A lot would be solved by outlawing targeted advertising.
"Targeted" advertising generally refers to the tracking-based targeting of individual people. Re-defining the term to include all types of advertising makes the term mostly useless.
> Doesn't seem feasible.
Banning targeted advertising would be easy with legislation that bans tracking and showing ads to individuals.
> You'd have to make people randomly choose advertising spots from all of media.
Traditional advertising methods worked fine for centuries. Nobody[1] places ads randomly; you advertise where your product's audience will see it.
[1] Advertising intended to build general brand awareness instead of selling a specific product or service might buy ads somewhat randomly, because the goal is simply getting the brand name seen widely and often.
So no, targeted advertising is not any ad with a target in mind, that is just advertising. Targeted ads are distinguished from regular ads based on targeting a specific individual. An ad in the WSJ may be aimed at a broad category of people interested in business news, but if I know for a fact that 'Letmesleep69' happens to be a reader of that paper and I take out an ad that specifically refers to that user name, then it would be a targeted ad.
edit: formatting
Disclosure: I believe in the eventual success of the fediverse.
> Seems impossible without outlawing all advertising. Advertising in the nytimes over some other paper or advertising on fox over cnn are all examples of targeted advertising. You'd have to make people randomly choose advertising spots from all of media. Doesn't seem feasible.
Not the OP, but I think he has a good idea stated over-broadly. Let me fix it:
A lot would be solved by outlawing profile-based targeted advertising.
If Facebook can't use you profile to individually target you, the advertisers are left to target the mass of "Facebook users" like they target the mass of "NY Times readers."
I should have added "by default" to my sentence.
Obamacare was intended to be like this. Legislators knew it was going to get attacked the second the ink was dry, so they built in a bunch of clauses making it extremely difficult to 'simply repeal'. New health care legislation almost certainly has to build on top of Obamacare, enough political capital can't possibly be raised to do anything else.
Preventing third party sources (images, scripts, "share buttons" etc.) from issuing or checking browser cookies might break a whole pile of useful things, but it'd make the world of retargeted ads dry up quickly.
In other words, create a modicum of public space which doesn’t have constant, intrusive noise.
To opt in just click 'Agree and Continue'. You won't ever hear from Facebook about this issue again.
To opt out click the much less visible 'Other Options' link, then scroll to the bottom of the page and expand each section and untick each box, then click 'Yes' when Facebook asks if you are sure, given that it will cause these problems for you. Then click 'Continue'. Now every 3 months Facebook will ask if you still want to opt out.
Plus Facebook can frame the opt-out option in the most unattractive light. When I try to disable 'ads personalisation' in Google it tells me 'You'll no longer be able to block or mute some ads'. Who wants to give up the ability to block ads?
Targeted advertising in some shape or form has existed for a hundred years. Just open any magazine that is targeted at a specific audience and you'll see widely different ads running in those magazines. McDonalds or Coca-cola aren't going to waste ad dollars running campaigns in hunting or boating magazines for example.
Can we just ban the rest of it then? ;)
Yes, because it makes inequality worse ;-)
Many users are in favor of targeted advertising. In a lot of forums where this is discussed, I usually just look for heavily downvoted comments - there's usually a bunch saying "I'd rather not have ads, but if I do have them, I want personalized ads."
Downvoting them won't make the sentiment go away.
It's already too creepy that my smartphone has trained its autocorrect with words I've never texted before but can extrapolate from my digital footprint.
> there's usually a bunch saying "I'd rather not have ads, but if I do have them, I want personalized ads."
How badly do they want that? It sounds to me like they don't really care.
That's a poor assumption on your part that they are not properly informed. In real life, when I've met such people, they are properly informed. It would be arrogant for me to think that the ones on the Internet forums are any different - especially when they are responding to submissions that are clearly outlining the negatives of this kind of tracking.