This episode of Security Now covered Google’s plan to deprecate third party cookies and the reaction from advertising organizations and websites.
The articles and the opinions of the show hosts are that it may have negative or unintended consequences as rather than relying on Google’s proposed ad selection scheme being run on the client side (hiding information from the advertiser), instead they are demanding first party information from the sites regarding their user’s identification.
The article predicts that rather than privacy increasing, a majority of websites may demand user registration so they can collect personal details and force user consent to provide that data to advertisers.
What’s your opinion of website advertising, privacy, and data collection?
- Would you refuse to visit websites that force registration even if the account is free?
- What’s all the fuss about, you don’t care?
- Is advertising a necessary evil in fair trade for content?
- Would this limit your visiting of websites to only a narrow few you are willing to trade personal details for?
- Is this a bad thing for the internet experience as whole, or just another progression of technology?
- Is this no different from using any other technology platform that’s free (If it’s free, you’re the product)?
- Should website owners just accept a lower revenue model and adapt their business, rather than seeking higher / unfair revenues from privacy invasive practices of the past?
Would you refuse to visit websites that force registration even if the account is free?
Lots of sites require a free account these days. I don’t visit those sites.
What’s all the fuss about, you don’t care?
I care.
Is advertising a necessary evil in fair trade for content?
I like advertising - how else are you supposed to find out what products/services are available? Regularly visit every website of every company I might be interested in? That doesn’t work.
It’s data collection I dislike, nothing wrong with ads as long as they’re a reasonably short interruption. Make ads relevant to the content, not the visitor.
Unfortunately under the current system I don’t see ads, because the only way to block tracking is to also block most ads. Sorry, but ad networks have burned that bridge. It’s going to take time to rebuild it.
Would this limit your visiting of websites to only a narrow few you are willing to trade personal details for?
A website would need to offer some really valuable service for me to “trade personal details”. Even sites where I have an account (e.g. YouTube) I generally don’t log into that account.
Is this a bad thing for the internet experience as whole, or just another progression of technology?
I think anything that gives users control over wether or not they’re tracked is a good thing - and forcing people to sign up / agree to terms before using a site does that. If websites want my personal details to access them… that’s fine with me. I just won’t use those sites. Other people will make a different decision. It’s how it should be.
I also think I’m not alone, and plenty of major sites will choose to just not do any tracking. I look forward to using those sites.
Is this no different from using any other technology platform that’s free (If it’s free, you’re the product)?
I reject that premise. Lemmy is free. I don’t feel like “the product” when I use lemmy. The product is the content and the discussions. If Lemmy has a few ads on every page, I’d be fine with that. I think it’d be a good idea - as long as it’s done right, without invading privacy.
Should website owners just accept a lower revenue model and adapt their business, rather than seeking higher / unfair revenues from privacy invasive practices of the past?
It’s their business, choose whatever revenue model they want. Just be honest and open about it.
I like advertising
🤮
Constantly being brainwashed to consume is one of the great evils of our time. Consumerism is bad for mental health and the environment. But advertising also creates many biases in content creation.
When was the last time you heard anything about bad effects of advertising? Not just superficial “stupid ad” but as a massive corrosive force on society? That is how much freedom of speech we have.
Yeah, large portions of economies are being driven by consumption. I feel like so much stuff is just landfill fodder.
Massive affects of advertising
I was hoping you might have some examples, I’m not sure.
Sorry I don’t have any great sources on this. It’s rather speculation because how could you research this scientifically? Even if you could, an experiment like that would actually be unethical! And who would fund this, there is no way to talk in mainstream about advertising without running against massive financial interests. There are some search results but most of those articles look like mental garbage.
My guess is that because we’re constantly being told what to consume our minds work quite differently from what they would without advertising.
Our minds constantly have to resist intrusive advertising and psychological manipulation which means we constantly have to switch between and adversarial mindset and whatever content we were watching / reading. Or we become obedient and just “let the advertising wash through us”. And advertising constantly has to find new ways to activate our emotions.
Just as massive is the effect on content produced, there is a “natural selection” that any content that helps sell advertisement is more successful on the market. It’s not just that you can’t piss off your advertiser but that generally you want the consumer to be in a certain mood - or that content producers who do this naturally are more successful and grow.
Then there are privacy concerns which reduce humans to machines and creates a powerful system that can and is abused for political control (public relations).
How can any of that not have massive societal impacts, since it’s being done on a massive scale and is near ubiquitous? How can anyone assume these effects are not incredibly bad?
You could have a country banning advertising that has a kind of “content tax” that is funded publicly and administered independent from the government through separate elections. And that has strict mandates and distributes the money to news papers, websites, movies and video creators dependent on views - similar to music rights agencies. But none of this is even talked about. We’ve completely lost the ability to even think seriously about how to improve our society. I believe in large part this is due to advertising.
PS: There is a film called “Branded (2012)” about the “horrors of advertising”.
