[Barraketh]

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymized personal data.

Also, fact is that matching consumers with products that they like doesn't just have enormous business value, but is actually socially positive! If you can more easily reach a niche audience, you can build better more targeted products. And the open data exchanges were a great moat against platform centralization like FB. The fight against open data exchanges make the comparative advantage FB has in advertising to you larger. That's actually pretty bad, because FB has some pretty bad incentives wrt to the attention economy and optimizing for engagement. A world where advertising on independent websites is effective is a much better one - it would let websites put out better content, it would decrease the power of social networks, it could fund better journalism (which is being decimated right now), etc.

[questionableans]

> Also, fact is that matching consumers with products that they like doesn't just have enormous business value, but is actually socially positive!

Well, sometimes. But what people want is not always good for them or for society at large. Targeted advertising has a side effect of hiding what exactly is being advertised to society. There's obviously the extreme cases of "vices," but what about things like junk food? People love it. Targeted advertising can induce cravings that make people buy and eat things they know are not good for them. Or for another example, what about pesticides and gas guzzling trucks? I don't want all my neighbors' vanity being exploited in order to pollute my neighborhood. We can openly talk about what we all see on TV, in newspapers, or on billboards, but if I'm not seeing the same ads as my neighbors online, those conversations aren't going to happen.

[coldtea]

>Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets.

Couldn't have happened to a worse industry

[hypertele-Xii]

Advertizing needs to be pull, not push. That is, when I have disposable income and am looking to spend it, there ought to be a place I can go to browse ads.

Otherwise, get the fuck off my attention span, stop bloating the web, and stop polluting public spaces with irrelevant information!

[troutwine]

> Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymized personal data.

I mean, why not both? I simply cannot think of someone who dislikes tracking-as-advertisement and is pro central clearinghouses for more targeted personal information.

> Also, fact is that matching consumers with products that they like doesn't just have enormous business value, but is actually socially positive!

Only with the unstated premise that tracking _will_ happen and it's better if that tracking is done in a decentralized fashion. Sure, I can agree that there shouldn't be a monopoly at the focus on online tracking-as-advertising, but there's an additional argument that the space _should not exist in itself_. These arguments have been rehashed endlessly online and especially on HN so they probably don't bear repeating here, but the either or choice you represent is disingenuous.

EDIT: fixed a typo

[Barraketh]

The premise is slightly different. I'm mostly differentiating between cookie tracking and social networks (and some other large online platforms). The large online platforms don't need to track you - you give them your data willingly. Facebook knows a lot about you not because it's tracking you, but because you keep posting things to it. Cookie tracking is an alternative way to build up an effective advertising profile that is decentralized and anonymized, which I think has some value.

[fuckyouriotshit]

> The large online platforms don't need to track you - you give them your data willingly.

Most people don't know the extent to which companies track them across the internet and their devices. It really would be better described as "stalking" given that there is a clear intent by most online platforms to be as stealthy as possible when it comes to their data collection activities.

> Facebook knows a lot about you not because it's tracking you, but because you keep posting things to it.

That's not at all true. People who have explicitly chosen to _not_ have a Facebook account still have their data sucked into the maws of Facebook's data collection systems. [1]

> Cookie tracking is an alternative way to build up an effective advertising profile that is decentralized and anonymized

Cookies cannot possibly be used to build up any sort of decentralized "advertising profile" across the internet - either you allow third-party cookies for tracking and the advertisers become the centralized data collectors or you don't and the cookies don't really provide any information that a website couldn't already collect (and which, critically, wouldn't be useful to produce an advertising profile for anything other than a single website).

> [..] which I think has some value.

Value for whom? It seems that you're very interested in talking about the value of data for those who collect it and are completely disregarding the value or cost to the people who are being tracked.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5921092

[adkadskhj]

> Also, fact is that matching consumers with products that they like doesn't just have enormous business value, but is actually socially positive! If you can more easily reach a niche audience, you can build better more targeted products.

Maybe this works well for some products, like "I know i need to buy milk, what should i buy?" but it has often been used in a form that appears like an abusive relationship.

Think about all of the kid-targeted ads from 30 years ago which peddled sugars and psychological tricks to get kids frothing at the mouth over their food and toy products. These weren't merely advertisements, but targeted attacks to the brain. And of course things haven't changed, it's just iconic to talk about early TV's cereal commercials hah. As with many product advertisements, they're not just trying to make you aware of the product - they're trying to bypass your consciousness and hook straight into your brain.

That was 30 years ago, and we've had the misfortune of seeing this evolve. Now social media advertisements are hyper targeted with similar tactics but more nefarious goals. Misinformation at the hands of targeted advertisements has been the source many-a controversies of recent years.

My point is i'd agree with you if advertisements haven't been so blatantly manipulative over the last 50+ years. If they were simply "Hey, you like X, try Y?"; but they're not. That ship sailed before i was even born. And it's only gotten worse with time.

[tomjen3]

The only data that can't be leaked is the data people don't have. When the OPM could be hacked, everything can be hacked.

Based on this, the only solution is to make sure nobody has any information that may possible be leaked and, at the time or later, be connected to me.

In addition to that nobody targets ads with value, because valuable products are super rare and don't need advertising because those show up in magazines, on blogs etc created by people interested in the field, because sharing those products give value to their readers.

I tested it recently on youtube, both by my locked in account (15? year old google account with a ton of info) and in a firefox container. The first ad was for some casual mobile game/scam and the second was for something I can't remember anymore. I also don't remember the first ad I got on the account that wasn't logged in, but the second one was for a website that sold used iPhones, something that I am very much interested in.

So, despite knowing a ton of me, Google couldn't show me a related ad that was better than the ad it showed when it had no data.

For a very long time the ads in gmail were all about getting loans no matter how poor my credit was, when my issue was that I need a good place to invest my money, not take on expensive loans.

Currently they were trying to sell me extra chargers for electric cars, of which I don't own any.

Facebook showed me a generic ad for cancer awareness aimed at somebody 15 years older than me (they know my real date of birth).

Previous to that they showed me a ton of ads for extra comfy travel trousers.

Twitter got the closest by showing me ads for places to buy crypto (yes I am interested in that space, no I won't by stuff from ads that scream scam to me).

I don't know what will replace ads, and it is possible that ads might bring some value in specific cases but in general they are a waste of money. I suspect Google etc knows this, but can't say it for obvious reasons.

Brand awareness ads might make sense, but it doesn't really make sense to target those much.

[mumblemumble]

> cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm.

This is a very specific statement. It may be true. But, even if we accept for the sake of argument that it is, it's not quite the same statement as, "Mass personal data collection has never resulted in personal harm," which, while seeming quite similar, also happens to be false.

[nickff]

But "[m]ass personal data collection" is a huge superset of "cookie tracking data"; the former encompasses all credit card information database breaches (such as Sony's), along with all government and healthcare database 'leaks'.

[mumblemumble]

We could limit it to "for marketing purposes" (which is what I meant, though I failed to specify it) and still find plenty of clear-cut examples of harm. This isn't breaking news. I took a class in graduate school that was largely devoted to studying examples of them and discussing their ethical and policy implications, and that was years and years ago.

[Barraketh]

I'm trying to differentiate between data that is anonymized (cookies), and data that is not. I'm unaware of any data leak of anonymized data that resulted in any harm, but if I'm wrong I'd love to hear about it.

[fuckyouriotshit]

How about intentional publishing of "anonymized" data? It's intentional, so it should be even less potentially harmful than an unintentional leak, right?

Well, Yahoo's publishing of supposedly "anonymized" data still poses a privacy risk to any of their users: https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp3d8v/yahoos-gigantic-anony...

That's just one of many apparently "anonymized" datasets that has been trivially deanonymized by researchers/hackers/internet-stalkers; so there's plenty of harm to be done.

[akdej27nd91ng]

Fun fact: one of the top 5 digital advertising platforms "anonymizes" user identifiers with a simple hash algorithm and "salts" all of the hashes with the same "salt". Can you guess the "salt"? Hint: it is commonly found on a dinner table and is used to season food.

[fuckyouriotshit]

I can't say I'm at all surprised. I've had similar conversations in a non-advertising field with non-technical managers where their attitude basically boiled down to "What do we care?" when it came to problems that would cost someone else money.

I also can't see attitudes like that changing until companies that collect data are seriously held to account for any leaks/abuses of the data that they collect.

Potential penalties would probably have to include criminal charges, in much the same way that individuals and companies can be held criminally liable for mishandling toxic waste.

[mumblemumble]

Perhaps? But focusing on that specific case means you're not aiming for the same goalpost as the article was.

[Barraketh]

I think you are right - this was a brain dump of some things I've been thinking about, specifically on how the fight against cookie tracking is making centralization worse and companies like Facebook more powerful. This article generically criticizes both, but I think there's actually a tradeoff here, and not making the distinction may lead to bad policies

[ben0x539]

> Also, fact is that matching consumers with products that they like doesn't just have enormous business value, but is actually socially positive!

What is the math here? How do you account for society-wide lost productivity from spending time consuming advertising? Or for people making sub-optimal purchasing decisions when products that are worse for their needs happen to have bigger advertising budgets?

[spinningslate]

>Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets.

Work in advertising by any chance?

If you read the article, it's not primarily about advertising. It's about privacy and the negative impact to society on losing it.

The ad tech firms were certainly pivotal in creating the dystopian surveillance world we live in. They deserve every single bit of bad rap they get for that and, personally speaking, I really hope there's a lot more bad rap heading their way.

>the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm

I don't know if you're deliberately positioning that duplicitously or not. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Whether there are cookie-based breaches or not is, in practical terms, irrelevant. Read the article. With cookies, and without breaches, the Facebooks and Googles of the world allow advertisers to promote smoking to children or payday loans to those with financial troubles.

Advertising is a wide spectrum. At one end it's relatively benign: billboards and the like. Some feel even that is unacceptable. At the other is the FB/G hyper-targeted end. In and of itself it is extremely creepy. But the article is about much more than just the weird experience of wondering how they knew to target you for erectile dysfunction treatment. Or divorce lawyers.

Ad tech has bootstrapped a global panopticon. That's the problem here.

Oh, and next time your insurance premium goes up mysteriously, have a think about your browsing history.

[cryoshon]

>actually socially positive

>If you can more easily reach a niche audience, you can build better more targeted products.

in practice, these two concepts are incompatible. everyone has buttons that can be pushed with the help of detailed psychological profiles made by advertisers.

if you push those buttons enough times, it's typically unhealthy for the person and financially beneficial for the pusher all the while.

[SavantIdiot]

> but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm.

How could you possibly make this claim in good faith, let alone believe it?

EDIT: typo

[edgyquant]

While I agree with this it should be easier to opt out without disabling JavaScript across the internet.

[jerry1979]

I see a couple some framing issues your comment. For example, the comment links (A) cookie tracking data with (B) people giving advertising a bad wrap. But, I think that people give advertising a bad rap for many reasons beyond simply cookie tracking. Given that, I worry that the idea "cookie tracking never led to harm" distracts me from the larger issue of generalized corporate and governmental data surveillance, especially considering that it seems like personal data breaches usually deal subtle harm to people.

[pdonis]

> matching consumers with products that they like

Is not advertising, it's sales: the seller establishes a personal relationship with the buyer, finds out what the buyer's needs and wants are, and proposes a product or service to them that satisfies those needs and wants. Advertising is nothing like that.

Not to mention that most things that get advertised for, nobody sells the way I just described above. The only products most people buy that get sold that way are houses and cars, and those aren't the kinds of things advertisers are trying to sell using harvested personal data. Most products that people buy that are advertised that way, they choose themselves, they don't have a personal sales person helping them.

[tomc1985]

Data can still be anonymized and dangerous. In extreme cases de-anonymization is available and for all the rest it still results in the targeted individual being exposed to manipulations and attempts at influence. And the amount of influence that advertisers wield absolutely needs to be curbed to an absolute minimum or, even better, non existence. People need to be making decisions on their own rational self-interest and not emotional overtures amplified by an intimate understanding of someone's fears and sensitivities.

[drocer88]

"but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm"

Do you have a link for this?

[bitexploder]

Their claim is logically dubious anyway. It’s not the cookies themselves but all the associated data that cookiesnlet big tech associate to profiles. This claim they are making about cookies are not associated with a breach is highly suspicious and not a good faith argument IMO. Even if they are not directly linked, cookies and tracking tools exist in a system and don’t exist in a vacuum. They are the tip of the spear. Sure the tip isn’t what kills you, but having the whole spear rammed through you sure does.

[Barraketh]

Well, it's hard to prove the absence of a negative - I think that it's on the people claiming harm to provide some examples. However, I'm not even sure what a cookie data leak would look like. The large advertising brokers are handling petabytes of cookie tracking data per day. To gain any insight out of it you need to run jobs on giant clusters. The volume of the data makes it basically impossible to exfiltrate. So yeah, I'm pretty confident in this statement.

[fuckyouriotshit]

> The large advertising brokers are handling petabytes of cookie tracking data per day.

Citation needed.

Also, you don't need a copy of every single byte that a tracking company collects; summaries are more than enough to be useful to track individuals across the internet.

> The volume of the data makes it basically impossible to exfiltrate.

An attacker doesn't need to try to exfiltrate a large fraction of collected data; only the data that's likely to be interesting to them.

See Facebook/Cambridge Analytica [1] for an example of just how incompetent a technically-sophisticated company can be when it comes to protecting their users' (and their own!) data from potential adversaries.

[1] In particular, the comments from Alex Stamos, the CSO who said “We have the threat profile of a [...] defense contractor, but we run our corporate networks [...] like a college campus" (from https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/19/facebook-security-chief-alex... )

[contravariant]

Sure I'm not particularly worried about cookies, where I control where the data is stored, what's in it, for how long, and who gets access.

Now if I had the same degree of control over all of my personal data we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[KyleBerezin]

I want a system that tracks me and is 100% transparent to me.

[Toks]

Exactly. It's not the tracking that is the problem, it's the lack of control/transparency. I want a personal data bank where I can decide who knows what about me.

[meh99]

Don’t expect that with big corporate hoarding it all for you. It’s “their infrastructure” and their business.

The west wants to be free of life’s problems while also being free to optimize time to avoid dealing with them.

It’s almost as if physical reality is full of real constraints our imaginations can refuse to acknowledge.

[intricatedetail]

Advertising that uses targeting is nothing else than manipulation and fraud and should be banned.

Disclaimer: I worked in advertising.

[Der_Einzige]

"Marketing is manipulation and deceit. It tries to turn people into something they aren’t — individuals focused solely on themselves, maximising their consumption of goods that they don’t need"

[questionableans]

It doesn't have to be that way, but that's typically the most profitable strategy, because most products actually suck.