.
But they used to, once upon a time, until they were limited from doing so.
> And if I don’t want to deal with a company, I can simply stop interacting with them.
Except when you can't. There's no "stop interacting" for a bunch of things in today's society. Google/Facebook tracks you even when you're not using their products. If you want a non-tech example, try stop interacting with Experian, for instance.
No, the worst thing a company can do is to influence your desires, feelings and behaviours, causing you to spend money irresponsibly, getting your kids addicted to useless games, ... All that is also what this kind of tracking aims at. It is quite incredible how people have gotten used to being manipulated on a daily basis. Advertisement used to be fact based, but it's nowaday all emotional trickery and the more the companies know about you, the better they can modulate it to your wants, needs and worries.
Targeted advertising has already changed governments, caused hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies, family trouble and breakups, and many sucides. You don't notice it anymore because it is so utterly ubiquitous, but it drains you and affects your feelings and thoughts most of the day.
I doubt that this relates to the online advertising space.
Disregarding the personal data and other tracking, banning all targeted advertising is... not ideal. I genuinely would prefer to have ads that are relevant, than ads for table casters.
One thing that we should also be aware, is that ads aren't going away. They're going to be more obnoxious as a result of this decision.
I can't avoid not paying taxes to fund the catholic church in my country, that uses that money to lobby homophobic laws... I can block Google and not use them.
This is not a simple "just vote them out", unless you're part of the privileged majority that can affect the policy.
Wow. I guess if we ban it then, we'll be living in a perfect utopia...like we used to have in the past?
Have you ever considered that "Targeted Advertising" could be, for the most part, a way for customers with wants/needs and businesses with products/solutions to efficiently match up? And that the people who have been "duped" by targeted advertising actually just have different wants/desires/needs than you?
I think its more likely that the root cause of all the things you mention, is just normal human nature stuff.
I think you might be using Targeted advertising as a panacea boogieman instead of confronting the uncomfortable real causes for these things (from election results you don't like to family breakups/suicides)?
But telling a small newspaper to stop using ads for revenue, when you aren't willing to financially support them is... hypocritical.
In short - just like a lot of "this ids good for you" laws, this will definitely impact smaller companies way more than you think.
We bought it in the same stores where we bought real food back then. We buy food in the same stores that have breakfast cereal now.
I haven't watched TV or movies for like the last 10 years, and I've blocked ads on my computers for ~20, so I've at least minimized the most blatant exposure, but I don't think myself immune. That's why I've done what I can to remove them from my life. But I'm naive too; like I didn't realize until recently that radio "callers" are just iheartmedia employees, or that you can just buy an "interest" piece on the news or Ellen or an "opinion" or "lifestyle" piece in the newspaper or whatever. It makes sense in retrospect, but the extent to which literally all media around us are just ads is hard to wrap one's head around, and a little unexpected IMO. I don't think it's intuitive or that you have to be dumb to be tricked. You just have to be honest enough that it wouldn't occur to you that everything around you is lying and that these people will relentlessly work to construct some Hell version of Plato's cave in order to sell you things and that it's basically legal to do so.
Maybe I'm just one of the dumb ones, but IMO ads like this[0] masquerading as national news should maybe require extremely clear labeling and disclaimers, or just be illegal. Maybe when shills on youtube say "this is sponsored, but this is my real opinion", the second half of that sentence should be illegal. Maybe they should have to say "this video is an advertisement for X, and I am not presenting my opinions on it".
The food desert idea is plausible, but the literal definition is useless (poor people can't walk 0.5 miles?), so I'm forced to be skeptical of any claims around it.
To me the plausible explanation for breakfast cereals is that people underestimate how evil these companies can be, and probably figure it must be illegal to sell candy advertised as food or something, so it can't be that bad if it's so common and if it's allowed to be advertised on TV. Surely they couldn't or wouldn't say it's "part of a complete breakfast" if it weren't at least mostly true. Surely if it's on the news, the reporter would mention if it's actually extremely horrible for you and surely the "report" isn't literally written by the advertiser.
[0] https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/oreo-os-cereal-returning-...
This is demonstrably not true. For over 100 years, advertising has had strong roots in emotional appeal. From wiki:
"In the 1910s and 1920s, many ad men believed that human instincts could be targeted and harnessed – "sublimated" into the desire to purchase commodities"
Just look at smoking ads from this time. Claiming health benefits that didn't exist, covering up health issues they knew existed, and associating smoking with cool people and socially desirable behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising#Since_1...
With these laws in place, EU companies face worse conditions than US ones. They may be protecting some bigger EU companies, but they definitely aren't protecting our IT industry.
GPDR was an annoyance for Google, and a complete disaster for anyone small(think companies that can't hire a Chief Data Protection Officer to work full time)
There's a good rationale for placing restrictions and rules on data privacy, but there are also some very ignorant and destructive decisions.
Not being able to interact with a business on Facebook or on any of the other equally insignificant platforms simply does not rate.
And if a governmental agency requires you to use Facebook to interact with them, without any stipulations to bind Meta to serve you, well it's alarming that anyone would have time to say a single thing about Meta instead of address the real issue of the agency having the power to in effect force you to interact with facebook.com.
The government is no more or less restricted than a corporation.
> "We won't share your data with anyone," there's nothing you can do when they change their mind
You can, you can sue for breach of contract. If the government tomorrow gets a law passed that they can share or institute a sharing system(like Five Eyes) - you literally can't even sue over anything.
> But you can sue the government for damages.
That's absolutely not true.
In government individuals carry more responsibility than "government". German government can fail to protect your tax data tomorrow and you'll have no way to sue them. You'll be pointed to the individual who'll be blamed and may even go to prison. But you'll get FA.
You have way more chances in winning a lawsuit against a corporation, than "a government".(barring some exceptions)
Instantly invalidates everything you said
Attributing all of these ills to better ads is just comical
> If you want a non-tech example, try stop interacting with Experian, for instance.
Use cash, homestead, etc. Yes - you can, in fact, stop any data going to credit rating agencies.
There's absolutely nothing you can do to stop being of interest to one or another level of government in US, while living in the US.
I know it's a radical example, but your statement is false.
Which public transport company has denied entry to someone?
> medical care, financial system (banking and insurance)
You mean the government instituted monopoly?
> salaried employment
This is patently false. No private corporation can deny you employment, outside of their own company.(at the very least, not without government enforcement)
Governments deny you salaried employment on a daily basis.
I don't think this is a contrarian view here, look at the comments a lot of people are very negative about the GDPR and just fine with how Meta collects data. There are quite a lot of libertarians here.
> The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap.
A company could make you dependent on their services, and then shut you out. Or sell your personal info to future employers. Or massively pollute and destroy the environment and climate. Or sell important medicine for crazy margins. There are even mercenary companies waging war and engaging in torture. Selling me more soap isn't the worst I expect from companies, by far.
> 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.
You are suggesting this has some vague evil hidden agenda, I find that entirely implausible. You don't have any evidence for this. I'm not even sure what you are hinting at, the possible ban on encryption? Do you seriously think this case against Meta is a way to make people somehow not notice that kind of legislation, how?
Clark Stanley, a former cowboy, copied this tincture, but claimed it came from the Hopi tribe of Native Americans and used rattlesnakes, which had barely any of the anti-inflammatory chemicals as the original Chinese recipe.
More importantly, a Federal government regulation in 1906, with the intention of cracking down on "patent medicine", discovered (in 1917) that Stanley's snake oil, had, in fact, no snake oil in it at all! For this gross violation of consumer trust, Stanley was fined $20, or about $500 in today's dollars.
For some really stupid reason, but yes. We shouldn't trust our governments as much as we do.
> at least the Nazis payed dearly for it
If you mean most of Europe paid dearly for that, then yes.
> Remind me how the Nazis are doing these days?
Surprisingly well and some are even on the rise, why do you ask?
If you think that Facebook is willing to part with the sole thing that makes them competitive... is crazy.
Of course, there is tons and tons of legalese, edge cases, interpretations etc. But if you abide by and implement these basic principles, especially as a small company, you can be quite confident you won't run into any real problems.
If you kind of cared about your customer data in the first place as part of your company culture, its not that hard to adapt. Maybe some really careless companies had a hard time. There must have been some kafkaesque situations killing small companies no doubt, but honestly I haven't heard of them. I only hear Americans complain about it.
To me, this means the law is just right.
I couldn't care less about toothpaste. I care about disinformation and divisiveness campaigns on topics like LGBT+, POC, workplace protection, environment, healthcare, food safety, unionization, gun safety, etc etc etc.
those are not about a little more revenue, those are about how we live, as a society. and _that_ should be a taboo for microtargeting. our ancestors fought long and hard to end feudal aristocracy. and no less is at stake than our freedom.
phew sorry for the rant.
This is reasonable.
Though knowing that the data used to serve ads has very little overlap with the information that governments are interested in, makes this move more pointlessly destructive.
Funny enough, the data that governments are interested in isn't getting restricted. There are laws about how to protect that store that data, but that data is not being restricted.
Let's not pretend that governments are going to tell companies to stop collecting data, that they are inherently interested in procuring.
(Mind that this isn't about Meta in particular, it's just that Meta has been found in violation of general regulations, which are now enforced.)
The utter failures of governments to provide any meaningful guidance, or intentionally boosting certain product consumption.
We can have an argument on how effective that propaganda was, but in the end governments in EU and US make bad food much more available than traditional diets.
We can all rant about how evil corporations are for putting HFCS into their products in the US, but it's disingenuous to disregard the fact that US government spends billions on propping up corn production that makes HFCS more economically viable.
In the end you still choose to buy sugary cereals, but if you are in poverty - you're left without a choice when it comes to calorie sources, because of government interventions.
What a perfect comparison for how toothless corporations are compared to governments.
Americans don't think politicians are a different breed of people, they treat them differently because their position in government gives them a lot more power and impact than corporations.
> Who said anything about giving government infinite power?
Infinite power is an exaggeration but EU governments are giving themselves broad surveillance powers while directing your attention at behavioral advertising.
Systemic > Isolated instances but also harder to point out.
Sugary products are cheap to manufacture, specifically because US government subsidizes corn production for HFCS. It's not because General Mills is evil corporation that wants to hook you on sugar.
As an example from the other side - Cheap dairy products in Europe exist because the governments there subsidize the crap out of dairy industry. And will not stop, no matter how bad production of those are for the environment. They will point the finger at air travel, though...
> The food desert idea is plausible, but the literal definition is useless (poor people can't walk 0.5 miles?),
How sheltered are you? No you can't walk 0.5 miles, when there's an interstate separating you from a grocery store that can financially afford to stock fresh produce. Or maybe you should walk an extra 30-60 minutes after you come back from your second shift of the day?
Notice how those two examples aren't restricted.
> Sites like facebook can sell your interests, google can sell them your search topics, etc.
Governments don't care for that kind of data, that's why they willing to restrict those. Even though the best reason to use Google, is because they know my previous search topics and what I clicked on.
I dunno if you realize this but this sentiment is by FAR the most dangerous opinion in regards to advertising one can have. Because you are essentially saying that humans have no personal agency and that every decision we make is influenced by external factors. Which leads to a logical conclusion of a society where eveyone is required by law to take Xanax and is subjected to a carefully planned life down to the minute.
>Targeted advertising has already changed governments, caused hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies, family trouble and breakups, and many sucides.
No it hasn't. Don't make shit up.
I would rather Google and Facebook have an financial interest in keeping that data to themselves, than having a financial incentive to sell it outright.
No, you actually can’t, in a very real and practical sense.
Also, behavioural tracking is by no means the only road to advertising. We have managed to do this for centuries with much less intrusion and risk.
The US is best understood as a very flawed democracy, somewhere between the extremes of actual authoritarian states on the one hand and modern well-run European states on the other.
Even when companies are only selling anonymized data, with enough money and sources, it's possible to cross-reference enough information to de-anonymize it.
This isn't just "lol dumb people got tricked". It's fraud. Plenty of apparently reasonable people take the intended (false) meanings from advertisements. These are intentional misrepresentations. And it's not one or two egregious actors. The entire industry is about deceiving to the maximum extent allowed by law, which is a lot.
Like I said the (colloquial) idea of a food desert is plausible, but there is no information on it. The stats are not looking at how many people have a highway blocking the way and you have to go uphill both ways in a wheelchair after working 3 jobs, so actually that 0.5 miles is burdensome. They tell us nothing (well, they tell us how many people don't even have to walk 10 minutes to reach a fully stocked supermarket). If you think that's the scenario being discussed when people talk about food deserts, it's coming from your imagination. Maybe it exists. It's not what the term means. It's almost like the term was chosen to be evocative and paint a certain picture of reality.
Anything that moves democracy away from one-person-one-vote to one-dollar-one-vote (which you need to buy ads), needs to be made illegal.
How do you know I am not willing to pay?
OK, I'll be the millionth commenter to repeat this viewpoint for the millionth time on HN: nobody has issues with online ads to support their favorite newspaper or creator, people have an issue with tracking and targeting ads.
We've had ad supported websites, forums and blogs since the 90's, but those were generic and harmless, and wouldn't track and target YOU.
So if newspapers or any other websites want to use weaponized ad-tech on me, then excuse me, but I'm gonna block the shit out of them with no remorse, to protect myself.
You can't look at governments, but especially the EU, as a single entity. Some parts of it want to collect all data possible while others want to protect your privacy. Here is a good article on how EU courts and the Irish government for example had very different views on this topic [2].
The general pattern you can observe is some political entities and/or countries really like to push surveillance and data retention laws in the name of security, sometimes without possible understanding the amount of misuse this could enable [3]. On the other hand privacy activists and other political entities and/or countries fight back against those and push for laws protecting privacy and your data or prohibit mass surveillance [4]. Sometimes those political "battles" are pretty obvious, with a recent example being the chat-control plans of the European Commission that the European Parliament will hopefully/likely reject [5].
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/12/google-android-location-tr... [2] https://www.politico.eu/article/data-retention-europe-mass-s... [3] https://netzpolitik.org/2021/urgently-needed-france-spain-pu... [4] https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/11/23719694/eu-ai-act-draft-... [5] https://www.aol.com/privacy-busting-chat-control-plans-17282...
Neutral market speak about "market efficiency" and matching customers with issues to businesses with solutions is fine, but talking about it at the expense of acknowledging that advertising CAN be harmful is against the point the parent comment is making.
I remember Enzyte commercials on TV in the 2000s. Manipulative against manhood, people who tried the drug had to have a doctors note saying "No, Enzyte didn't make my client's penis size increase" to be "allowed" to cancel their subscription. I can't even begin to imagine the hell someone with a "has small penis" ad profile lives in with targeted ads.
You can stop doing business with Mom&Pop’s coffee shop relatively easily, just like you can move to a different town to get away from your city government authority.
But you’re practically never going to truly get away from Meta, Google, Amazon, Nestle, McKesson, ATT, and those behemoths due to their size, similar to how you’re going to struggle to get out from under the US Federal government.
For a terrifying counter-example do some research into how easy it is for a stalker to abuse data about their victims.
The free-for-all collection and market of data about all of us is the real problem. Anyone with a few bucks can get around the "safeguards" around accessing it. Governments, your employer, your neighbor, your opponents in an election, criminals.
They can sell/give the data they have on you to someone with real intent to harm you.
They can use their money, power and the data they have on you to ruin your life, just like a Government could. A strategic leak of private data about a vocal critic of your company is not uncommon.
They can also use their data to influence Governments in ways that will harm all of us. And they do.
I could go on and on.
Thankfully, governments are incompetent and inefficient enough to prove a real threat on this matter when it comes to tech
Being done by the government and not by a company doesn’t change a thing. Maybe except that if it was a company, they would have monetize it better I guess.
Antisemitism was and sadly is very widespread in Europe.
Now, for a productive conversation, I'd recommend you putting effort in as well, instead of just sea lioning [6].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Privacy_is...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/company-that-mak...
[3] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/analysis-health-insuranc...
[4] https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/07/not-again-bone-grafts...
[5] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/poopy-lettuce-at-wen...
People's pockets did that. And they definitely are perfectly fine for breakfast. They're not the best, but they're not "the cause of the obesity epidemic".
> People think Special K is healthy.
What is specifically unhealthy in Special K?
> Slimfast advertising 10g protein (with milk teehee) when it's actually got 2 g protein and 11 g sugar
What does factually misleading advertising have to do with this? They're literally advertising the opposite of what we're talking about. Neither is 11g of sugar is going to cause you to gain weight.
> If you think that's the scenario being discussed when people talk about food deserts, it's coming from your imagination.
It's coming from me literally having been to a few such areas in Camden NJ, Bronx and in Baltimore. But hey! I must have imagined all of those places...
They used to not build profiles... and we had the most awful ads served... and performing search resulted in pages upon pages of results we're not interested in.
Why do we have to nuke everything and sow the ground with salt, just because some paranoid individuals want everyone to suffer their delusions? Especially, when the governments have more and more power to spy on us?
I imagine Google filters the bad stuff, so you're not likely to actually see anything life scarring with that first search. But go ahead and run the experiment and see if anything comes of it.
Because we've been there, done that. How many local or small news outlet subscriptions do you have? I'm pretty sure it's not a lot.
> We've had ad supported websites, forums and blogs since the 90's, but those were generic and harmless, and wouldn't track and target YOU.
And as a result any website with reasonable traffic, would have to put up a million ads - to just break even. Attendance was rising, costs associated with maintenance as well. Advertisers don't want to pay just to show random individuals ads that have close to 0 chance of being useful.
Generic advertising effectively excludes smaller companies from advertising space. If your advertising budget is $50k today, with targeted ads, you can effectively spend it to show your product to people who would be interested in it. Without, you have to spend $1mil on ads to show it to everyone and get results equal to spending $1k with targeted ads.
> weaponized ad-tech
Yes, yes... The "mid 20ies, IT person, with interest in HN" is definitely a weapon to take "you" down. Quit with the hyperbole, no ad tech keeps anything remotely interesting about you.
And no, they're not going to magically stop funding the Catholic church or become a safe haven for LGBT people.
If you work in a B2C publicly accessible sector, I can assure you - you store more PII than you'd like to believe.
But, I guess, we won't agree on this.
Maybe watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_(2003_film) and it's sequel from 2020 (linked from there) for starters?
Again, products are created in response to consumer needs/wants, not the other way around. Look at the history of Kellogg to see why cereal exists.
Pick even the most frivolous of products, a $12,000 handbag. You probably believe the reason people desire such an object is due to advertising, and they otherwise would be more rational like you -- they must be being tricked right?
Wrong. Women want to signal their social class and that they are successful in attracting high value mates/power, and have since the beginning of time. The 12k handbag exists to meet that existing demand.
Advertising simply directs that existing demand towards a specific frivolous luxury good over another. It didn't create the demand. Before advertising & handbags even existed...social climbers and aristocrats used other things like silk fabrics, spices, servants, etc to meet the same demand.
What you're actually upset about is that other humans want things you don't agree with. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but making you dictator and removing all advertising will not change human nature.
We already see the result of this happening in San Francisco - the policies that led to the state of the homelessness population and crime all stemmed from taking away agency from people. "Its not their fault that they are addicted to drugs. Its not their fault that they feel so desperate to turn to life of crime".
Now, with the recent shenanigans of Cambridge Analytica, if you follow this claim, you are essentially saying that people can't be trusted to make rational decisions on their own because they are so influenced by information that they see, so that information must be controlled.
None of this is farfetched. Privacy is simply being used as a political tool for people to gain control, it has no implications in the real world.
Nobody is gonna argue that companies are going to require zero regulation. There will be instances of companies trying to bullshit their way to get more profit, and for this reason the regulations exist, but these all isolated cases.
The point is that widespread advertising legislation on every single company by non technical people in the government under a false pretense of increasing privacy is not really a good thing. Governments should be there to step in when companies get out of line, but in that case, the task is clear. Introducing legislation that later on can be used to push more nefarious agendas are not.
After all, both governments and companies are ran by people.
And what's the definition of tracking? It's not clear to me if links 1,3,4 are related to personalized tracking. For example, is TikTok remembering what videos you wanted for how long and showing you recommendations based on your watch history personalized tracking?
> is TikTok remembering what videos you wanted for how long and showing you recommendations based on your watch history personalized tracking?
Yes, if I did not give consent to create a profile on me.
That's not how I interpreted the conversation. The article says:
>a ban imposed by non-EU member Norway on "behavioural advertising" on Facebook and Instagram
That seems to be banning tracking for ads, but tracking for timeline suggestions and friend suggestions would still be allowed.
And the comment I replied to seemed to be about ads:
>>But are personalized Facebook ads really an example of this?
Like support for dairy industry came before the dairy industry got enough money to lobby... and sustain itself through lobbying.
Same goes with HFCS, and many others.
It's unfair to argue "evil corporations", when these corporations are made evil specifically by the government intervention in the first place.
I can guarantee you, that should US government pull all financial support for the dairy industry and support plant based products - these corporations will move to plant based alternatives. Because their pure interest is to make money the least cumbersome way.
There are different levels of impact, but generally all EU governments consider the government to be "competent at safeguarding private data". Making any and all data collection justified.
Even Germany collects a lot of private data.
That doesn't negate the fact that targeted advertising is drastically more cost effective for smaller companies. It's drastically more valuable for sites that provide advertising space. It's a win-win for almost everyone involved.
We're talking about ads, not recommended content here. These are two very different things. You conflated them, to make an argument that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.