I'm still surprised no one has yet figured out a way to store sensitive data about personal interests and preferences on the client-side and let the client itself pull appropriate ads for the user to see. The quality of such a system should be comparable or better to server-side technologies with the right amount of tuning, and much less privacy-invading than existing approaches.<p>Personally I'd love to support more websites through ads if two conditions could be met:<p>- A way to ensure that ads don't try to harm me by e.g. leading me to websites serving malware or abusing my computer's resources (e.g. miners)<p>- A way to keep my privacy and control what data is collected about me (and who has access to that data)<p>Currently I simply can't turn off the ad-blocker even if I wanted as most sites become completely unusable and outright obnoxious by showing large, blinking or content-hiding ads, videos, popups or fake overlays. That's why most people use ad-blockers (IMHO). If ads are decent, relevant and non-obtrusive I personally would be happy to see them.<p>Also, go to any large website these days (without ad-blocker enabled) and check how many third-party trackers they load. There are many sites that send my data to more than 50 (!) different ad networks and partners, which is just insane.
In their example, under "Gather consent seamlessly", their example shows "Yes" and "Other Options". Now, I haven't yet read the GDPR in detail, but I was under the impression that opting out should be as easy as opting in. A quick search returns:<p>> The ICO also said that, while "GDPR does not specifically ban opt-out boxes," that method of communication is "essentially that same as pre-ticked boxes, which are banned"<p>If this is correct, using the product as shown on the screenshot (and as used by several websites) is in violation of the GDPR.<p>I wonder if Google will pick up your legal defense costs if you get sued for using their product.<p>(Edit: I tried to find answers to these questions, but apparently the only way is contacting my Google representative, which I don't have)
Google Contributor was service from Google that used a pool of money set aside by the user to bid on ad slots, and if a particular ad auction was won, the ad would be replaced in the pageview with a pictorial pattern of the user's choice. The program was not well publicized, although tech journalists have covered it and I have written [1] about it in my comments when Brave and Flattr came up and have wondered why Facebook (sitting on a huge trove of real identities) never did the same.<p>But in 2017 it was shut down for a few months, and relaunched as a program which would omit all ads from the target site if the site was a partner, and the user has marked that site in their account. The amount charged for each pageview is set by the site [2]. Only a handful of websites are supported, although most are news sites -- local papers or TV channels.<p>This new Funding Choices program aims to greatly expand the list of sites that use Contributor by offering a managed solution that solves a better-than-before subset of two pain points at once: regulatory compliance and monetization.<p>[1] <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20google%20contributor&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20google%20contributor...</a> [2] <a href="https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/7359560" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/7359560</a>
I appreciate that Google appears to have reached out to local newspaper sites (qctimes.com, napavalleyregister.com), for Contributor. But if I were a major content publisher, the relatively small and mostly non-notable list of current Contributor sites [0] would make me think that Google isn't highly invested in this project. Which is not a good first impression considering that many people think that Google is too quick to abandon projects. They should have booked a few more major sites and media brands; right now, the 2 sites that are highlighted are the National Post and Popular Mechanics.<p>[0] <a href="https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/7324995" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/7324995</a>
I would not trust any opt-out offered by a company who's bottom line is directly dependent on violating people's privacy. The only opt-out that can be trusted is one that does send any network requests to the stalking company until consent is given.<p>That's the same reason why you wouldn't want to ask an alcoholic to guard a warehouse full of vodka at night, as you'd probably find a few empty bottles the next day. Same thing with an advertising company, even if they claim to respect your privacy, nothing guarantees they're not secretly looking at it anyway (and using it to adjust their ad tracking in a way that's undetectable from the outside, as to not be sued for it). It's even worse, because at least with alcohol you can count the bottles and find the empty ones. With data collection, if they're careful, you have no way to know whether your privacy has been violated.
I hope they find ways to do this while actually complying with GDPR.<p>A lot of (primarily US-based) sites now say things like "We need to track you to keep running, consent or click this link to enter a maze of poorly documented ways you can try to opt out, if you decline then goodbye".<p>Some even let you opt out of tracking (taking several minutes to 'process' this opt out), and then tell you they can't serve you a site that doesn't track you.<p>I'm OK with those - I don't go there any more.
> Engage ad blocking visitors<p>> With Funding Choices you can automatically identify ad blocking visitors and ask them to disable their ad blocker especially for your site — or give them an alternative way to fund your content via Contributor.<p>> Contributor lets users buy an ad removal pass for your site, helping you monetize your site's content again.<p>Great! Now, can I have that for Google? I'd gladly pay in exchange for the added privacy.
Gotta love their choice of wording, "recover lost revenue from ad blocking users", like blocking ads is equivalent to stealing money from the site owner.
Put Google's JS on my website and let google harvest all my user's information. Sounds about right. I don't see much difference between FB and Google these days.
There are actually parts of this I like better than the current status quo:<p>* Ad blocker detection and a way to ask for funding? Seems nice. We will get a view on the actual market value of the content. As the Internet started out free and hand plenty of content, I assume content producers will get a rude messages about their actual value here.<p>* A good base platform for the GDPR is also nice. A big player like Google cant flaunt the law too much, and browser plug ins have one big target to block, verify or modify<p>Some extras to make the ad ecosystem sane again:<p>* Micro-payments. You could get to choose between an ad, a micro-payment, or no content.<p>* Content producer vetting and taking responsibility for their ad's. Todays ads are bottom feeders. If, say, a car site would get an image from e.g. a car company, and place ads on their own site, you get a better ad for the customer, no privacy violation, and more respect and use for the ad vendor. This is the stack oveerflow/jobs model.<p>* A header element like X-Interested-in. Use your browser to set a free-form value, and let the ad vendors get some input to give better ads , while you are completely anonymous to them.
I started up CodeFund last year in an effort to help fund open source projects and developers. This year, we opened up the source code (<a href="https://GitHub.com/gitcoinco/codefund" rel="nofollow">https://GitHub.com/gitcoinco/codefund</a>) and provide ethical advertising. We don’t do any tracking, profiling, cookie setting, remarketing, etc. and our ads are chosen by the audience that the website caters to. We also give back up to 70% of all gross ad revenue back to the publishers. <a href="https://CodeFund.io" rel="nofollow">https://CodeFund.io</a>
I would be willing to load ads if I didnt have to see them. I’m happy. Content provider gets ad shown so they are happy. Advertiser doesn’t get anything, but I don’t care.
We also have a GDPR-like data protection law (almost identical bar right to be forgotten; which do not have in here) in Turkey. A Turkish version is also needed.
Nice!! Another Google product that will be EOL'd in a few months, leaving both users & website owner unprepared...
Really: Google became so unreliable on the business side these days that I wouldn't use their product for anything but playing