Hacker News Reader

Comment by ipsum2 | Hacker News Reader

> On April 4th, Snap announced a programmatic offering called Audience Network, which copies Facebook’s strategy of selling user data for third-party ads across multiple applications

This is incorrect, and makes me wonder if the rest of the article is accurate. Both Snap and Facebook's Audience Network is similar to Google's AdSense (running ads on a website) or AdMob (running ads on mobile). Google, Snap, and Facebook don't sell user data (from the aforementioned products, at least).

View on HN

I see this a lot and I have to wonder: Why would they sell the user data? It would ruin their business model of collecting the data

I suspect "selling user data" is often a shorthand that really means something more like "selling ad-targeting based on user data". Which is not the same thing, although the results can still be abhorrent.

I think this is correct, but we also semi-intentionally conflate the two to say the less worse version while connoting the worse version.

That said, the difference is blurry. LinkedIn and Facebook are both capable of hyper-specific targeting that may as well be specific users. I haven't interacted with Snap's ad product, but I suspect it can accomplish similar granularity.

Selling data, renting it, or monetizing derivatives of it...does it matter? Being a gatekeeper to data pays regardless of what kind of transaction is occurring.

Because, $BAD_ACTOR$ may be able to target advertizing to $GROUP_X$ in one scenario, but in another, may actual have the underlying data which can be abused in MANY other ways.

For example, you search for porn content... an advertiser targeting porn content doesn't know YOU search for porn content in the former... in the latter they do know.

What is the practical difference(s) between those two scenarios?

While this fundamental misunderstanding - or more likely to me lack of pedestrian vernacular - is common (see FB), I think the authors intent is correct.

Snap, FB, etc are monetizing user data by allowing advertisers to transact on that audience data, off these platforms' main apps across.

Just need a better, yet still widely understandable, verb/description. I'm not sure I can think of one with just one or two words. Transact upon user data seems to come close, maybe leverage user data to sell targeted ads

‘milk the cow’

lol I can't tell who's the cow or who's the milk in that analogy but I love baby cows so i'm in!

Perhaps they sell analytics for how well their ads are performing, which is technically "user data," though that is also perfectly reasonable to sell.

They sell the data which is anonymized into audiences. When you buy audiences on Facebook, they are in turn, selling you audiences (and data)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com