
European Parliament wants to forbid personalised advertisements - Someone
https://paultang.nl/en/forbid-personalised-ads/
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Someone
I think the actual text can be read of at
[https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/LIBE-
PA-650375...](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/LIBE-
PA-650375_EN.pdf). If so, it is more nuanced:

 _“calls therefore on the Commission to introduce a limitation on micro-
targeted advertisements, especially on vulnerable groups, and a prohibition on
the use of discriminatory practices for the provision of services or
products.”_

This also doesn’t mean this is law no, by a long, long stretch. It’s more a
letter of intent.

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erikald
No, that's a proposal still on the table. The actual vote was on this text:
calls on the Commission to ban platforms from displaying micro-targeted
advertisements and to increase transparency for users;

See:
[https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2020-0158...](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2020-0158_EN.html)

~~~
Someone
Thanks.

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ricardobeat
This seems even bigger:

> Recommends Commission to work on harmonising the national personal
> identification sign-ins with a view to creating a single Union sign-in
> system in order to ensure the protection of personal data and age
> verification, especially for children

While the intent is good there would be very perverse consequences to a
mandatory EU-wide sign-in system. Hopefully this will be acknowledged in
advance, and some form of distributed / anonymous system used for the purpose
of protecting privacy, not just put the data in the hands of a central entity.

~~~
hirundo
With centralized sign-in you could greatly restrict someone's access to the
internet by freezing just that one account. You could effectively disappear
someone from public forums with a single order. It becomes less of a privacy
service and more a cudgel to force compliance. Is that a bug or a feature to
the Commission?

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hogFeast
From the UK Competition Commission's report on digital advertising:

"The available evidence suggests that the user data used for targeting digital
adverting is highly valuable to advertisers and publishers. For example,Google
ran a trial in 2019 to compare the revenue publishers received from
personalised advertising with revenue from non-personalised ads. The results
indicate that UK publishers earned between 50% – 65% less revenue when they
were unable to sell personalised advertising but competed with others who
could."

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hirundo
I hope it will still allow me to opt in. If I'm going to see ads I'd prefer
that they were more nearly relevant to me.

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xiphias2
I wish EU would get more specific about the harm companies are making (like
uninformed voting, health/financial consequences of buying/using products,
companies gathering/mishandling data without user consent).

At this point recommendations that save time are so closely tied to
personalized ads, that it's hard for me to imagine a world without them.

Limiting revenue of the companies for the sake of limiting their revenue is a
step towards communism.

GDPR was a step in the right direction for example, as it gave more
responsibilities for companies instead of forbidding the services/ads they can
provide.

