Comment by home_boi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by home_boi | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the legislators understand the technical complexity it would take to comply with GDPR nor the benefits of tracking for the internet.

Tracking makes markets more efficient.

1. Advertisers can tune their ads/targeting to get higher conversions and sales. They pay higher PPMs and PPCs.

2. Publishers get higher PPMs and PPCs. This motivates them to invest more in their content and website because each new user will yield more money with higher PPMs.

3. Users get more relevant and safer ads. Remember the shady banner ads of the late 90's and 2000's? That's the type of low conversion rate / click through rate ads that will run when advertisers can't target their audience efficiently and PPMs are very low. Relevant ads also save users (the segment that buys stuff from ads) time from researching for products and services.

4. Users get personalized content from publishers. This has a few negatives but I would argue that it greatly improves user experience.

The technical and administrative complexity required for the legislation effectively shuts off tracking for all websites that aren't owned by a megacorp. Small and medium sized publishers now have less motivation to get good content out and improve their websites from the lower PPMs.

> Relevant ads also save users (the segment that buys stuff from ads) time from researching for products and services.

That is specifically not wanted.

Several European governments are subsidizing projects to provide consistent and exhaustive comparison tests between many products instead, so customers can for each category of product they may need find massive comparison tables, find which products fulfill their needs, and can buy the cheapest one.

This makes the market more efficient, because the best product for the lowest price wins, instead of the best marketed product.

One such example is the Stiftung Warentest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest

So is that going to be another parcel of life under the state control? It is easy to predict such tools are going to be abused (for example excluding products from a producer that has opposite political views to the currently ruling people)

Every company today that you rely on to discover products will shape what you see for their own advantage.

Google puts their own ads more prominently and bans competitors from certain ad spaces, Amazon does the same, as does even Yahoo.

And your worst fear is that maybe the government might end up just as bad as the companies that you see as alternative?

There is a difference thought - you can't have multiple governments to choose from at any given time. State always limit the choice.

> the benefits of tracking for the internet

I do not see any.

> They pay higher PPMs and PPCs.

As a user, I do not care.

> Publishers get higher PPMs and PPCs.

Don't care either.

> Users get more relevant and safer ads

Sorry but that's outright bullshit. In practice, targeted ads feel absolutely worse (at least for me), as an example I remember buying an umbrella a year ago on Amazon... guess what do I still get recommended to me on there? F'ing umbrellas... I know I'm in the UK but come on, one is enough.

> Remember the shady banner ads of the late 90's and 2000's?

I still see that garbage all over the place, including from supposedly "reputable" ad providers with apparently top-notch tracking like Google. Fake antivirus software or tech support scams are still common on there.

> Users get personalized content from publishers. This has a few negatives but I would argue that it greatly improves user experience.

That's my other problem with tracking-based ads, as it creates an echo chamber. I'd much prefer getting "irrelevant" ads as it makes me discover products I would've never otherwise thought about. I prefer print & real-world billboard ads for this reason as they're generic and expose me to stuff I wouldn't see otherwise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com