
Dear internet: We must ban targeted advertising immediately - JackWritesCode
https://usefathom.com/blog/targeted-ads
======
avalys
I dislike these articles that try to manufacture outrage by using emotionally-
charged terms from the physical world - like “stalking” - in the context of
targeted advertising, to make things seem more threatening than they really
are.

Someone stalking you in real life is pretty damn scary, and not at all
comparable to an automated Facebook algorithm showing you ads for mountain
bikes because you joined a mountain biking club.

EDIT: I realize now that it was actually a HN commenter who used the word
stalking, not the article, which is slightly more circumspect, though still
uses manipulative language in my view.

~~~
fossuser
I agree - I also remember a comment a while back from someone on the google
ads team and a lot of the targeted ads help small businesses the most.

Large brands already have a lot of market presence and a lot of money for
advertising campaigns. Small businesses that can find targeted customers that
might want their thing on a nation or country wide scale get huge benefits
from that and would be hurt the most from losing it.

People have such strong and over-confident ideological positions without
really knowing the issue in depth or thinking through consequences.

~~~
DSingularity
Thinking about my past experiences —- I can definitely see how that may be the
case.

That being said — we have got a problem here and we ought to try and solve it.
The ability to target people with potent advertisements tuned using machine
learning on large scale populations is fearsome in its potential. At the very
least it should not be allowed to continue without basic restrictions and
oversight. Like it should be obvious that targeted political advertisements in
liberal, free-market democracies will lead us to bad places! Yet we do
nothing.

~~~
fossuser
Totally - I think there lots of things that can be improved and lots of
rules/laws or data policy that makes sense around privacy and civil liberties.

I thought Zuckerberg’s Georgetown talk on political ads was actually pretty
good (digs into some of the complexity:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/zuckerb...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/zuckerberg-
standing-voice-free-expression/))

I’d also recommend this:
[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033714.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033714.do)

The main issue I have with the HN post is that it’s arguing against this
nuance in favor of just banning it.

------
Animats
Tax it.

Advertising, in general, is under-taxed. Should it even be tax-deductible as a
business expense? Overall, in the US, most people are maxed out on spending.
The savings rate is low. Advertising does not stimulate demand, it just moves
it around, while adding cost.

Think of a tax on advertising as mutual disarmament for manufacturers. Less
spent on fighting with competitors, more price cutting.

~~~
vikramkr
It can draw people to buy on credit, thus stimulating demand. And
fundamentally businesses are taxed on profit, and advertising is an expense,
so if you start saying advertising isn't tax deductible, you start
fundamentally changing the way corporate taxation works and opening up a whole
can of worms. Adding a tax on advertising spend like a sales tax would be far
less messy - but it would benefit brands with large existing recognition at
the expense of smaller/emerging companies. Without advertising, warby parker
would never have been able to grow, leaving luxottica unchallenged as the
largest frame maker. You'd just cement current market leaders.

~~~
Animats
Only short term. Someday, the credit card bills have to be paid.

------
repsilat
To play devil's advocate, advertising is a social good, and better advertising
is even more of a social good.

How many times have you heard someone complain, "I just bought a desk lamp,
and now I'm getting loads of ads for desk lamps. Don't they know I don't
_want_ another desk lamp?" And surveys back it up -- people would largely
rather the ads they see reflect the things they're interested in. Because a
well-targeted ad is good for the viewer. Sometimes they want the thing, and
they buy it, and their life is improved.

If I'm statistically more likely to buy a particular item because of some
demographic I belong to, and you have my demographic information, by all means
use it to decide which ads to show me.

Maybe you _having_ that information is a breach of my privacy, but if you do
have it you should at least use it for something that'll benefit me.

~~~
missedthecue
This shouldn't even be a devil's advocate point of view. Targeted
advertisements have been just about the greatest value-add in the world of
business in maybe the last twenty years.

Imagine if you couldnt target advertisements. Imagine the waste. European baby
formula manufacturers advertising to middle aged single men in Wyoming
shouldn't happen, and it's because targeted advertising that we prevent that
waste. We are all better off for it.

~~~
austinjp
Can't tell if sarcastic.... _squints_

How about this: everyone already knows what they need and where to get it.

That _really_ reduces the infernal waste of advertising completely.

~~~
avalys
No one really needs anything except oxygen, food and water.

Everything else is a want.

Sometimes people invent things that others want, but that others don't know
about yet. That's what advertising is for.

~~~
lonelappde
Why can't they target the ad to content instead of to people?

------
downvoteme1
Interesting article. Then I dug in more about the author and no wonder he runs
a competing user tracking service that competes directly with google
analytics. Sure it does less targeting - but then also provides less data
points.

~~~
JackWritesCode
Yeah - privacy is important to the author. Less data points but protecting
users' privacy.

------
causality0
Here's an idea: let people have a public advertising profile they have
personal access to. I'd do a lot less adblocking if I knew advertisers were
picking off a defined list of my interests. New iphone? No. Android flagship
with a headphone jack and a telephoto camera? Oh yeah I'm interested. Allow
people to make it known they're interested in classic computers or new rifle
accessories or LEGO videogames or books from John Scalzi. It would be nice if
advertisers knew enough about me I could cancel all my Google Alerts.

------
olegious
What this ignores is that non targeted advertising means less money for
publishers. As advertisers are willing to spend more when they have more info
about a user. According to a Google study [1] the impact can be as high as
50%.

I prefer targeted advertising that's relevant to me. Especially because the
advertiser doesn't actually know anything about me as an individual, I'm just
an id, one of billions.

[1] [https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-
pa...](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-
party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf)

~~~
MereInterest
Why does it matter whether it is the advertiser themselves who know about me?
The wrong is that I am being stalked in the first place.

Why does it matter that advertisers pay more for targeted advertising? The
wrong is that it is an option for them to choose in the first place.

~~~
missedthecue
You'll see twice as many ads, and most will be irrelevant to your interests.

It's better to see half as many and have them be able to pique your interest.

The publisher wins, the advertiser wins, and the consumer wins.

~~~
papermachete
I'll see no ads because I run several different ad blockers, as should
everyone else.

------
mgreg
Wired published a well researched article a short while ago laying out the
arguments in a little more persuasive manner.

[https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-
ad...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-advertising/)

------
renewiltord
We have almost all the technology. What we don't have is verifiability in most
cases. i.e. the real problem is that the publisher cannot determine that the
User Agent is telling the truth. Everyone has a different value on the value
of their data. For instance, I find great targeted advertising to be
practically like a recommendation engine. Instagram's ads are great! And few
of them relate to things I've done on Instagram or Facebook. They're clearly
3rd party.

If we can find a way to ensure that the User Agent isn't lying (this may not
be easy), then I could trade my data for a discount on the WSJ instead of
paying full price and you could pay for the WSJ at full price and share
nothing about yourself.

I think the truth is that most people will pick the discount, but that's
because I would. I think that's a fair exchange and very open and clear. You
can opt-in.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Once upon a time, cable didn't have ads, because theoretically it got money
from cable subscribers. Then they realized they could have subscribers _and_
ads and make even more money.

The vast majority of sites don't treat "paying subscriber" and "sell
information" as an either-or. They treat paying subscribers as people they get
money and more information from.

Also, there's a third option: keep improving ad-blocker-blockers, so that they
don't just block ads, they also block "we see you're using an ad blocker"
messages.

~~~
lonelappde
When was once upon a time? Over 40 years ago.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-
inv...](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by-
commercials.html)

------
ksec
This may be unpopular on HN. But I dont mind ads, I dont mind target ads
either, in many cases I like them. What I do mind is creepy, personal ads.

"Your Friends _Joe_ just bought a wallet, you might like this too."

I am OK with recommending me a wallet, since in real life I would have sales
coming around me if I was in the Wallet counter and interested in one. I am
absolutely NOT OK with being told my friend _Joe_ bought a wallet. How did
they know Joe was my friend, why are they telling me he bought a new wallet?

Amazon are allowed to collected data when I am in their store, but those Data
should not be sold to any other company.

Right now there is a whole market for personal Data, and to me, that should be
illegal.

~~~
lowdose
Names follow a power law distribution, there are millions of guys named Joe
and everyone has a friend with that name. Half of the men in the US have only
100 different names.

Do you think it was just a coincidence in Amazons serie "The man in the high
castle" the main character is named John Smith?

~~~
ksec
I think it was more specific like Joe Smith, which was indeed my friend with
his Facebook Profile pic, it was many years before there was any backslash
against Facebook. It was that time I decided to drop Facebook.

------
kasey_junk
The idea that it is ok for Amazon to show you targeted advertising on their
properties but its not ok for third parties to do so seems like a pretty easy
way to entrench Google and Amazon.

In fact, targeted advertising is _already_ extremely low margin outside of
Facebook and Google. The big dollar ad campaigns follow context (Ford doesn’t
want to follow you around the internet, they want to show you every ad on
ESPN.com and their other properties).

This is a proposal that would a) make Google/Amazon/Facebook even more
powerful on the internet and b) kill small publishers.

------
mikeg8
While I agree with the overall sentiment in regards to supporting end-user
privacy, this article’s title is a bit sensational and the body fails to
provide enough substance to support such a dramatic claim. It’s an overly
idealistic solution to the problem and therefore is not of much use.

------
12xo
Yes. This would be good but it is impossible. Washington is moved by profits,
not people.

Could there be a better example of this than what's happening right now?

------
megavolcano
More laws, less justice. This can only backfire.

------
gentleman11
What would the text of the law say? All in-person sales activities are
personalized. Would it simply forbid the use of automation for this in a list
of specific ways? What would it say about YouTube video recommendations?

~~~
JoshTriplett
There's an easier solution: drop the word "targeted", and ban all unsolicited
advertising. You have to define "advertising" either way, and this way you
don't have to define what "targeted" means.

------
lonelappde
AsGuard DNS. Works on ant device and unsucks the Internet.

------
anovikov
It will effectively put vast majority of the Internet behind a paywall. Just
turn it into a sort of a cable TV of today. With almost all small publishers
closing and the rest just charging for what you see, and turning it into a
largely unidirectional, top-to-bottom source of information... Because there
is no way in the world non-targeted advertisements are going to pay for
things, remember those mid-1990s sites all flashing with banners - and yet
never making enough.

------
behnamoh
Knee-jerk decision IMO. Advertising will always be at the core of businesses,
and they all compete with each other on lowering the costs of advertising. Why
would they agree on non-targeted ads if at least one of them has incentive to
target their own ads? People began using ad blockers exactly because ads were
not targeted.

~~~
lecarore
I'm using an adblocker because most ads are deceptively trying to push garbage
products. And I feel like I've never been offered some valuable information by
an ad. Having them push stuffs we want (good and relevant products) it's
different from having them push targeted trash. I believe that selling trash
anonymously on the internet (think drop shipping, malware and bloatware) is so
lucrative that genuine products and companies have a hard time competing.

