... And nothing of value was lost.
If it's detremental to your business to not be able to track users on such a granular level, it's a bad business.
I'm sure Facebook will survive here.
100% biased, can't stand that company.
If it's detremental to your business to not be able to track users on such a granular level, it's a bad business.
I'm sure Facebook will survive here.
100% biased, can't stand that company.
Except that Apple still allows tracking on this granular level, it's just that now they have to explicitly ask users to allow this.
Says a lot about Facebook's (and others) business model if it only works when the vast majority of users are mostly unaware of the amount of tracking they do, but the minute you make these users aware of the tracking and ask for their permission, the business model falls apart.
Would you be ok if they did it that way? A warning that says "by using Facebook, you are agreeing to be tracked", at which point the user could either continue or uninstall the app?
“If consent is bundled up as a non-negotiable part of terms and conditions it is presumed not to have been freely given.“
The only thing Apple is preventing them from doing is making an even larger shit ton of money by essentially knowing every app you ever use for anything that includes the Facebook SDK.
Note the same thing is true of Google. Google can (and did, and does) make shit tons of money by showing you targeted, relevant ads just based on your search keywords, or alternatively on a partner site by showing you ads just based on that site's content. But no, they need to make even more gargantuan shit tons of money by tracking your every move in Chrome and Android.
That people won't opt into something that they didn't ask for and isn't primarily for their benefit is unsurprising.
I opt-in to using my car to drive, and I opt-in to using my laptop to write code.
I don't opt-in for tracking, advertising, or other negative externalities.
And I don't even think it has to be the primary feature. As someone else mentioned about maps, map apps are still plenty useful without location tracking (indeed, analog maps worked well for millennia without it), but I know if I opt in to location tracking while using a map app that I'm going to get a lot of additional useful features, so I do it.
That's like saying if you put a price on something, it will kill that thing. No, it doesn't.
Facebook and others use the word "ad" hoping people assume the definition is the old school television or print ad; "here's our thing buy it and it'll make you happier". Beyond whatever massage it had that advertisement only affected you if you turned to that page or watched it during your show. The content creator got paid to use some of their space/time to let an advertiser reach their audience.
For Facebook (and Google and others) and "ad" means a content creator is not just selling their own space or time but they're selling their audience. To them an "ad" is a means to hoover up a vast amount of data on people. Because of their reach and the fact they run a social network the data amounts to tons of PII. There's little regulatory control over the collection, storage, or dissemination of this data. The person being surveilled has no meaningful way to control what data is collected or what's done with it. Even opt-ins don't provide meaningful data to someone to make an informed choice about "ads".
Apple making some of the scope of their tracking clear is a step in the right direction for users. People shouldn't have to participate in a dystopian panopticon just to use an app or a website. If the apps or website somehow can't survive without surveillance that would give Stasi agents a boner they can fuck right off alongside Facebook.
There's zero oversight of how that data is used or who it's sold to and what those buyers do with it. We've already seen a number of cases where this harvested data was sold to unscrupulous or outright criminal concerns.
So it's not just Facebook using browsing history to sell you boxes of Tide. They're selling dossiers on you to groups literally trying to gaslight and manipulate you, to subconsciously influence you to do things, or to just make you generally feel like shit. Facebook exacerbates this behavior by "advertisers" by using your dossier to stick you in a filter bubble while at the same time showing you content that maximizes "engagement" and nothing else.
The dog wagging and gaslighting are not common knowledge or well understood by most people. Neither are the shadow profiles or the access of data by any organization that drove a dump truck full of money to Menlo Park. They're worse than the old school information brokers and credit reporting agencies because they feed all of your behavior into their graphs rather than just transaction history or public data.
Where can I find one of these dossiers? Or at least a screenshot example of a dossier that someone bought from Facebook?
Surely you wouldn't make a claim without seeing proof of this behavior happening. That would misinform people and your not trying to do that, right?
[0] https://m.facebook.com/help/212802592074644 [1] https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/24/technology/facebook-data/in... [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/faceboo... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/how-to-see-which-facebook-ap...
To be clear: GDPR data you can download about yourself includes the information about the advertisers who already had your contact info. Those advertisers don’t get a copy of the GDPR data portability document.
Insinuating Facebook is not selling a personal dossier because they don't attach a copy of your driver's license is ridiculous. Your relationships and activity are your personal identifiable details.
It’s not true that you can just buy a dossier on someone from Google or Facebook. That would make no sense, their business is rationing the use of that data by selling inferences (the gold eggs), not by selling the model (the golden goose).
But let's pretend that because Facebook isn't providing third parties Manila folders full of photocopied papers that they're not selling your PII.
Unless you break the service in case the permission is revoked. Then users gladly enable the permission.
E.g. it's not a cookie banner type thing, you provide the text for the dialog, and the dialog gives users a yes/no option.
So there's no ambiguity about what the user's intent in, and any developer who ignores it wouldn't be able to argue that they didn't understand.
If one is optimistic, this could be the the downfall of facebook. If FB is scummy it doesn't increase its chances of survival.
To be honest I'm sure there will be millions of other opportunities to gather data, by other companies. Facebook does it the easy way. Data gathering is a business now, I'm sure there are people who specialize in data gathering operations, a little like oil prospecting, the obstacle here is just getting the legal consent of consumers.
To me it's a miracle Facebook is allowed to do business given how many scummy things they do
The Western World claims to be honest and transparent and talks a lot about ethics etc
However, you never see stuff like Facebook or the Tik Tok ban in countries like China and INdia which are supposedly riddled with corruption
America it seems corruption is completely OK as long as there is enough bread and circuses for the common people
Nothing of value was lost.
That alone can be turned into endless streams of money (selling them to advertisement companies).
And that's just one of many points.
So yes this won't get anywhere close to killing FB even if it is adopted by other platforms like Android.
Still it hurts revenue and this companies don't work on a morlaic basis but a pure monetary one, moral only matter because overstepping it to far makes you lose customers and trust from the government and with that potential more regulations.
This is definitely not true. There is considerable value in advertising, it's just not apparent to you.
In fact - advertising that is 'well targeted' is considerably less annoying than ads that are poorly targetted.
The economic value of a well targeted ad is probably 10x otherwise.
Ergo - unless you are willing to pay for apps - you might now see 10x more ads appearing on pages than otherwise.
The moment you build something, and have to get the word out - your perspective will turn right upside down. As a creator you don't want to bother people who are not interested, but you definitely want to put up ads for those who may be.
A lot of ads are just a waste of time, but there is a lot of efficiency in the communication there and that has value.
The better we are able to connect people with the things they want, the better we all are.
Of course, privacy matters as well, and this presents with a great paradox, in that, losing privacy may not be worth it for some people, but it's surprisingly hard to be objective when we've only been on one side of the fence.
> Ergo - unless you are willing to pay for apps - you might now see 10x more ads appearing on pages than otherwise.
I'm afraid that this is nonsense. If the economic value of selling bread went down by 10x, do you think people would start offering you 10x as much bread?
I would urge you to consider the real economics of the situation instead of propagating bad information, and embarrassing yourself.
Ironically, the evidence for the relative value of ads is right on Facebook Ad Platform itself!
You can run an experiment today, right now.
Create a Facebook ad, and send people to your web site, with some kind of intended action.
Send 'Ad 1' to a completely untargtted audience.
Send 'Ad 2' to a crudely targeted audience (say, nation and demographic)
Send 'Ad 3' to an interest based demographic.
You will right there, plain as day, in a single day, see that ads 1, 2 and 3 will each have an order of magnitude of a different conversion rate.
Most public commentary on ads is based on ignorance, which is somewhat understandable because it's domain specific knowledge, but because it's a 'personal issue' to some, they have an opinion about it.
Targeted ads are unambiguously better for everyone: sellers, marketers, exchanges, buyers.
The issue is privacy.
I am disputing your random assertion that, if advertising became less effective (say by removing targeting), the quantity of advertising that people see would go up significantly.
The amount of adverts that people see currently is not based solely on their economic value - it is based on their value relative to how much people are willing to put up with being advertised to. If advertising becomes less valuable, that doesn't mean people will suddenly put up with more of it.
Indeed, if the value of adverts went down, I would expect to see fewer advertisements, not more, since the value of showing them to people is now less relative to their willingness to put up with them.
And better than targeted ads are ads that only need contextual information to work. If I'm on a page for a bit of sports equipment, I'm probably interested in sports equipment, or at the very least sports. Didn't need a complex data collection and analysis pipeline there.
> unless you are willing to pay for apps - you might now see 10x more ads appearing on pages than otherwise.
I do in fact pay for apps, and I'd very interested in seeing the data collection + sale markets collapse, so that apps are not tempted to double-dip and sell my data anyway.
> The better we are able to connect people with the things they want, the better we all are.
I'd suggest that the more efficiently we are able to let people find what they need, the better. Advertising exists to sell you a product, totally regardless of whether it's the actual best product for your needs.
> Of course, privacy matters as well If advertising can be done even 50-60% as well without scooping every piece of user data it can get its hands on, then it should be.
Unfortunately, this simply isn't true.
The value of a vistor to a 'sports site' may be considerably more for some other product or service.
The fact is - most content is placed on sites for which there is no obvious context: Facebook, Twitter, news - none of it provides much information.
"I do in fact pay for apps" - it doesn't matter what you or I do - it matters what people do. The fact is, people are considerably more likely to opt for ad-based products than pay-based products, and for some kinds of products, it has a strategic consideration (i.e. those with network effects).
Ads are not going away.
"I'd suggest that the more efficiently we are able to let people find what they need, the better."
People never knew they needed a smartphone, did they? Nobody was thinking 'hey I really want a 'big screen phone'.
So I agree 'search for stuff' should be better, but advertising is not going away.
The 'ill effects' of privacy are negligible.
Nobody is harmed because of what FB is able to discern 'out of network' vs. what it already knows from what you do 'on network'.
There are definitely considerations, but in reality, no harm.
Can you think of examples where you, or someone you know has been harmed by FB out of network data collection?
Ads are not going away, better ads are better for everyone, we need to figure out how to deal with privacy.
It quite literally is. I like mountain biking, if I go to Pinkbike (largest MTB news site), all the ads are for mountain biking products. If I'm there, I don't want to see ads for cloud services, or toasters, because that's literally not what I'm interested in at this point.
> The value of a vistor to a 'sports site' may be considerably more for some other product or service.
Like what? Probably less utility to the user though.
> The fact is, people are considerably more likely to opt for ad-based products than pay-based products
Many products are advertising only, and there's a strong culture (pushed by the advertising industry I might ad) of ad-supported above all else.
> The 'ill effects' of privacy are negligible...Nobody is harmed because of what FB is able to discern 'out of network' vs. what it already knows from what you do 'on network'.
In your opinion, sure. So what, we should all just have to put up with it, just because Facebook thinks it "deserves" to make money. Phillip Morris and friends argued that cigarettes didn't harm anybody as well.
> There are definitely considerations, but in reality, no harm.
The previous American election and the well documented effect of troll farms would indicate otherwise. Targeted advertising, enabled by invasion of privacy and amplified by the ill-effects of social-networks literally enabled that directly. The "chilling effect" of constant monitoring on culture is a well documented effect.
> Ads are not going away, better ads are better for everyone, we need to figure out how to deal with privacy.
"Ads are here, who cares about privacy, we want to make money". We have a right to privacy, advertisers not have right to make money, and when rights and advertising collide, I don't see any reason beyond "let's just endlessly feed people to the machine of capitalism" why the latter should be allowed to win.
It's a huge stretch to say 'targetted ads disrupt elections'.
What if we could to 'perfect targetting' without invasion of privacy? Well, the 'Evil Russians' would still be able to try to use ads.
They are completely separate issues.
'The Russians' FYI mostly use FB pages, Reddit pages and fake groups to generate outrage, not just ads.
There isn't really specific harm to individuals by FB having this information. It 'feels' creepy, but it's really not a material issue. It's something we would rather not have, obviously, and there are elements of privacy we definitely don't want to give up (ie intimate moments haard by Alexa), but in general not something that's bad.
As for 10x more ads if they get less effective, that doesn't make any sense. Advertising supported media isn't showing the minimum amount of ads needed to cover their costs out of some sort of altruism. They show the profit maximising amount. Any more ads will cost them more eyeballs/clicks than they currently get.