"Every day, consumers are exposed to extensive commercial surveillance online. This leads to manipulation, fraud, discrimination and privacy violations. Information about what we like, our purchases, mental and physical health, sexual orientation, location and political views are collected, combined and used under the guise of targeting advertising."
Completely agree that commercial surveillance should end.
However, ending surveillance-based advertising is not enough to end manipulation, as that's one of the primary goals of most advertising, even when surveillance is not involved.
Instead, we should go further and end all unsolicited advertising.
This is exactly why we're building EthicalAds. It's an ad network that only targets based on the content of sites, doesn't allow any third-party JS or images, and is currently only focused on a developer audience: https://www.ethicalads.io/advertising-vision/
We had the same choice on Read the Docs, but didn't really have any other way to make money but advertising. We decided to build ethical advertising, so that we could be proud of the ads we show, knowing we weren't adding to massive pool of data out there. I talked a bit more about it here: https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/aug/31/funding-oss-ma...
Doesn't go far enough: since advertising is virtually all lies, we should prohibit it.
The bad effects of advertising are well known, from web ads distributing malware, to print advertisers affecting editorial content and direction to ad spammers ruining faxing, usenet phone calls and email. We, as a society, should acknowledge advertising as a bad thing, and try to live without it.
I'd like to see a very high taxation on advertising, especially by class or scale.
The local sandwich shop, theatre company, or software consultancy is unlikely to cause much harm and likely to see major benefit by advertising.
The FIRE sectore, fossil fuels and petrochemicals, fizzy drinks, tobacco, alcohol, junk foods, pharmaceuticals, payday lenders and crisis-oriented financial services (granted a subset of FIRE), infomercials, and major-industry influence marketing (effectively political lobbying through advertising), all carry huge externalities and gain tremendous leverage through advertising which a steep taxation rate should ameliorate.
Ads should be replaced by fact sheets, made to objectivly compare products. Instead of advertising agencies, you'd have organisations that compare the greatest number of products, as objectivly as possible.
Probably unrealizable, and riddeled with issues, but ideally preferable.
I wouldn't mind ads if they were ... accurate, and would just advertise what I want to see, and let me participate and tell them what I want.
Let me manage what I want to hear about. I can assure you that my engagement would be a hell of a lot higher than when they advertise "thing you just bought" or "we think you're a woman here's a bunch of products related to" (I'm not a woman, I don't buy those products, amazon ... stop it). Or Google "hey here's some stuff from some sports team you googled" no google that's my team's RIVAL... I already told you I don't like them.
Granted advertising dollars come from folks who want to spend them so I'm going to see that stuff, not the other way around.
I prefer them to not have ANY information about me - because the holy grail of such system is to dynamically adjust prices, upwards, depending on your preferences. To extract as much money as you are willing to pay for a product.
An automated bazaar system, where prices can only rise for you.
I'm on the same boat. But furthermore, I'd like ads to be related to the content of the site I'm visiting. Say I'm on Quanta reading an article about black holes, how about show me an ad for a book on dark matter. Instead of an ad for a pair of shoes I searched a week ago. Contextual ads make so much more sense to me.
I'm torn: on the one hand I'd rather not be spied on on every damn web page I visit. On the other hand, my experience with Instagram's ads was downright positive, which was very unexpected. They showed me cool stuff that I didn't even know existed, and that I'd actually like to buy.
So it seems like we should either have no surveillance, or the absolute maximum -- most ads are still in that gross uncanny valley.
> I wouldn't mind ads if they were ... accurate, and would just advertise what I want to see
"Accurate" doesn't necessarily mean "what you want to see". The quip of "more relevant ads" sounds nice, but it just means they're tuned to you specifically, not that they're tuned to what you want to see.
As an example, if it is possible to accurately target people with particular voting preferences, it is possible to show them links to articles about how individual votes don't matter and otherwise discourage them from voting.
Agree 100%.
I see everywhere that people "prefer personalized ads" ... but if I am looking at paintball, you can just show me paintball ads! You dont need to understand me in depth at all. No privacy concerns if you just assume my interests based on what I am currently viewing.
In part because the same investigatory bodies that would investigate and issue those charges benefit greatly not only from our country's mature surveillance infrastructure and the data it sucks up, but also from the friendly partnerships they have with the companies that own the surveillance infrastructure.
Is it actually true that tracking results in better ads?
Take this very post - couldn't some agent scan all the text, aggregate and basically determine that "anti-ad" sentiment is strong, then some company could advertise in pages that have strong "anti-ad" sentiment. No tracking necessary.
I have no idea. The story about tailoring ads to individual consumers that the tracking companies sell is catnip to marketing departments, but I don't have high confidence that the advertising industry is better at the statistics needed to evaluate what they are doing than, say, psychologists were before the replication crisis.
While this works for Google Search (to my knowledge, search ads are still exclusively contextual) most contextual ads only work in limited situations - random blog websites or things like quizlet don't really have any related products you could advertise on based on the domain, while people might still be included to (for example) purchase an Amazon item they viewed a few days ago.
There's a pretty strong argument that it doesn't, at least in many cases. Cory Doctorow's How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism is one long-form answer to that question.
I'm not convinced he's entirely correct. Marginal improvement over other methods may be useful, and there are some cases, notably political advertising aimed at dissuading target groups of voters from participation, which may be at least sufficiently effective to be useful.
In my opinion an outright ban like this is the only way to begin to make the internet a net force for good again. The high profitability of exploitative data collection creates a perverse incentive for businesses, which coupled with unfettered capitalism(in the US especially) has led to the current situation with Facebook, Google and others; sacrificing privacy, personal freedoms, and even democracy itself on the altar of ad revenue.
This is also a rare window of opportunity where the Democrats control both chambers of congress, making such a ban at least somewhat feasible.
Hear me out. If we agree that my attention has economic value (and it must as that is the entire basis of advertising); and if we agree once my attention is captured it cannot be applied to something else at that moment; then unsolicited advertising is an act of theft.
Unlikely legal conclusion I know, but damn, maybe I would like to sit on the beach and have my own thoughts rather than be forced by an airplane banner to wonder if I need a personal injury attorney...
What really bugs me is that ADHD is completely ignored in the WAI-ARIA spec.
I'd be hopeless without the ability to block ads.
Addendum:
A "Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force" does exist, but they seem to be mostly focused on people who have difficulties understanding the content or how to mentally map/navigate it. What I want is a legal right to the ability to block major distractions.
It'd be great if Google would stop their efforts to sabotage ad blocking, but I'll take a browser-level setting in the same vein as the new "prefers-contrast" and "prefers-reduced-motion".
Not sure I agree with that interpretation, but it brings up something I've always wondered. The advertiser pays $x to show me an ad, presumably because their expected ROI (from me) is greater than $x.
So if that's actually true on average, ad-suppprted services aren't really "free"? I pay for them in all the extra spending I do because of the ads, and the margin on those product prices that goes to advertising.
On the web you are explicitly choosing (i.e. clicking a link or typing a URL) to go places that show you advertising in exchange for providing whatever content or service you when there to see. This is why many argue (coherently) that using ad blockers are an act of theft. I actually think the latter is a much stronger argument than what you're putting forth.
The issue you'll run into with this is that retrieving content that is accompanied by advertising is not a passive activity. You've solicited it.
You could make some interesting arguments along these lines, for example against the concept of highway billboards perhaps, or similar. But the word unsolicited is doing a lot of work here that I don't think applies.
It's an interesting thought but I am not sure if it holds up. What about advertising on road signs and even going to the mall? Surely, storefronts are stealing my attention and what about those fancy gold plated luxury items? Are flowers stealing bee's attention?
Advertising is the activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media, per a dictionary definition.
Attracting public attention is not theft of attention.
You would be better served in your meme-war to refer to the dark patterns of advertising without vilifying the entire industry.
By that logic, attractive women who go out in public wearing skimpy outfits are committing theft - but I would not want to make dressing sexily and then going out in public illegal. I think there is something about the airplane banner at the beach and the slick hyper-calculated megacorp advertisement that pops up on the website you visit that is annoying for reasons other than theft - it is not so much the grabbing of one's attention that is annoying, but rather what grabs it and what the intentions behind it are and what context it happens in. Part of what makes many ads suck, I imagine, is that people deliberately design them to be unpleasant - which is why so many of them are garish. They stand out in part because they actually are meant to be annoying. In which case it is not so much the grabbing of attention that is the problem as what grabs it and what the intention is - in the case of the deliberately garish ad, your attention is grabbed in a deliberately unpleasant manner by a team of total strangers who work for YetAnotherSlickModernCorporation, want only profit, and are probably not offering you anything that you want.
It's actually not "willy nilly". If someone looks you up, you get a notification with their full name. This pretty strongly discourages people snooping on eachother's finances, while also helping to keep wealth hoarders accountable.
The advertising industry has done a terrible job explaining its role in the open internet and how personal the data collected actually gets.
"Surveillance" implies that someone is actually watching you, knows and cares who you are as an individual. This can't be further from the truth- no one cares about "you" as an individual, that kind of identifying data is absolutely useless because you by yourself aren't worth anything from a data perspective. You as an anonymous member of a data segment containing tens of thousands (or more) anonymous individuals is what's worth something. So the data collected can't be used to identify you.
For those of you saying "ban all ads" are living in a fantasy land. Most popular content and services online are supported by advertising. Email, search, maps, entertainment, news, etc. The vast majority of global internet users can't afford to pay for these services and content. "They don't need to waste time on X" you may say, but why do you get to decide?
> that kind of identifying data is absolutely useless because you by yourself aren't worth anything from a data perspective.
I hate to get all Godwin's law on you, but you don't think, say, Jews in the 1930s might have had reason to worry about the business model of third-party analytics companies if they existed back then?
There's also a large cohort of people that aren't against targeted ads, but are against large companies like Google and Facebook. The problem is removing 3rd-party targeted ads would not hurt the giants, but embolden them, as 1st-parties will be able to use this data with impunity.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|4 years ago|reply
Completely agree that commercial surveillance should end.
However, ending surveillance-based advertising is not enough to end manipulation, as that's one of the primary goals of most advertising, even when surveillance is not involved.
Instead, we should go further and end all unsolicited advertising.
[+] [-] viro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericholscher|4 years ago|reply
We had the same choice on Read the Docs, but didn't really have any other way to make money but advertising. We decided to build ethical advertising, so that we could be proud of the ads we show, knowing we weren't adding to massive pool of data out there. I talked a bit more about it here: https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/aug/31/funding-oss-ma...
[+] [-] bediger4000|4 years ago|reply
The bad effects of advertising are well known, from web ads distributing malware, to print advertisers affecting editorial content and direction to ad spammers ruining faxing, usenet phone calls and email. We, as a society, should acknowledge advertising as a bad thing, and try to live without it.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|4 years ago|reply
I'd like to see a very high taxation on advertising, especially by class or scale.
The local sandwich shop, theatre company, or software consultancy is unlikely to cause much harm and likely to see major benefit by advertising.
The FIRE sectore, fossil fuels and petrochemicals, fizzy drinks, tobacco, alcohol, junk foods, pharmaceuticals, payday lenders and crisis-oriented financial services (granted a subset of FIRE), infomercials, and major-industry influence marketing (effectively political lobbying through advertising), all carry huge externalities and gain tremendous leverage through advertising which a steep taxation rate should ameliorate.
[+] [-] daptaq|4 years ago|reply
Probably unrealizable, and riddeled with issues, but ideally preferable.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] viro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skinkestek|4 years ago|reply
This is obviously wrong.
There exist ads that I have been very happy to see and that has saved me lots of money and/or hassle.
[+] [-] duxup|4 years ago|reply
Let me manage what I want to hear about. I can assure you that my engagement would be a hell of a lot higher than when they advertise "thing you just bought" or "we think you're a woman here's a bunch of products related to" (I'm not a woman, I don't buy those products, amazon ... stop it). Or Google "hey here's some stuff from some sports team you googled" no google that's my team's RIVAL... I already told you I don't like them.
Granted advertising dollars come from folks who want to spend them so I'm going to see that stuff, not the other way around.
[+] [-] Xelbair|4 years ago|reply
I prefer them to not have ANY information about me - because the holy grail of such system is to dynamically adjust prices, upwards, depending on your preferences. To extract as much money as you are willing to pay for a product.
An automated bazaar system, where prices can only rise for you.
[+] [-] elorant|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andai|4 years ago|reply
So it seems like we should either have no surveillance, or the absolute maximum -- most ads are still in that gross uncanny valley.
[+] [-] Vinnl|4 years ago|reply
"Accurate" doesn't necessarily mean "what you want to see". The quip of "more relevant ads" sounds nice, but it just means they're tuned to you specifically, not that they're tuned to what you want to see.
As an example, if it is possible to accurately target people with particular voting preferences, it is possible to show them links to articles about how individual votes don't matter and otherwise discourage them from voting.
That's more accurate, but not desirable.
[+] [-] PhillyG|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GenerocUsername|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metabagel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] literallyaduck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavyset_go|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endisneigh|4 years ago|reply
Take this very post - couldn't some agent scan all the text, aggregate and basically determine that "anti-ad" sentiment is strong, then some company could advertise in pages that have strong "anti-ad" sentiment. No tracking necessary.
Advertising is the ultimate zero-sum game.
[+] [-] chalst|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FredPret|4 years ago|reply
In real life, targeted ads add value by matching products and consumers that would not have found it in the jungle of information.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|4 years ago|reply
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capit...
I'm not convinced he's entirely correct. Marginal improvement over other methods may be useful, and there are some cases, notably political advertising aimed at dissuading target groups of voters from participation, which may be at least sufficiently effective to be useful.
[+] [-] oliv__|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varispeed|4 years ago|reply
They don't provide value to consumers, but give unscrupulous companies tool to manipulate people into buying things they don't need or want.
[+] [-] mtlmtlmtlmtl|4 years ago|reply
This is also a rare window of opportunity where the Democrats control both chambers of congress, making such a ban at least somewhat feasible.
[+] [-] viro|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ryandvm|4 years ago|reply
Hear me out. If we agree that my attention has economic value (and it must as that is the entire basis of advertising); and if we agree once my attention is captured it cannot be applied to something else at that moment; then unsolicited advertising is an act of theft.
Unlikely legal conclusion I know, but damn, maybe I would like to sit on the beach and have my own thoughts rather than be forced by an airplane banner to wonder if I need a personal injury attorney...
[+] [-] krono|4 years ago|reply
I'd be hopeless without the ability to block ads.
Addendum:
A "Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force" does exist, but they seem to be mostly focused on people who have difficulties understanding the content or how to mentally map/navigate it. What I want is a legal right to the ability to block major distractions.
It'd be great if Google would stop their efforts to sabotage ad blocking, but I'll take a browser-level setting in the same vein as the new "prefers-contrast" and "prefers-reduced-motion".
[+] [-] tdeck|4 years ago|reply
So if that's actually true on average, ad-suppprted services aren't really "free"? I pay for them in all the extra spending I do because of the ads, and the margin on those product prices that goes to advertising.
[+] [-] jensensbutton|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|4 years ago|reply
The issue you'll run into with this is that retrieving content that is accompanied by advertising is not a passive activity. You've solicited it.
You could make some interesting arguments along these lines, for example against the concept of highway billboards perhaps, or similar. But the word unsolicited is doing a lot of work here that I don't think applies.
[+] [-] viro|4 years ago|reply
Advertising doesn't show up on site without the OWNER of the site wanting it to be there.
[+] [-] systemvoltage|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavyset_go|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gear54rus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skinkestek|4 years ago|reply
>
> Hear me out.
You are heard. I read it more than an hour ago and have though about it.
I appreciate the initiative of Forbrukerrådet.
And I think your comment is obviously wrong.
You get free content for your loss of attention.
Just like selling something more expensively on one place than another isn't theft.
Maybe advertising is wrong, but please keep it somewhat serious.
[+] [-] 9wzYQbTYsAIc|4 years ago|reply
Please keep your meme activism to yourself.
Advertising is the activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media, per a dictionary definition.
Attracting public attention is not theft of attention.
You would be better served in your meme-war to refer to the dark patterns of advertising without vilifying the entire industry.
[+] [-] axguscbklp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unixhero|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walshemj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtlmtlmtlmtl|4 years ago|reply
Either way, this is nothing but a red herring...
[+] [-] olegious|4 years ago|reply
"Surveillance" implies that someone is actually watching you, knows and cares who you are as an individual. This can't be further from the truth- no one cares about "you" as an individual, that kind of identifying data is absolutely useless because you by yourself aren't worth anything from a data perspective. You as an anonymous member of a data segment containing tens of thousands (or more) anonymous individuals is what's worth something. So the data collected can't be used to identify you.
For those of you saying "ban all ads" are living in a fantasy land. Most popular content and services online are supported by advertising. Email, search, maps, entertainment, news, etc. The vast majority of global internet users can't afford to pay for these services and content. "They don't need to waste time on X" you may say, but why do you get to decide?
[+] [-] chalst|4 years ago|reply
I hate to get all Godwin's law on you, but you don't think, say, Jews in the 1930s might have had reason to worry about the business model of third-party analytics companies if they existed back then?
[+] [-] throwaway3699|4 years ago|reply