Democrats unveil bill to ban online ‘surveillance advertising’
theverge.com
theverge.com
Online platforms can still be funded by advertising. Taking away the targeting just reduces the incentive to spy on users.
The answer is a browser UI control for a rectangle that has a limited subset of tags available, for display only features, with no javascript. This would allow ads to become a 'display only' feature that is safe for users.
As a long time ad blocker - If they would remove tracking and malware, I also would be open to the idea of allowing ads on sites as long as the sites provide value and the ads are not overdone.
Preventing this scenario of user friendliness but lower ad spend rent is likely the primary reason why google funded making chrome!
Congress, particularly these representatives, doesn’t know what outcome they want though
How about making users the direct recipients of the value of their data, with consent provable revokable consent. Similar to a streamlined licensing agreement.
Maybe it'll shut down marketplaces where XYZ Company can buy an ad to target Facebook users with very particular demographic characteristics.
But that doesn't keep Facebook itself from just saying "You know what, we'll do some AI/ML algorithm figure out that selling XYZ Company's ad to this very particular set of users optimizes the click-through rate..."
Why is this user getting this ad? How can you prove that Facebook's doing this, when all the code for matching ads to users is locked on Facebook's servers and requires a degree in AI/ML and years of study of Facebook-specific internal stuff to even understand? Will there be some gigantic new federal inspectorate that understands and audits the source code of every Internet company that buys or sells advertising?
I also can't help but think that this creates a mote for companies like Google and Facebook, who employ lawyers and engineers to make sure their ad business is legal. Furthermore using machine learning and proprietary signals in lieu of whatever data stuff like this manages to restrict.
As an upstart website, ad monetization will become increasingly difficult. As a small business, serving ads to the right users will become increasingly difficult.
Ads will not go away or stop being annoying from a user's perspective. They will be less relevant, too.
What makes you think that Democrat legislators and "democrat run companies" (operating on the assumption this is true and on the assumption that all of the company's operations match it's executives' political views- again a pretty big question mark) in any way share the same views concerning surveillance advertising?
They need the law for some other reason.
Since they already have a monopoly, what better way to protect it than with federal laws regulating it? That creates a nice moat that makes competition even less likely.
A pattern I've noticed, not limited to one party, is that laws are (in at least some cases I've read) written in two parts.
The first part is a political statement about why the law is necessary and what it does.
The second part states the actual law and provides precise definitions of terms.
The trick, I believe, (based on observation and not a legal education) is that the public and the media focuses on the first part, but that has no legal weight and can be (is) completely unrelated to the actual law.
For instance, one could write a law in which it is explained that it is necessary to stop Martians from poisoning our aquifers by banning methane powered rockets. And everybody will be arguing about how this will affect Elon Musk and whether Martians are real and so on.
But then the actual law can be, say, raising the gas tax by 0.25%. And nobody will notice!
I'm not giving real examples because people would get mad, but I've seen this sort of thing from Democrats and Republicans, both laws and executive orders.