I dislike these articles that try to manufacture outrage by using emotionally-charged terms from the physical world - like “stalking” - in the context of targeted advertising, to make things seem more threatening than they really are.<p>Someone stalking you in real life is pretty damn scary, and not at all comparable to an automated Facebook algorithm showing you ads for mountain bikes because you joined a mountain biking club.<p>EDIT: I realize now that it was actually a HN commenter who used the word stalking, not the article, which is slightly more circumspect, though still uses manipulative language in my view.
Tax it.<p>Advertising, in general, is under-taxed. Should it even be tax-deductible as a business expense? Overall, in the US, most people are maxed out on spending. The savings rate is low. Advertising does not stimulate demand, it just moves it around, while adding cost.<p>Think of a tax on advertising as mutual disarmament for manufacturers. Less spent on fighting with competitors, more price cutting.
To play devil's advocate, advertising is a social good, and better advertising is even more of a social good.<p>How many times have you heard someone complain, "I just bought a desk lamp, and now I'm getting loads of ads for desk lamps. Don't they know I don't <i>want</i> another desk lamp?" And surveys back it up -- people would largely rather the ads they see reflect the things they're interested in. Because a well-targeted ad is good for the viewer. Sometimes they want the thing, and they buy it, and their life is improved.<p>If I'm statistically more likely to buy a particular item because of some demographic I belong to, and you have my demographic information, by all means use it to decide which ads to show me.<p>Maybe you <i>having</i> that information is a breach of my privacy, but if you do have it you should at least use it for something that'll benefit me.
Interesting article. Then I dug in more about the author and no wonder he runs a competing user tracking service that competes directly with google analytics. Sure it does less targeting - but then also provides less data points.
Here's an idea: let people have a public advertising profile they have personal access to. I'd do a lot less adblocking if I knew advertisers were picking off a defined list of my interests. New iphone? No. Android flagship with a headphone jack and a telephoto camera? Oh yeah I'm interested. Allow people to make it known they're interested in classic computers or new rifle accessories or LEGO videogames or books from John Scalzi. It would be nice if advertisers knew enough about me I could cancel all my Google Alerts.
What this ignores is that non targeted advertising means less money for publishers. As advertisers are willing to spend more when they have more info about a user. According to a Google study [1] the impact can be as high as 50%.<p>I prefer targeted advertising that's relevant to me. Especially because the advertiser doesn't actually know anything about me as an individual, I'm just an id, one of billions.<p>[1] <a href="https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa...</a>
Wired published a well researched article a short while ago laying out the arguments in a little more persuasive manner.<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-advertising/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-ad...</a>
We have almost all the technology. What we don't have is verifiability in most cases. i.e. the real problem is that the publisher cannot determine that the User Agent is telling the truth. Everyone has a different value on the value of their data. For instance, I find great targeted advertising to be practically like a recommendation engine. Instagram's ads are great! And few of them relate to things I've done on Instagram or Facebook. They're clearly 3rd party.<p>If we can find a way to ensure that the User Agent isn't lying (this may not be easy), then I could trade my data for a discount on the WSJ instead of paying full price and you could pay for the WSJ at full price and share nothing about yourself.<p>I think the truth is that most people will pick the discount, but that's because I would. I think that's a fair exchange and very open and clear. You can opt-in.
This may be unpopular on HN. But I dont mind ads, I dont mind target ads either, in many cases I like them. What I do mind is creepy, personal ads.<p>"Your Friends <i>Joe</i> just bought a wallet, you might like this too."<p>I am OK with recommending me a wallet, since in real life I would have sales coming around me if I was in the Wallet counter and interested in one. I am absolutely NOT OK with being told my friend <i>Joe</i> bought a wallet. How did they know Joe was my friend, why are they telling me he bought a new wallet?<p>Amazon are allowed to collected data when I am in their store, but those Data should not be sold to any other company.<p>Right now there is a whole market for personal Data, and to me, that should be illegal.
The idea that it is ok for Amazon to show you targeted advertising on their properties but its not ok for third parties to do so seems like a pretty easy way to entrench Google and Amazon.<p>In fact, targeted advertising is _already_ extremely low margin outside of Facebook and Google. The big dollar ad campaigns follow context (Ford doesn’t want to follow you around the internet, they want to show you every ad on ESPN.com and their other properties).<p>This is a proposal that would a) make Google/Amazon/Facebook even more powerful on the internet and b) kill small publishers.
While I agree with the overall sentiment in regards to supporting end-user privacy, this article’s title is a bit sensational and the body fails to provide enough substance to support such a dramatic claim. It’s an overly idealistic solution to the problem and therefore is not of much use.
Yes. This would be good but it is impossible. Washington is moved by profits, not people.<p>Could there be a better example of this than what's happening right now?
What would the text of the law say? All in-person sales activities are personalized. Would it simply forbid the use of automation for this in a list of specific ways? What would it say about YouTube video recommendations?
It will effectively put vast majority of the Internet behind a paywall. Just turn it into a sort of a cable TV of today. With almost all small publishers closing and the rest just charging for what you see, and turning it into a largely unidirectional, top-to-bottom source of information... Because there is no way in the world non-targeted advertisements are going to pay for things, remember those mid-1990s sites all flashing with banners - and yet never making enough.
Knee-jerk decision IMO. Advertising will always be at the core of businesses, and they all compete with each other on lowering the costs of advertising. Why would they agree on non-targeted ads if at least one of them has incentive to target their own ads? People began using ad blockers exactly because ads were not targeted.