
Wanted: Online Pubs Doing Real (and Therefore GDPR-Compliant) Advertising - rinze
http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2018/05/30/post/
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michaelbuckbee
Non tracking ads used to be the norm, but two things got in the way:

1\. Any kind of even vaguely targeted advertising is better than none. It's
common sport on HN to jeer about how badly the ads that people see are
targeted towards them but non-targeted is so much worse. It's ads for
restaurants that won't be in my area for decades (if ever). Male and female
specific medicines, and on and on.

2\. The rampant abuse and fraud on the part of the publishers. Much of the js
and tracking on sites is not about _you_ so much as making sure that the site
that the ads are embedded on isn't just a VPS that someone is flogging with
bot traffic.

~~~
Mirioron
Don't forget language. In the EU this is a pretty important point and it's
something you can't even estimate based on IP in some countries.

~~~
makr17
Accept-Language: en-GB,en

~~~
majewsky
My systems have

    
    
      LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
      LC_MESSAGES=C
    

There is substantial disagreement among the programs that I use [1] whether
this constitutes a German locale or an English locale.

[1] True, only those programs which are dumb enough to assume that locale is
described by a single word like "German" or "English".

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downandout
Interesting that WaPo's free option seems to be in violation of GDPR. It has
no option to reject personalized ads and third party trackers - you can simply
accept and view the site, or go away:

[http://prntscr.com/joqj3d](http://prntscr.com/joqj3d)

That seems to be in direct conflict with GDPR provisions that force web
publishers to give people the option to reject personalized ads while still
giving them the services they were trying to access. I'm sure that when
regulators come calling, they'll claim "legitimate interest," but if this
model is acceptable under GDPR, then almost nothing has actually changed under
it.

~~~
dogma1138
That is only if you use consent as your lawful basis.

The reason why nearly everyone is using consent currently is because the other
straightforward one which is:

(f) Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate
interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good
reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those
legitimate interests. (This cannot apply if you are a public authority
processing data to perform your official tasks.)

Is so vaguely defined as far as benchmarks go and no one is up for taking the
risk of being at the mercy of the judgment of 28 different regulators and
court systems.

~~~
amarkov
I don't think it's necessarily the case that everyone's using consent
currently. They just think (probably correctly) that regulators will be more
favorable to a company that always makes disclosures and asks for permission
up front.

~~~
dogma1138
The disclosure part is unrelated to the basis, you need to tell the user what
you collect for what purpose and what is the lawful basis for it. Consent is
no more lawful than interest however it’s less open to interpretation despite
its likely not the most appropriate basis for many cases. Consent doesn’t
enables you to do more or less all the lawful bases by definition are equal in
their scope.

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pkaye
Lets see it is $6 with tracking ads or $9 with no ads. So with non-tracking
ads, it will cost somewhere between the two. Is there really a need for that.
Honestly if I was going to pay $6, I would just pay a little more and get no
ads.

~~~
jasonkostempski
Eventually it becomes $9 with tracking ads. Do the world a favor and just nip
it in the bud as soon as you start getting ads embedded in paid content. And
do it loudly so they, their advertisers, and other customers know exactly why
they're not getting any more of your money.

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stevesearer
[https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) here.

This describes us as we sell our own ads, self-host them, and only allow
static jpg graphics.

After changing our MailChimp signup form and removing sharing button scripts I
think the only 3rd party things we use are Google analytics (now with
anonymous IP settings activated) and a google font and jquery cdn.

For me, the goal has been to create a site that attracts a specific audience
and target the ads based on the content.

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Matticus_Rex
There are some missing steps between the idea that Post readers (at least say
they) want non-tracking-based ads more and the idea that they're worth more.
Readers may well be willing to pay some amount more for tracker-less ads, at
least until they experience the joys of seeing that most ads are for things
they can't use. That doesn't mean that they're willing to pay _as much_ more
as what those eyes are worth to advertisers.

~~~
freeone3000
I currently see no advertisements, for free. GDPR just passed, so they can't
track me without my consent. Why would I consent, given I don't see the ads
either way?

~~~
dogma1138
They can track you without your consent if they can justify it through one of
the other 5 lawful bases for data processing, consent is just the easiest to
some extent since it transfers the much of responsibility to the consenting
party however it’s not without its own pitfalls.

