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Comment by elorant | Hacker News Reader

By hosting non-tracking ads. Like they used to be before Google started this whole profiling menace.

They can even be dynamic. Filter on location, uplink/computer speed, screen size, browser etc. None of it requires storing data.

Adtech might move to correlating all these things + the website visited to target particular demographics.

They can also be quite smart. What was your referrer, what's your user flow through the site, what do similar users do when arriving from the same pages and searches? What time of day is it for the visitor?

ie: figure out why they are doing what they're doing and direct them to ads that capture that intent.

I'm not certain but much of that sounds like the kind of information GDPR doesn't let you use like that.

The only reason that IP address logging is a problem is that ISPs could theoretically cross reference with subscribers leases and identify them.

I think this much vaguer stuff will be fine.

Why? None of it requires saving info on an individual server-side. As long as you don't do that the GDPR doesn't even apply to you.

I keep seeing this argument. But the reason I don't see this happening is the giant amount of fraud out there. Sure ad fraud is an arms race, but if you can't do js fingerprinting, cookies, etc it would be impossible to verify ad impressions are real humans, not bots. And actual clicks from real humans would be impossible to differentiate - not coming from the same bot clicking over and over again (can't store ip, cookie, etc I'm not sure how you'd distinguish).

Sure you could store IPs, as you can also use cookies. I think there's a hysteria regarding GDPR. It won't break the web. Perhaps we need to give it some time to settle in and then draw our conclusions.

To fight fraud you can use some short-term temporary tracking without saving data for a long time, without linking cookies and IP to email or real name, without exchanging data with other companies (like Google), without buying or selling data to data brokers.

To show ads you don't have to report about all of your site visits to Facebook and Google.

Did you use the internet back then? Do you remember what online ads were like before AdSense?

My god. They sucked so hard! AdSense was a revolution.

AdSense was definitely a revolution in many fronts, especially because it enabled small sites to start earning a decent income. And for that we'd be eternally grateful to Google. On the other hand Google back then didn't have the variety of products they have now so profiling was much less intrusive.

It wasn't privacy invasions that made the ads better, it was Google making the process easier. Instead of dealing with shady smaller networks, or individual sites (which only businesses that extracted high value from online presence could afford, e.g. gambling,) any business could then easily and safely publish their ads widely. That is not going away, and advertising in the EU will still exist.

of course not, there will be more ads. EU developers are not going to just shut down their websites, and there arent any better european ad solutions.

I have used an ad blocker for the last 10+ years. I don't know how Adsense has improved my internet experience, and I suspect it has had no effect.

adsense ads have not changed much since 10 years go. it had a huge effect compared to 20 years though.

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