So many words to defend the indefensible. Its not a "war", it is asserting the collective will of an entire continent (made up of fairly diverse cultures and a long history of painful social strife, political and racial oppression and persecution). The aim is to close Pandora's box that was (as it happened) opened by the amoral and asocial advertising industry that cannot see beyond its (admittedly long) nose.
The issue is not advertising, the issue is the construction, classification and use of human profiles through the collection of behavioral data, by-and-large without the subjects being aware or cognizant of the possible short and long-term implications. Once that practice has been legitimized and proven ultra-lucrative and empowering for its practitioners it has undermined the very foundation of digital society.
Just to be clear, there is nothing the adtech industry can do to assure us that behavioral targeting can be made safe. The large scale processing of human behavioral data followed by the direct algorithmic application of real life actions is a weapon of mass social destruction. It is inherently dangerous and should be outlawed. Full stop.
There is a case to be made for taming the nuclear energy of behavioral data in reactors (as opposed to bombs). But the architecture of such systems will be dramatically different to the digital wild-west regime that has been inflicted on society. Consequently also highly regulated with countless lead layers of protection (and thus also far less lucrative / interesting for the digital cowboys).
> The issue is not advertising, the issue is the construction, classification and use of human profiles through the collection of behavioral data, by-and-large without the subjects being aware or cognizant of the possible short and long-term implications.
I don't disagree that collection of data isn't bad, but two things:
1. The collection of data isn't the goal, the advertising is. The data is only practically valuable to do advertising better (and of course for surveillance, but I suspect the market for data for surveillance is orders of magnitude smaller). If you kill the advertising, you kill the need for data. If you kill the data, the advertisers will just find other ways to make their advertising convert better.
2. We should all be outraged at the idea of corporations using psychological tricks to influence our behavior. The human mind was not pentested before shipping to production. Some ads just remind you that a product exists, but many try to create positive associations to make the product more appealing or to make you think of it later.
We just let this happen and don't care. Mostly because we don't really notice it working. You don't think "oh yeah, I'll buy the name brand paper towels because I saw that commercial", you just buy them because they're the ones that your brain has an association with cleaning up the whole dribble of blue liquid. Of course you'll buy the one that works. Our brains are unpatched Linux kernels and advertisers are botnets.
Like, be outraged at the data mining and selling. But be more outraged at why it's happening.
I too see issues with advertising as such. It has created an unsatiable society that cannot find balance even though it churns through an ever growing slice of the planet. But I feel it is a longer term problem about how to organize markets and disseminate product availability in a less manipulative way. In a strange way the internet is actually a pull medium that should orient people more towards seeking information rather than being pushed stuff. In a sense the walled gardens and the timelines aim to replicate a push relationship (that was at its heyday during the TV era).
But I really think the risks from personal data based profiling are more serious and broad based. If these practises get normalized for adtech they are normalized, period. Every industry will want to get in the act. Car manufacturers will want to grab and sell behavior, supermarkets, banks, toothbrushes, fridges, thermostats and doorbells will want to do the same.
But ultimately I think we might be agreeing on the why things are happening as thus underlies everything: Unhinged pursuit of profit (= claims on society) without any care about the impact on that same society.
The various risks we are discussing will only keep multiplying and aggravating if we dont find more effective harnesses to channel these behaviors towards more positive goals.
Exactly. I essentially think we need an amendment to the constitution that protects an individual’s right to not be solicited.
What law would stop Google and Facebook in their tracks is more the question we need to answer.
Data collection is a means to an end for advertisers and not in and of itself bad (nor are applications and/protocols that use PII or globally unique IDs, etc.), which is why GDPR hasn‘t really moved the needle much. It’s fighting the symptom not the cause. Invasion of privacy and “spooky” knowledge about individuals is all downstream.
And if I want to be solicited and psychologically manipulated into consume consume consume, then I really want it to be as relevant and effective as possible, don’t I? Yet another reason why attacking the data collection is ultimately barking up the wrong tree. But solicitation definitely shouldn’t be legal without my consent and probably broadly illegal to do to children.
Why should I be able to control what someone else knows about me? Seriously? If you sit in a park bench and watch me running around on a hot day I can’t compel you to “forget I was there”. And if you use that knowledge as data to support opening a lemonade stand, and even to reach out to me directly and offer a discount on cold drinks, who is being socially harmed? Where is the “social atomic bomb” here?
And, if I consent to this because you can offer me better prices if I allow you to cookie me, and I don’t see a problem, it seems everything is humming along ethically and harmlessly.
So I’m not sure I buy the conclusion that “behavioral advertising is ethically bankrupt”. Notice in your comment you have to evoke the idea of “mass behavioral knowledge”. What does this mean and how is it bad or different from “minor or regular behavior knowledge”?
Please understand I’m not writing this comment to defend the advertising industry. I’m writing it because I also believe this stuff is potentially grievously detrimental, but I don’t think we have a good foundational construction today for why. And we can’t say what is wrong. If we could, we could more easily point a finger at it, declare it unethical, and make laws against it.
But, no, I don’t think we’ve yet landed on the answer. It’s not some innate “right to be forgotten” and it’s not GDPR telling everyone abstractly that “you can’t use PII in your application”. (The GDPR bit is kinda moot because you argue that it’s unilaterally not okay regardless of consent and the GDPR argues it’s okay with consent, so the GDPR is not a solution to your argument.) There’s something else here to build a case against.
If real harm is impacting individuals or society then shine a light on it! Otherwise it’s just ra ra we hate behavioral advertising because it’s spooky. Which while fun to rally around, doesn't really carry social and legal weight. Pointing this out does not bring me snarky joy, rather it frustrates me because I think we’ll be stuck banging our tech heads trying to make every internet standard and protocol 100% anonymous fighting the digital boogie man until we try a new approach. In order to make social and legal progress, because I do suspect the solution is social and legal, we need a really clear understanding of the problem.
In the face of a globally connected world, what new fundamental right do humans have, that behavioral advertising robs them of, that we must take extreme measures to protect as a society?
Great question. Let me first answer the meta question that i see all the time, from someone who studies systems science. There’s a supposed “crisis” with the scaling of X that involves millions or billions of people, and our largest societal institutions. Here’s a simple folksy example of x that’s not really much of a problem, how is that different from X? The answer is always the same, because scale matters, always.
In this case, here’s why scale matters. We know these ads work. On an individual basis let’s say you have a 0.31% chance of buying a thing you wouldn’t have otherwise. On this individual scale it seems like no big deal, certainly no amoral or unethical undue influence. On a massive scale however a 0.31% increase makes the advertiser a lot. AND there’s a network effect because desire is contagious, so the more people that buy, the more others will want - double winner. Now let’s say there’s a organization that wants to push some new technology into people’s lives, let’s say voice assistant smart speakers. At scale this doesn’t just sell smart speakers, now 5% of homes have one, and this now has the power to fundamentally change a small slice of culture more broadly as it becomes more common, ubiquitous, and relied upon. And the drift in a small slice of culture drifts the ultimate the trajectory of our civilization - simply by using small but statistically proven edge to influence people. Not to mention in this case, it further entrenches this power of corporate data collection and influence! And now, imagine instead of selling smart speakers, an organization wants to push a political idea, let’s say for example, that democracy is an conspiracy built by elite bankers. I think you can see where this goes.
Try going around a park photographing what everyone is doing. Further, start giving selectively (to kids and other vulnerable people) lollipops in exchange for them identifying everybody in their friends and family circle by name. At best you would be chased out of the park. At worst you would be lynched.
The cry to identify "real harm" is insidius and malevolent. There have already been documented instances of political manipulation. Given the opaque nature of the sector and the massive leverage it affords its very likely this was just the tip of the iceberg. Risk management is not just making sure you dont die of food poissoning today. It is also about avoiding that heart attack that will come decades early.
Again, its not about the act of advertising as such. It is the behavioral profiling that is the toxic practice. What grave harm can behavioral profiling possibly insert into policing, medicine, finance, education, relations with state and corporate employers etc? Its not even a rhetorical question. Its a societal disaster of historic proportions.
The moral bankruptcy of the adtech industry is not just the original sin of rolling this practice out, but, (after they have been outed) to pretend that they have this under control. That it is a sandboxed environment. It is not. The digital domain is interconnected and leaky. Economic and political dynamics is unpredictable and all the above mentioned domains come into play with adtech itching to expand its reach.
Its not a "new right" that people to defend, the framing is again odius. Who gave the right to certain entities to institute mass surveillance? They simply abused the lack of regulation. Moved fast and broke things.
At stake are fundamental questions about human agency, transparency and accountability of the actions of organised enterprise (and public sector), and the very nature of our social systems as we move deeper into the digital era.
The start of that era is certainly dystopic-looking with unscrupulous private sector and captured governments. The major question is if the (unexpected to be honest) principled stance of the European Union will help boot into an alternative operating system.
It's the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes. It's one thing if a single lemonade stand keeps track of its customers. When the same lemonade stand can almost instantly access its customers' complete life history, it's a completely different thing.
Imagine being hailed by a random lemonade vendor, "Hello Mr. dcow, I have some cold lemonade for you! It's sugar-free, so don't worry about your diabetes. I can even put it on your tab, since I know you've never been late with your payments and you pass through here every Saturday"
It sure might be convenient, but that doesn't make it less creepy.
> Why should I be able to control what someone else knows about me?
Why should companies be allowed to relentlessly spy on everything you do without your consent?
For instance, Google literally buys a copy of everyone's credit/debit card transaction data.
> as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.
> Why should I be able to control what someone else knows about me?
The right to privacy is:
- complete sovereignty over oneself, including data about oneself
- control over public knowledge about oneself
In other words: I am my data, my data is me. I own myself.
To deny my fundamental right to privacy is to deny my personhood, to deny my membership in a society of equals.
--
It's corny, but I sometimes liken privacy to the "true name" plot device. In fantasy, knowing a person's "true name" gives one power over them. In sci-fi, the "true name" would be something like a password or root private key.
Behavioural advertisment runs counter to the goals and aspirations of a free democratic society. We have enough atomization of the information space as it is.
What makes me pause is that there are truly people who are like "Pff! Free society!" or "Pff! Survival of the human race on planet earth!" and then go to explain how their profits are really what the rest of us should care about. In their worst version these people would sell Cyclon-B to the nazis if it just made them a good enough profit and there are people who see that kind of apocalyptic nihilism and confuse it with strength and power.
The rest of us should ban, tax, punish and prevent more of this totally braindead behaviour. Go ahead and make a profit, but if you can't manage to make it in a way that doesn't impact the rest of us, you can go fuck yourself.
If you ask the average man on the content "would you like your behaviour tracked?" he will indeed reply "No!"
But if you ask him "If you have to choose between seeing ads for women's clothing or ads relevant to your interest, which would you choose?", then he will pick the option that requires behavioural tracking.
I don’t think that’s true, I think most people would actually choose to have adverts that are irrelevant, much easier to tune them out if the signal to noise ratio is low. I think most people don’t like or want adverts in their lives at all.
The case you describe can be served with contextual ads, no need to know anything more than what I have searched for just now.
No history, no fingerprinting, no profile that follows me everywhere, that gets sold, stolen, triangulated and potentially used against me without me even even knowing.
Maybe I take human history too seriously. Maybe others are morally bankrupt and will try mental and moral somersaults to justify their stance. You judge.
As a lawyer working on these topics, this is a poor phrasing. EU regulators don't need to "war" with advertisers - they have complete control over them. There's no other side of this war, just regulators issuing commands that industry tries to follow.
It's confusing as a war is because the regulators decided not to make the law say, 'behavioral advertising is illegal,' and instead have spent years slowly awakening to that conclusion, at the cost of zillions of dollars in legal fees.
The megacorporations are at war against humanity and won't stop until forced: they must profit and grow at the expense of civilization, climate, and biosphere.
It's true the EU does not recognize it's in a war yet but they are at least trying to slow them down. The US is further behind.
Is EU really trying to slow it down? TikTok ban in US seems to be a common talking point. Meanwhile here very few people talk about it and those are seen as lunatics in most cases.
Most people seem to happily approve all the GDPR dialogs too. While doomscrolling TikTok/Instagram/FB.
This doesn't make sense to me. You make it sound like a rosy cooperative relationship where advertisers want to follow the rules and regulators just haven't made them. Even so, regulation isn't "complete control" in any way. It seems more like the advertisers are always going to try to make the advertisements as effective as possible while toeing the letter of the law as closely as possible and ignoring the spirit of the law completely. What are you actually trying to say here?
I'm saying the laws EU has released are too complex and indirect and cost too much money, and that if they wanted to ban behavioral advertising outright they should have and could have done that instead of what they have done.
And/or they realize that trying to introduce too large changes in one go will throw the markets into damage control mode, and the results will not be favorable to the legislators and their constituents. Better boil the frog gradually than have it jump out and take its money elsewhere.
> There's no other side of this war, just regulators issuing commands that industry tries to follow.
We know how well the industry "tries to follow" from how industry follows GDPR and how Facebook keeps pretending that it's their god-given right to use tracking data in advertisment.
> It's confusing as a war is because the regulators decided not to make the law say, 'behavioral advertising is illegal,' and instead have spent years slowly awakening to that conclusion, at the cost of zillions of dollars in legal fees.
It's not confusing. Regulators do what they always do: they let companies do whatever companies do. And when the companies keep doing shitty things, regulators regulate.
Surely the other side is public opinion. If corporations convince the public that the regulators are going to make their life worse, the regulators lose.
Uh... hmmm. I work in the industry and this article is very even handed but still a bit off.
We don't really have have a term for "behavioral" advertising. So a lot of things are being lumped together that don't necessarily fit.
For example, Facebook USED to be highly valued because of the amount of "targeting" (again, we don't use the term "behavioral") data they had. When you went to tell FB what you liked and didn't like they used that. They also kept that valuable data under lock and key - they have no interest in sharing it.
Things are a bit different now. Since they and everyone else switched to an endless "doomscrolling" experience, all that data is worthless. No one keeps their likes up to date, no one engages with content. So there's really not that much targeting ("behavioral") data out of FB anymore. So native ads are less effective, but people look at much more.
"Data brokerages" are pretty niche. They don't exist to the extent that people think they do. And the data they provide is often absolute garbage. Users switch phones, emails, numbers way too often to actually get anything resembling a permanent "lock". Marketing data ages FAST. Do you go to a store and find they have an address that is like 4 moves old? That's kind of the quality of brokerage data - it's good for filling in gaps, but is not nearly as valuable as first-party data.
So part of what you are seeing is not necessarily advertisers responding to upcoming EU regulations, but organic changes in what sort of advertising is even effective anymore. Third party cookies are not as useful as they used to be, and they cut into the big advertisers' monopolies on user data. So they are being phased out anyway.
> Attribution / measurement of advertising campaigns became more and more precise
This is the exact opposite of what is happening in the industry. There are so many different data sources that all conflict that data quality is often very dire in most large organizations. So there is a ton of fraud and snake oil used to justify advertising budgets.
However, where the author hits the nail on the head I think are future outcomes: EU markets are being deprioritized (it doesn't hurt that economically, consumer wealth in Europe is falling like a rock). Users are opting in to more advertisements (Instagram is quickly becoming the QVC of the internet). One thing he misses is the rising importance of sponsorships and physical marketing..
> it doesn't hurt that economically, consumer wealth in Europe is falling like a rock
Falling like a rock? Where is this comming from? What Europe are you talking about? The EU, the continent, the eurozone, the UK, Russia?
Granted, high inflation, primarily caused by higher energy prices after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has slowed down consumer spending in the EU, but generally speaking the outlook isn't that bad.
- Total financial assets of EU households grew almost continuously during the period 2011–2021, falling only in 2018. Their total value increased from €21 331 billion in 2011 to €34 982 billion in 2021, a 64.0 % overall increase. (Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...)
- Consumer Spending in European Union is expected to be 1804.00 EUR Billion by the end of this quarter, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations. In the long-term, the European Union Consumer Spending is projected to trend around 1836.00 EUR Billion in 2024 and 1869.00 EUR Billion in 2025, according to our econometric models. (Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/consumer-spendin...)
- In June, Eurosystem staff revised down slightly the outlook for growth in the euro area for the next two years. The economy is expected to slow to 0.9% in 2023 before rebounding to 1.5% in 2024 and 1.6% in 2025 as energy prices moderate, foreign demand strengthens and real incomes improve.
(Source: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2023/html/ecb.sp230...)
Damn I knew the EU wasn't in a great place from the last few years but I didn't realize it's post covid recovery was so horrible compared to the USA. Hopefully they can turn it around!
If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news. But how does that square with the fact that the online ad industry continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked?
> If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news.
Ummm. Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertising. It's really a slow return to how TV advertising and etc worked.
> continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked
How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and safeguards than there were a decade ago. Let alone the amount of tools like AdBlocker or Ghostery or Brave or etc.
Keep in mind that the awareness of your online presence is probably growing faster than your actual online presence.
In fact, just like standard of living, it's easy to lose perspective of just how fast our entire idea of privacy has changed. 100 years ago, hotel beds used to be shared amongst strangers. Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home.
The two things do not seem to me as contrasting, there is an industry gathering the data and selling them (with promises and snake-oil) and other people buying those data.
Whether what is sold is accurate or not is another thing, as long as it is perceived as "good enough" by the buyers it will be bought anyway.
I don't think that many companies (buyers) have the guts to stop for - say - 6 months all advertising on a given channel and see what happens.
Median consumer is getting fucked by central bank loan rates, sky-high housing prices wherever jobs are and overall inflation. Talking from EU perspective, but probably applies to most of the world pretty well.
Great post. Adding that the article misreads the legal events too. The Norwegian decision for FB isn't a watershed moment. The Irish enforcement against them is not.
I think the author has the terms "opt-in" and "opt-out" reversed, which was a bit confusing. If something is "opt-in", then you have to explicitly decide to opt-in, which means that by default you won't be included.
A good example of this is organ donation. Some countries have it opt-in (i.e., you have to decide to donate), whereas in other countries it is opt-out (so you are a donor by default).
I think it describes a somewhat common scenario, where it's on by default but there's an effort made to make it seem like you went out of your way to agree to it.
Like a pre-checked box on a form about your desire to receive marketing mails.
> Prior to ATT, every app by default had access to your advertising ID, i.e. it was opt-in by default.
Nitpicking, it was not opt in, as the user did not opt in. It would be more accurate to say: "consent was implicit", or even "the app could access the user's advertising ID without the user's consent".
I feel that it's important to distinguish "opt in" as something that requires explicit user action.
I think that's not just a nitpick - it's a misuse of the word. "Opt-in by default" should just say "opt-out". You can see the same misunderstanding, I think, in the strapline of the article.
Just wanted to say I thought this was an excellent description of the Internet ad market and the recent changes that have occurred. I don't work in the ad space (though I've worked on consumer sites so I have a fairly decent understanding), so I thought this article did a great job thoroughly and clearly explaining the details.
Ads should be completely outlawed (stating from paper ads in the mail)
We need a place for manufacturer (not sellers) to put _full specifications_ of their products. If you think you make something useful you put it there.
Then people can use filters and search to find the products they want/need and then search for the right price/seller or directly contact the manufacturer/reseller network.
Readit News
The issue is not advertising, the issue is the construction, classification and use of human profiles through the collection of behavioral data, by-and-large without the subjects being aware or cognizant of the possible short and long-term implications. Once that practice has been legitimized and proven ultra-lucrative and empowering for its practitioners it has undermined the very foundation of digital society.
Just to be clear, there is nothing the adtech industry can do to assure us that behavioral targeting can be made safe. The large scale processing of human behavioral data followed by the direct algorithmic application of real life actions is a weapon of mass social destruction. It is inherently dangerous and should be outlawed. Full stop.
There is a case to be made for taming the nuclear energy of behavioral data in reactors (as opposed to bombs). But the architecture of such systems will be dramatically different to the digital wild-west regime that has been inflicted on society. Consequently also highly regulated with countless lead layers of protection (and thus also far less lucrative / interesting for the digital cowboys).
I don't disagree that collection of data isn't bad, but two things:
1. The collection of data isn't the goal, the advertising is. The data is only practically valuable to do advertising better (and of course for surveillance, but I suspect the market for data for surveillance is orders of magnitude smaller). If you kill the advertising, you kill the need for data. If you kill the data, the advertisers will just find other ways to make their advertising convert better.
2. We should all be outraged at the idea of corporations using psychological tricks to influence our behavior. The human mind was not pentested before shipping to production. Some ads just remind you that a product exists, but many try to create positive associations to make the product more appealing or to make you think of it later.
We just let this happen and don't care. Mostly because we don't really notice it working. You don't think "oh yeah, I'll buy the name brand paper towels because I saw that commercial", you just buy them because they're the ones that your brain has an association with cleaning up the whole dribble of blue liquid. Of course you'll buy the one that works. Our brains are unpatched Linux kernels and advertisers are botnets.
Like, be outraged at the data mining and selling. But be more outraged at why it's happening.
But I really think the risks from personal data based profiling are more serious and broad based. If these practises get normalized for adtech they are normalized, period. Every industry will want to get in the act. Car manufacturers will want to grab and sell behavior, supermarkets, banks, toothbrushes, fridges, thermostats and doorbells will want to do the same.
But ultimately I think we might be agreeing on the why things are happening as thus underlies everything: Unhinged pursuit of profit (= claims on society) without any care about the impact on that same society.
The various risks we are discussing will only keep multiplying and aggravating if we dont find more effective harnesses to channel these behaviors towards more positive goals.
What law would stop Google and Facebook in their tracks is more the question we need to answer.
Data collection is a means to an end for advertisers and not in and of itself bad (nor are applications and/protocols that use PII or globally unique IDs, etc.), which is why GDPR hasn‘t really moved the needle much. It’s fighting the symptom not the cause. Invasion of privacy and “spooky” knowledge about individuals is all downstream.
And if I want to be solicited and psychologically manipulated into consume consume consume, then I really want it to be as relevant and effective as possible, don’t I? Yet another reason why attacking the data collection is ultimately barking up the wrong tree. But solicitation definitely shouldn’t be legal without my consent and probably broadly illegal to do to children.
Why should I be able to control what someone else knows about me? Seriously? If you sit in a park bench and watch me running around on a hot day I can’t compel you to “forget I was there”. And if you use that knowledge as data to support opening a lemonade stand, and even to reach out to me directly and offer a discount on cold drinks, who is being socially harmed? Where is the “social atomic bomb” here?
And, if I consent to this because you can offer me better prices if I allow you to cookie me, and I don’t see a problem, it seems everything is humming along ethically and harmlessly.
So I’m not sure I buy the conclusion that “behavioral advertising is ethically bankrupt”. Notice in your comment you have to evoke the idea of “mass behavioral knowledge”. What does this mean and how is it bad or different from “minor or regular behavior knowledge”?
Please understand I’m not writing this comment to defend the advertising industry. I’m writing it because I also believe this stuff is potentially grievously detrimental, but I don’t think we have a good foundational construction today for why. And we can’t say what is wrong. If we could, we could more easily point a finger at it, declare it unethical, and make laws against it.
But, no, I don’t think we’ve yet landed on the answer. It’s not some innate “right to be forgotten” and it’s not GDPR telling everyone abstractly that “you can’t use PII in your application”. (The GDPR bit is kinda moot because you argue that it’s unilaterally not okay regardless of consent and the GDPR argues it’s okay with consent, so the GDPR is not a solution to your argument.) There’s something else here to build a case against.
If real harm is impacting individuals or society then shine a light on it! Otherwise it’s just ra ra we hate behavioral advertising because it’s spooky. Which while fun to rally around, doesn't really carry social and legal weight. Pointing this out does not bring me snarky joy, rather it frustrates me because I think we’ll be stuck banging our tech heads trying to make every internet standard and protocol 100% anonymous fighting the digital boogie man until we try a new approach. In order to make social and legal progress, because I do suspect the solution is social and legal, we need a really clear understanding of the problem.
In the face of a globally connected world, what new fundamental right do humans have, that behavioral advertising robs them of, that we must take extreme measures to protect as a society?
In this case, here’s why scale matters. We know these ads work. On an individual basis let’s say you have a 0.31% chance of buying a thing you wouldn’t have otherwise. On this individual scale it seems like no big deal, certainly no amoral or unethical undue influence. On a massive scale however a 0.31% increase makes the advertiser a lot. AND there’s a network effect because desire is contagious, so the more people that buy, the more others will want - double winner. Now let’s say there’s a organization that wants to push some new technology into people’s lives, let’s say voice assistant smart speakers. At scale this doesn’t just sell smart speakers, now 5% of homes have one, and this now has the power to fundamentally change a small slice of culture more broadly as it becomes more common, ubiquitous, and relied upon. And the drift in a small slice of culture drifts the ultimate the trajectory of our civilization - simply by using small but statistically proven edge to influence people. Not to mention in this case, it further entrenches this power of corporate data collection and influence! And now, imagine instead of selling smart speakers, an organization wants to push a political idea, let’s say for example, that democracy is an conspiracy built by elite bankers. I think you can see where this goes.
The cry to identify "real harm" is insidius and malevolent. There have already been documented instances of political manipulation. Given the opaque nature of the sector and the massive leverage it affords its very likely this was just the tip of the iceberg. Risk management is not just making sure you dont die of food poissoning today. It is also about avoiding that heart attack that will come decades early.
Again, its not about the act of advertising as such. It is the behavioral profiling that is the toxic practice. What grave harm can behavioral profiling possibly insert into policing, medicine, finance, education, relations with state and corporate employers etc? Its not even a rhetorical question. Its a societal disaster of historic proportions.
The moral bankruptcy of the adtech industry is not just the original sin of rolling this practice out, but, (after they have been outed) to pretend that they have this under control. That it is a sandboxed environment. It is not. The digital domain is interconnected and leaky. Economic and political dynamics is unpredictable and all the above mentioned domains come into play with adtech itching to expand its reach.
Its not a "new right" that people to defend, the framing is again odius. Who gave the right to certain entities to institute mass surveillance? They simply abused the lack of regulation. Moved fast and broke things.
At stake are fundamental questions about human agency, transparency and accountability of the actions of organised enterprise (and public sector), and the very nature of our social systems as we move deeper into the digital era.
The start of that era is certainly dystopic-looking with unscrupulous private sector and captured governments. The major question is if the (unexpected to be honest) principled stance of the European Union will help boot into an alternative operating system.
Imagine being hailed by a random lemonade vendor, "Hello Mr. dcow, I have some cold lemonade for you! It's sugar-free, so don't worry about your diabetes. I can even put it on your tab, since I know you've never been late with your payments and you pass through here every Saturday"
It sure might be convenient, but that doesn't make it less creepy.
Why should companies be allowed to relentlessly spy on everything you do without your consent?
For instance, Google literally buys a copy of everyone's credit/debit card transaction data.
> as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no...
I fully support a requirement that citizens must give consent before a company is allowed to invade privacy to this extent.
The right to privacy is:
- complete sovereignty over oneself, including data about oneself
- control over public knowledge about oneself
In other words: I am my data, my data is me. I own myself.
To deny my fundamental right to privacy is to deny my personhood, to deny my membership in a society of equals.
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It's corny, but I sometimes liken privacy to the "true name" plot device. In fantasy, knowing a person's "true name" gives one power over them. In sci-fi, the "true name" would be something like a password or root private key.
I will naturally forget because I’m a human with fuzzy memory / storage.
I am not an highly consistent, available and resilient database which will store the information for the next 5 / 10 / 15 / 30 / N years.
Appreciate this is a bit of a nit pick on your argument, but I feel it is also important because it highlights the massive risk / impact difference.
What makes me pause is that there are truly people who are like "Pff! Free society!" or "Pff! Survival of the human race on planet earth!" and then go to explain how their profits are really what the rest of us should care about. In their worst version these people would sell Cyclon-B to the nazis if it just made them a good enough profit and there are people who see that kind of apocalyptic nihilism and confuse it with strength and power.
The rest of us should ban, tax, punish and prevent more of this totally braindead behaviour. Go ahead and make a profit, but if you can't manage to make it in a way that doesn't impact the rest of us, you can go fuck yourself.
If you ask the average man on the content "would you like your behaviour tracked?" he will indeed reply "No!"
But if you ask him "If you have to choose between seeing ads for women's clothing or ads relevant to your interest, which would you choose?", then he will pick the option that requires behavioural tracking.
No history, no fingerprinting, no profile that follows me everywhere, that gets sold, stolen, triangulated and potentially used against me without me even even knowing.
Maybe I take human history too seriously. Maybe others are morally bankrupt and will try mental and moral somersaults to justify their stance. You judge.
It's confusing as a war is because the regulators decided not to make the law say, 'behavioral advertising is illegal,' and instead have spent years slowly awakening to that conclusion, at the cost of zillions of dollars in legal fees.
It's true the EU does not recognize it's in a war yet but they are at least trying to slow them down. The US is further behind.
Most people seem to happily approve all the GDPR dialogs too. While doomscrolling TikTok/Instagram/FB.
Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.
Or they weren’t paid enough in legal and illegal bribes before, if you prefer the cynical take.
We know how well the industry "tries to follow" from how industry follows GDPR and how Facebook keeps pretending that it's their god-given right to use tracking data in advertisment.
> It's confusing as a war is because the regulators decided not to make the law say, 'behavioral advertising is illegal,' and instead have spent years slowly awakening to that conclusion, at the cost of zillions of dollars in legal fees.
It's not confusing. Regulators do what they always do: they let companies do whatever companies do. And when the companies keep doing shitty things, regulators regulate.
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What that means for the clerks trying to regulate the ad business... Well...
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Data aggregators and advertisers don't have agency?
We don't really have have a term for "behavioral" advertising. So a lot of things are being lumped together that don't necessarily fit.
For example, Facebook USED to be highly valued because of the amount of "targeting" (again, we don't use the term "behavioral") data they had. When you went to tell FB what you liked and didn't like they used that. They also kept that valuable data under lock and key - they have no interest in sharing it.
Things are a bit different now. Since they and everyone else switched to an endless "doomscrolling" experience, all that data is worthless. No one keeps their likes up to date, no one engages with content. So there's really not that much targeting ("behavioral") data out of FB anymore. So native ads are less effective, but people look at much more.
"Data brokerages" are pretty niche. They don't exist to the extent that people think they do. And the data they provide is often absolute garbage. Users switch phones, emails, numbers way too often to actually get anything resembling a permanent "lock". Marketing data ages FAST. Do you go to a store and find they have an address that is like 4 moves old? That's kind of the quality of brokerage data - it's good for filling in gaps, but is not nearly as valuable as first-party data.
So part of what you are seeing is not necessarily advertisers responding to upcoming EU regulations, but organic changes in what sort of advertising is even effective anymore. Third party cookies are not as useful as they used to be, and they cut into the big advertisers' monopolies on user data. So they are being phased out anyway.
> Attribution / measurement of advertising campaigns became more and more precise
This is the exact opposite of what is happening in the industry. There are so many different data sources that all conflict that data quality is often very dire in most large organizations. So there is a ton of fraud and snake oil used to justify advertising budgets.
However, where the author hits the nail on the head I think are future outcomes: EU markets are being deprioritized (it doesn't hurt that economically, consumer wealth in Europe is falling like a rock). Users are opting in to more advertisements (Instagram is quickly becoming the QVC of the internet). One thing he misses is the rising importance of sponsorships and physical marketing..
Falling like a rock? Where is this comming from? What Europe are you talking about? The EU, the continent, the eurozone, the UK, Russia?
Granted, high inflation, primarily caused by higher energy prices after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has slowed down consumer spending in the EU, but generally speaking the outlook isn't that bad.
- Total financial assets of EU households grew almost continuously during the period 2011–2021, falling only in 2018. Their total value increased from €21 331 billion in 2011 to €34 982 billion in 2021, a 64.0 % overall increase. (Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...)
- Consumer Spending in European Union is expected to be 1804.00 EUR Billion by the end of this quarter, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations. In the long-term, the European Union Consumer Spending is projected to trend around 1836.00 EUR Billion in 2024 and 1869.00 EUR Billion in 2025, according to our econometric models. (Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/consumer-spendin...)
- In June, Eurosystem staff revised down slightly the outlook for growth in the euro area for the next two years. The economy is expected to slow to 0.9% in 2023 before rebounding to 1.5% in 2024 and 1.6% in 2025 as energy prices moderate, foreign demand strengthens and real incomes improve. (Source: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2023/html/ecb.sp230...)
Ummm. Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertising. It's really a slow return to how TV advertising and etc worked.
> continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked
How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and safeguards than there were a decade ago. Let alone the amount of tools like AdBlocker or Ghostery or Brave or etc.
Keep in mind that the awareness of your online presence is probably growing faster than your actual online presence.
In fact, just like standard of living, it's easy to lose perspective of just how fast our entire idea of privacy has changed. 100 years ago, hotel beds used to be shared amongst strangers. Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home.
Whether what is sold is accurate or not is another thing, as long as it is perceived as "good enough" by the buyers it will be bought anyway.
I don't think that many companies (buyers) have the guts to stop for - say - 6 months all advertising on a given channel and see what happens.
Where in Europe is consumer wealth falling, by how much, and why is this a trend?
I could say the same about the US or Brazil or any other place, barring a source.
To the extent that it is wrong it is because we, as an average customer, have a pretty bad customer experience using the products. Educate me.
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A good example of this is organ donation. Some countries have it opt-in (i.e., you have to decide to donate), whereas in other countries it is opt-out (so you are a donor by default).
So "opt-in by default" doesn't make any sense.
However, I do see this opposite usage increasingly often, which means "opt-in" shouldn't be used any more.
Using "on by default", "enabled by default", "off by default", "disabled by default" would be clear and make sense.
Like a pre-checked box on a form about your desire to receive marketing mails.
Nitpicking, it was not opt in, as the user did not opt in. It would be more accurate to say: "consent was implicit", or even "the app could access the user's advertising ID without the user's consent".
I feel that it's important to distinguish "opt in" as something that requires explicit user action.
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We need a place for manufacturer (not sellers) to put _full specifications_ of their products. If you think you make something useful you put it there. Then people can use filters and search to find the products they want/need and then search for the right price/seller or directly contact the manufacturer/reseller network.