Meta’s behavioral ads will finally face GDPR privacy reckoning in January | Hacker News Reader

Meta’s behavioral ads will finally face GDPR privacy reckoning in January

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92 pointsnemoniac59 comments

Slightly off topic, but recently I got to interact with a group of about 40 college students and took the opportunity to ask them what social media they used. Here are some results that if I was Zuckerberg I would find concerning:

- Facebook: 2 of 40 have accounts. One said he does not use it at all. The other said she uses it to pull up her baby pictures because that’s where her mom put them.

- Instagram. 3 of 4. Use it for its messenger capabilities, do not post.

- Snapchat. Nobody.

- TikTok. 1 of 40 knew somebody who posts videos.

- Twitter. 5-6 of 40 use it but said they are worried about what it will be in the future.

- Discord. A little over half said they use it routinely. I should have asked more about this.

College kids are often strong indicators of what will be considered cool by the next generation and it sounds to me like Facebook/Instagram is a walking corpse.

Almost everyone I know has been switching to discord, the exception is about half of my family (including parents and grandmother) who has switched to Telegram for interactions.

How does that work? Do friend groups and families have their own discord servers?

Pretty much. I am a part of about a half dozen servers like that.

Yep. I have a couple "Family" telegram channels, and I'm in several discord servers for friend groups.

For a while I was living out of telegram, even using it to read Hacker News (front page items would end up in a telegram channel). I've since moved to RSS as it's less distracting though.

As another point of (less rigorous) annecdata from a group of ~50 or so college students in Northern Eu:

- Facebook: they all use it for messenger only

- Discord: only a small few use it

- TikTok: a couple of them post, but all watch and pass them around

- Instagram: Most of them use it and post occasionally

- Snapchat: They all use it daily and they all see each other's real-time location. This is mind blowing to me as it generates a lot of drama: "Why was my ex at your house at 3am?"

> - Snapchat: They all use it daily and they all see each other's real-time location.

"They" are only the very beginning of a long list who see that.

Jesus wept.

I wonder if there is somethink like Facebook, before Facebook became bad. A place to put up a personal profile, a few pictures, the bands you like, and then tell people to "add me there". A messaging feature, a "how I'm doing" status feature, and thats about it. No social media, no feed.

I seems like you should be able to strap a Django CRUD app, an ActivityStream library, and a XMPP (or Matrix?) client together and get a decent early Facebook clone in the Fediverse.

You can clone early facebook’s features pretty easily, but you can’t clone the usage.

This might change from place to place, but here in Italy whatsapp has effectively 100% market penetration. I don't know anybody except very elderly people who doesn't use it.

Not that I'm a fan of it, it's kind of garbage actually, but I take it as a fact of life.

Define social media though.

WhatsApp is only messaging. I don't see any ads really.

It has 100% penetration because companies have still limited number of sms and mms, so nobody use those

I'm surprised to not see WhatsApp on this list. In my country, it is currently ubiquitous (not just all acquaintances except 2, but stuff like "send us the message you want on WA and we'll print it on this bouquet" for florists, or for printer offices, "send us the doc on WA at this number").

I didn’t specifically ask about it.

I guess I don’t know what social media is. I think of whatsapp as akin to an instant messenger. Do those count as social media? Or maybe whatsapp has social media features I’m not aware of.

In the sense of “it has a feed and ads” then no. In the sense of “platform people use to interact with friends” Facebook and WhatsApp compete for the same market.

Based on how you phrase it, I'm either a heavy social media user or I am no social media user. Unless you count linkedin which I use to host my resume.

Weird.

I don't see WhatsApp as very different from Discord from this point of view, that's why I'm asking about it (also because GP was saying that they use Instagram for chat).

I wonder about how younger people have access to more distributed services these days, like Minecraft, selecting servers, there are more opportunities for interacting with services like Discord -- essentially things that are less consolidated than say FB or IG. So there becomes a preference/familiarity with the concept of distributed services and affinity for them (federation)...perhaps?

Here is the thing that Discord got right:

1. Signing up and joining a server is dead simple. Anyone from 6 to 86 can figure it out in a minute.

2. Discord mimics our social circles instead of trying to redefine them. Remember the panic college kids who first joined FB felt when they realized their parents and employers were on there as well? Discord doesn’t have that problem. Google Plus circles was a similar idea except it was overthought and way too engineered. Discord is just group chat where you get to define your groups. It can use a few more features in terms of moderation, etc. but it really just works for the use case of talking to your coworkers, family, D&D group, and sky diving club without having to mix them all into one feed. It’s the equivalent of SMS group messages without the hassle of exchanging phone numbers between all parties so everyone knows who everyone is.

That’s it.

#2 is the killer app.

I find the concept of servers really hard to explain to anybody...

> - Discord. A little over half said they use it routinely. I should have asked more about this.

People have been using Discord to host chats for student societies, classes, to complete group work, and other school related messaging threads (seems to replace school subreddits).

There are some school provided class chat boards from things like Blackboard, but those are monitored by the instructors and TAs. The discussions tend to be more open and frank in Discord.

Original source: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instag...

The source = noyb is the organization (founded Max Schrems) that actually filed the complaint, hired lawyers, fought the Irish DPA tooth and nail for 4.5 years. Essentially doing all the leg work – great job!

Ironic to link to a website doing a similar thing - illegally using "legitimate interest" to justify data processing.

Here is the actual link

https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instag...

Techcrunch is useless.

@dang Can we update the URL?

Monopolies built on ads end up being not much more than a global tax on business.

Not really different than the old mafia offering "protection" to local shops.

Advertisement seems to be necessary for products discovery, but it used to be healthier when it was less monopolistic.

I'm happy with the fact that I need to pay for advertisement. It has always been the case, and if it can boost my sales, that's still a win.

However I'm not happy with the fact that if you don't pay ads (or want to conform to shitty content formats), then you have zero visibility. But then again, it has always been the case, even before social media or www existed.

What I certainly can't endorse is fb's use of our personal data that they collect without our consent. For example the local broadcasts they do on wifi networks to figure out who else is around (yes, it's a thing, or was at least, I've seen it). Screw you facebook.

not everyone agrees that your capital allows you to deserve our attention

People have been demanding your attention to sell you things since people had things to sell - vendors shouting out from market stalls to storefront displays to door to door sales to newsprint, radio and television ads.

Getting your attention has literally always been a part of selling things.

One might be tempted to wonder how a communist or at least strongly government-regulated economy would fare. When you have only one supermarket chain, for example, why do advertising at all? Why have dozens of variations of the same products, just with different brands, assaulting your eyes the whole time you walk through a supermarket? Or worse, not just our eyes but also our ears with "store radio" yelling at us to try the new novelty super-soft toilet paper?

That is maybe the worst side effect of the USSR collapse: once the counter-example went away, capitalism had free rein in going as excessive as it wanted, because the alternative (not being blared at by ads all the time) simply didn't exist any more. We literally can't imagine such a place any more... it reminds me of 1984, with the difference that we don't lack the words to describe that, instead we know that without a worldwide revolution, there will be no realistic way of turning the wheels.

The USSR had tons of advertising. Instead of a product, it was pitching the government. Instead of advertising, it was called agitprop.

Instead of 12 kinds of toilet paper, you were lucky to have any to pick from. If you wanted furniture, or a car, or any other big ticket purchase, you'd have a years long wait (I've seen others mention 10 years to get a car) to get your order fulfilled.

I'll be honest, nostalgia for the glories of command economy USSR is not really what I expected to see today when I woke up.

The USSR was all but glory, I agree, and yet it kept rabid capitalism in the West in check.

I never said that.

However my capital - acquired through hard work - affords me a way to at least show you my offer.

Whether it retains your attention is up to you.

Dumb myth that capital and hard work have any connection at scale. You’re suggesting the power to control attention is earned through merit or labor (or making a “not all” argument) which is obnoxiously wrong

Again, I never said that.

Simply replying to your snarky remark and trying to remind you that I'm a human too and what you call angrily my "capital" is basically my savings I worked hard for myself.

Can you please stop interpreting what I say as if I were some kind of surveillance asshole?

Look, I hate surveillance as much as the next guy, but I have a one man show business I believe in, and ads are the only effective way for me to tell the world about my services.

That's all.

sorry, I meant to comment on politics rather than your individual situation - I have no grudge against you as an individual, best of luck with your business

Thanks!

> I'm not happy with the fact that if you don't pay ads...then you have zero visibility

Plenty of businesses manage without advertising. They market precisely. Advertising is ideal for mass-produced B2C. But not every business needs to play the numbers game.

I disagree.

My target market is fairly small and well defined. Probably a couple thousand people in a small region of my country. Also I am definitely not selling a mass produced item. In fact I'll spend at least 4 hours for each customer.

But they don't all talk to each other, and I don't get to meet them in person before the sale. Also, they are unlikely to require my services more than once a year, if at all.

How would you suggest I let them know about my services?

You could say they will look me up, but they don't. In fact, they sometimes don't even know they need the service. It's only when it's too late that they realise they needed it. But it's too late.

And even if they look someone up for the service, others are paying for ads. So unless I do it too, I never show up.

So yeah, ads.

> How would you suggest I let them know about my services?

I’m not saying ads are the wrong solution. Just that they aren’t the only one. Depending on your market, salespeople, trade shows, sponsorships and PR could be valid alternatives (or complements).

All of those alternatives are a ton more expensive. At my scale, I can't afford them, except sponsorships, but that typically doesn't bring clients long term.

> You could say they will look me up, but they don't. In fact, they sometimes don't even know they need the service.

Sounds like they're doing just fine without it, then. In what sense do they 'need' your services?

The 2008 movie 'Delgo' is an interesting case. The independently produced movie lost it's distributor (IIRC, 20th Century Fox) and to get the movie into theaters, producers used its advertising budget on a pay-for-play distributor. The producers hoped that enough people would be curious enough by the name on the theater's marquees to see it and then word of mouth would bring in the crowds. It ended up being the lowest earning wide release (2000+ screens) movie up to that time. It was estimated that each showing averaged two people. It wasn't a very good movie, which probably is why the distributor dropped it, but plenty of bad movies have made back their budgets off of advertising induced first week ticket sales before word of mouth sunk the long tail.

This reads to me as further criticism of advertising, really. A bad movie can con enough people into paying for it and not enjoying it that it can successfully turn a profit.

What's a bit sad about this is that legislation like this is actually going to benefit the largest corporations (as usual).

If you want to sell detergent or coca cola, you can advertise to everyone, because anyone can buy your product. If you want to advertise a new invention of a small light that catches mosquitos (which I recently bought from an IG ad), your market is pretty small and Facebook's targeting was actually pretty awesome at helping you build a business.

I'm not saying that collecting all this data is ok, but it is rather annoying that yet again, regulation just basically fucks with small businesses (and facebook), and in return we will again, only see toothpaste and detergent and perfume and german car ads everywhere.

Or, instead of spying on millions of individuals and then selling ad space based on the results of that illegal behavior, ad companies could do what they always did before which is identify venues that attract a certain audience and sell the ad space in front of those venues. For an ad company that also owns two of the biggest media websites in the world, this should not be a difficult problem.

Your comment shows you have no experience with the power of targeted ads and how it’s an order of magnitude better than “targeting venues with audiences”.

Which is why you’re getting downvoted in case you’re interested

Just because it works doesn’t make it right.

Stealing cars is also more profitable that buying them legitimately.

Your entire comment is about what companies “could” do instead, implying that’s somehow a viable alternative. It’s not.

Whether it’s right or not is a different question, which is exactly what I am debating from both sides in my original comment.

If that mosquito light works, then it will not be a niche product. If it’s like the one somebody in my household bought off instagram last summer, I think you shouldn’t throw away your deet quite yet.

Putting that product aside, I get what you’re saying about advertising. Facebook ads have been a boon to small businesses who couldn’t otherwise reach a market.

A gentle reminder that GDPR is not really just about the annoying cookie banner(which most of the time are not GDPR compliant anyway).

So 5 years later we need to search that hard for maybe one win for GDPR legislation?

Google, "GDPR fines", second link : https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

You are welcome.

Cool - they paid for their own bureaucracy with a bunch of small fines with no net benefit to society.

Click on 'fine' to sort the table by amount. The first 10 in the list are 1.9 billion Euro together.

Both the scope of companies fined, the trade of fines and the size of the fines are potentially orders of magnitude too small to even come close to keeping pace with the greatest violations.

The benefit to society largely comes from those who have complied, not the punitive damages from those who haven't.

It's always funny when someone complains about that, because the cookie law (ePrivacy Directive) is a different thing, it isn't even from GDPR.

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