- The entitlement of these fuckers is just off the charts. They have zero right, none, to the tracking they’ve been getting away with. We, as a society, have implicitly accepted it because we never really noticed it. You, the user, have no way of seeing it happen. Our brains are naturally attuned to detect and viscerally reject, with outrage and alarm, real-world intrusions into our privacy. Real-world marketers could never get away with tracking us like online marketers do.
Imagine if you were out shopping, went into a drug store, examined a few bottles of sunscreen, but left the store without purchasing anything. And then immediately a stranger approached you with an offer for sunscreen. Such an encounter would trigger a fight or flight reaction — the needle on your innate creepometer would shoot right into the red.
Fuckers indeed.
Side note, while I'm bummed that reporting suggests that Apple might be delaying some of these proposed changes, I'm delighted that there's a company that is evoking this kind of response from online advertisers. If politics dictates that this change takes a few extra months to get here I'm fine with that, as long as it comes.
Gruber is absolutely right that the only reason we "tolerate" online violations is because they are hidden from us. Part of that is inherent to the technology itself, but much of it is on purpose.
If tracking worked, I think we would all actually like it. Imagine searching for a new mattress online. Then getting ads with progressively bigger discounts and perks ("Free Delivery!") until you buy it. Then you stop getting ads for mattresses. Completely. THAT is how this SHOULD work, and COULD work, but doesn't, because everyone involved in the scam that is online advertising knows the emperor has no clothes but has no fucking idea what to do about it. Then Apple comes along and disables tracking. The whole house of cards comes crashing down... and something else will emerge from the ashes. Apple has done this before. Multiple times. It's their Thing; they look at how everyone will be using a technology in 5 years, and say "Fuck it. Let's do it now." and force their entire userbase kicking and screaming into the future. And three months later it is normal. Mouse-based interface. Removing the floppy drive. Removing the CD drive. Killing shareware and opening the App Store. Removing the keypad from phones. Ending support for Flash. Moving on from USB. The list goes on and on and on. And every single time they do it, an imperious minority gets all huffy and wound up about it, and projects the end of Apple. And within a few short months of the change, it becomes the standard across the industry. The online advertising industry has failed, and has been failing for more than a decade. Someone needs to shoot this zombie in the head, so we can all move forward. Apple has the gun loaded, and is about to pull the trigger. What will be truly fascinating is when Android (Google) adopts the idea and online ads (Google) have to finally pull their own weight and provide demonstrable benefits to the advertiser...
I think it’s easy for people sufficiently interested in this issue to write, or even read, an article like this to overestimate the interest that other people have in the subject. Here’s the mockup of the feature: How many people will click “Allow Tracking”? Consider how often the first button is “OK” and muscle memory says it’s the one you click to make the thing you just requested happen. Consider how many apps and services are already interlinked, and how hard it might be to figure out what might break if you opt out. See an address in Safari? Click on it to get directions from Google. See a phone number in Chrome? Tap it to dial your Apple device. Log in all over with your Facebook or Google account so you don’t need a million passwords. Forced to choose between “personalized ads” and “random ads” how many people would choose random? Surely at least 99% of ads are ignored. That means all businesses have to spend a lot more to reach their next customer. If targeting is improved, the whole disagreeable sector can be smaller and less wasteful. I would think people around here with businesses that have an online presence would be supportive of ad targeting.
The argument by privacy advocates going back to the DMCA has always been that people lack interest because they lack understanding. When Disney said "you can't tape football games" the country said 'the fuck you say' and everybody knew. On the other hand, when Sony said "we can sue you for millions if you make a perfect copy of your CD" things were much better hidden. "You wouldn't steal a car LOL" became the reaction of the world seven years after there was any discussion about it; this is one of the reasons everyone publicized the hell out of Net Neutrality despite the fact that it had very little effect on anyone in the moment. That makes it "dark design", not choice. It's not hard to figure out what's broken. Try it. Does it work? Then it's not broken. Is it broken? Then it's broken. I switched back to iPhone about a month ago. I was delighted to discover I could delete Apple Maps. I was more delighted to discover that not only can I use Google Maps in Apple Carplay, but that it's radically more useful than Google Maps in Android Auto. Now - if I try to get Siri to look up an address, she refuses to talk to Google Maps. Apple helpfully asks me if I want to reinstall Apple Maps for that functionality and I cheerfully do not because the dumpster fire that was Apple Maps the last time I used it will never not be fresh on my memory, and having compared Google to Apple with my wife out driving around two weeks ago even a cursory glance at the AIs' chosen behavior reveals Apple to continue to suck. Apple is making it a lot more inconvenient for me to subvert their native app. They are, however, allowing me to choose to do so. Thus, I continue to work around the lack of Apple Maps. Let's hear it for choice! Simon calls me up two or three times a month to honor me with the opportunity to advertise on kiosks at the mall. They can hook me up for a mere thousand dollars a month. "Sure," I say, "lemme see your demographic breakdown and visibility figures for those kiosks." There is generally a pained silence on the other end of the line, followed by a variation of "no one's ever asked for that before" or "why do you need to see that" or "what's a CPM." I then patiently explain that I have an advertising budget that I'm attempting to maximize the utility of and I'm not going to commit to an ad buy whose effectiveness I can't predict. The conversation goes sideways at that point. Conversely, I have a double-sided jumbotron at a busy intersection. It's dying; it was installed in 2004 and hit end-of-life in 2018 so we're looking at dropping between $30k and $50k to replace it. Now here's the thing: when I told the company to give me a CPM breakdown on that sign, THEY DID. They divided the cost of the sign by the number of vehicles that encountered it daily times the occupancy rate (both figures available from DOT) over the cost of the lease and revealed that spending $50k on a sign is 20 times cheaper than Google AdWords. More than that, our intake surveys ask "how did you hear about us" which is how I know that 20% of our customers come to us through online search, 20% through insurance website search, 20% word-of-mouth and 40% drove by and saw the sign. As a business owner, I don't feel compelled to spend "a lot more to reach their next customer." I will spend as little as possible for maximum effect. As a savvy business owner I will research that relationship until I'm satisfied. if an advertising platform wishes for me to "spend a lot more" they need only give me compelling evidence that my spend will be efficacious. Simon Outdoor fails. Daktronics wins. It's just numbers. I recognize you're talking about targeted advertising and I'm revealing that my means-tested, tracked, and researched most-efficient ad buy is "fuckin' 4'x10' LED sign on a street corner." I think that's telling. We presume that because something is super-invasive it must be super-effective and it's simply not so. I made the point to the guy who literally runs the Internet for Warner Brothers that with all the cookies and stuff Warner has in my browser it's kind of astounding that they give me the exact same ad three times over six times an hour. He responded that while the cookies and such are clearly and obviously available, the advertisers aren't interested because when you're trying to move product, microtargeting is utterly ineffective. He didn't say it was offensive; wasn't his wheelhouse. And look. I think we're spending $100/mo on adwords right now. We're also organically the second or third search result for any term that matters to me within the isochrones I care about. That's in a market where my nearest competition literally owns "birthcenter.com" (they're two or three links below us). As far as sponsored ads? We're number two of two because any term we care to spend money on we're automatically outbid by a major hospital conglomerate. Which, really, goes to show how ineffective online advertising is. We're basically pissing away that $100. Our business comes from being in the directories patients expect to look at, and in making the community aware of us through outdoor signage. Which, once more, is probably why these discussions are so contentious. There's no there there. Nielsen ratings exist because the advertising industry demanded it of broadcasters; online advertising exists because it isn't tracked by Nielsen. As soon as there are auditable metrics for online advertising of any kind the whole thing will collapse.I think it’s easy for people sufficiently interested in this issue to write, or even read, an article like this to overestimate the interest that other people have in the subject.
Consider how often the first button is “OK” and muscle memory says it’s the one you click to make the thing you just requested happen.
Consider how many apps and services are already interlinked, and how hard it might be to figure out what might break if you opt out.
Surely at least 99% of ads are ignored. That means all businesses have to spend a lot more to reach their next customer.
This mirrors my feelings. I remember the pre-tracking days, and would give up anything gained to go back. The convenience value has been very low. Just because there is now a multi-billion-dollar industry based on the abject betrayal of our privacy doesn’t mean the sociopaths who built it have any right whatsoever to continue getting away with it.
So you don’t use mapping apps for directions? You don’t shop online? You don’t stream entertainment? You can go back, at least for future data collection. Give up these low-value conveniences. would give up anything gained to go back. The convenience value has been very low.
Like you I'm very frustrated by how little choice we are being given in the matter, but you have to admit that SOME (perhaps very few) applications that collect our data have been amazingly useful. Mostly they have been made by Google; Search and Maps. Could they have made these and distributed them for "free" without tracking? Probably not. What I would like is to be able to opt out, and instead pay for the app. I wonder, though, how expensive would Maps really be if we all had to pay for it instead of being tracked and advertised to? I think I have a lot more to say on the subject, but I'll keep it short for now.
I actually think Google could still afford Maps. Look at OpenStreetMap, for instance: https://www.openstreetmap.org/ They could definitely afford search by targeting terms alone. DuckDuckGo does it.
DuckDuckGo is alright, but I haven't used it much so I can't speak for its quality. OpenStreetMap seems decent enough, at least for just finding your way, but what about all the other things Google Maps is great at? - Traffic estimation (could NOT be done without tracking) - Searching for non-specifics such as "restaurant" - Street View; this one is particularly extravagant, in that they needed to drive across the whole world. It's not the MOST useful feature on Maps, but it IS useful on many occasions, and you need a lot of money to do it. Yeah, I lived before Google Maps, and it was alright. I could usually find a place to eat or drink, and I could find my way by asking people. But undeniably, I have found a lot more "obscure" and good (thanks, reviews) places, especially while travelling, with Google Maps. It's saved me a lot of time stuck in traffic, and it's often quite good at knowing when a road or train line is closed. Tens of hours of my life have been saved, I'm sure. My point isn't simply about whether it's possible to do these things without tracking; the question is also if it's feasible to do on a modest budget.
True, tracking isn’t necessary for us to get those services. I think the mistake is to believe that we can stop the tracking and the only consequence will be no more tracking, that the “multi-billion-dollar industry” will quietly vanish rather than adopting new techniques which might be more objectionable than the tracking, which I think most people don’t find sufficiently objectionable to take basic precautions.
We don't need to stop it, we just need to be able to audit it and bid against it. The thing that makes online advertising successful is that nobody who buys the ads can get any sort of proof that it works, therefore it's what the market will bear. Meanwhile, the price your privacy is sold for is appallingly low. A company I worked for bought ads on Reddit. If I recall correctly we paid $20 for 100,000 people to see that ad 10 times a day for two weeks. That put Reddit's CPM (cost per mille or thousand impressions) at 70 cents. The minimum bid right now is something like 50 cents per mille... or in other words, every ad Reddit shows you earns Reddit one twentieth of a cent. How many ads does Reddit show you in a day? Seems like something that could be catalogued and categorized. Assume Reddit shows me 80 ads a day. If I pay Reddit four cents, Reddit is revenue neutral with advertising. If I pay Reddit five cents they're at a 25% profit over selling me ads. Facebook is no different; they charge extravagantly for targeting but that extravagant fee per user is a pittance. Take a counter-example. Yelp charges me ten.fricking.dollars to drive traffic to my site. Per user. Principally because nobody ever clicks. Ever. Take that ten bucks and divide it by everyone my name is shown to for every useless search Yelp does and let those Yelp users buy themselves out of ads. The number will work out to be pennies per month. None of the internet companies want to do this, of course, because it will drive home the point that (A) they're charging whatever they fucking well feel like for (B) wildly ineffective sales methods that (C) are a privacy nightmare. A proper restraint-of-trade legal case - why can Procter & Gamble buy my data but I can't pay to keep it to myself? - would force the Internet into the same standards as television and radio. Which would probably drop their prices eighty percent. And which would allow those people who want to save twelve cents a day to give Facebook however much personal info they want while the rest of us could pay twelve cents for Facebook to never sell any of our information. The mistake is to believe that the compelling reason for privacy violations is value, rather than the lack thereof.
I’m not sure what these companies could do instead if tracking were illegal, and punishment severe enough to stop it. Any ideas? I know they have tried tracking users based on fonts installed etc, but any means could be included in a broad anti-tracking law. If the new techniques were worse, then they should be dealt with. I don’t find the possibility reason enough not to stop this current practice.
Targeted advertising is big business. Search terms alone don’t work if you want to target a location or demographic. If buying and selling user data becomes illegal, the value of illegally-obtained user data will rise. There will be more incentive to geolocate IP addresses and parse user agent strings. The vendor is going to say, we’re just trying to sell diapers and most people don’t want diapers. Why should we advertise indiscriminately when we have data showing targeted campaigns are welcomed by new parents? People posting baby photos on Facebook should expect the world to notice that they have a baby.
This is not factually correct. Targeted advertising is 4% more profitable than non-targeted advertising. Worse, the number has dropped precipitously: ten years ago they made publishers twice as much money as non-targeted advertising. If the vendor sells diapers, the vendor knows that people get creeped out when they don't understand where their advertising comes from. This is why every "major life change" gate point is inundated in flyers. Move house? Get diaper coupons. Visit an obstetrician? They'll give you a little bag full of coupons. Attend a parentmap function? have some diaper coupons. And why all the junk mail you get addressed to "occupant" is full of stuff that people would rather not be targeted for. People don't like to be targeted. 87% say there are more ads in general than 2-3 years ago 79% feel like they're being tracked by retargeted ads The drop in targeted ad revenue is likely a reflection of the awareness and distaste people have for targeted ads. Advertisers have long since learned that alienating your customers is bad business; outfits like Google and Facebook have not.Targeted advertising is big business.
The vendor is going to say, we’re just trying to sell diapers and most people don’t want diapers.
91% of people say ads are more intrusive today than 2-3 years ago
Have you ever bought a targeted ad? It costs money for corporations to collect and maintain databases of user information. They go to the trouble because they can profit by responding to customer demand for personal user data. Google and Facebook are mainly in the advertising business.
And that business is profitable through monopoly power. If customers could pay what advertisers pay for Google and Facebook not to track them, the entire model would collapse. Google Adwords averages about $115 CPM. Google has analytics on all of this. Google could charge me 11.5 cents for every ad they're not showing me - at which point I would look at the pathetic amount of money Brave throws at you for opting into the BAT platform and either accept that my searches are worth a dollar a day or recognize that my privacy is worth more than that. The power of the transaction is in the opacity.
We tolerate it because it's absolutely different. In the real world, you don't know anything unless I tell you specifically. I went somewhere last Tuesday, you don't find out unless I TELL YOU. Unless you are following me and listening in, which is creepy. Online, you pretty much telegraph the entire thing. You carry a locator in your pocket. You leave trails based on your IP address. There are no secrets. You can't tell the world where you are and what you're doing and then get mad because people know. You told them.
Thanks for sharing this informative article.
What real-world privacy looks like. For years I don’t pick up the phone if I don’t recognize the number because usually it’s someone trying to sell me something I don’t want. Half the time I don’t even speak the language they leave in my voicemail. If only there were an effective do-not-call list that would track my preference to not be bothered. Companies I have done business with could still reach me, but they are in my contacts list. People knock on my door and ask me to donate to causes I oppose. They ask questions about my family demographics that are none of their business. Strangers approach me on the street and ask me to sign petitions or give money, with no idea whether I support their causes. I don’t want my personal information in a database, but if it means more efficient marketing so I don’t get buried in solicitations I would never consider, it might be a price worth paying.
I think this is absolutely key. If you could see how much profit any given company makes off of your own personal data, you could rationally decide whether that convenience was worth it to you. If Google had to say "the aggregate value of the information we have on you is worth $4 a month to us" I would say TAKE MY MONEY and leave my name off your lips. If on the other hand Google had to say "the aggregate value of the information we have on you is worth $30 a month to us" then we start having a value discussion. Really? knowing where I drive and the terms I search makes Google $30? But only makes Duck Duck Go $8? All of a sudden I give no fucks about how crappy DDG's search is, I'm saving a ton of money on my car insurance. These discussions are controversial because the actual value being discussed is a mystery. Clear up the mystery and the market will take care of the rest.I don’t want my personal information in a database, but if it means more efficient marketing so I don’t get buried in solicitations I would never consider, it might be a price worth paying.
Everybody has stories like this: Today I was doing some bottom-feeding and saw a mention of a Gilbert Gottfried video in which he reads the dirty lyrics to the song "WAP." Once you start bottom-feeding, you might as well go all the way ... but my kid uses devices that are logged in to my Google account, and I didn't want to have the view associated with my YouTube account. So I switched to the Brave browser where I am not logged in to Google, watched the disappointing video, and then the original version to compare, for science. About an hour later I turned on Amazon Music on the television* for some atmosphere, absently selecting Massive Attack "Mezzanine" as a starting point. Nineteen predictable genre songs followed, then "JU$T" by Run The Jewels came on, but I had added a Killer Mike playlist recently so this was excusable. Then, four songs later, it was Cardi B and her WAP again. I think Mr. Gruber makes a number of unwarranted assumptions, starting with "We wouldn’t tolerate it." Two percent of air travelers opt out of facial recognition checkin. Not that it matters; your face is already in the system whether you opt in or not. Where did the airlines get all those face photos? Hubski hated this article so much it eviscerated a bunch of arguments the author didn't make: Most people by now must realize that web sites track users and sell targeted ads. I think they reasonably consider that an acceptable cost of getting access to a huge variety of amazing tools and information for free. You can request a copy of your Amazon data. I got the whole load and was unable to find anything more interesting than Kindle page turn events. Of course my entire order history was in there. I would prefer to think that Amazon does not provide my name and order history to anyone willing to pay (not sure if they do), but it sure was helpful to be able to immediately re-order the exact same car headlight bulb or obscure battery without doing a new search. * Smart TVs Are Cheaper Than Ever, and It's Because They're Selling Your Data I saw Cardi B on a 43" 4K Samsung I had delivered for $250 plus tax. Somebody has to know what I'm watching, but it doesn't have to be Samsung. I use a Chromecast or Fire dongle and never enter a wifi password into a television. If you care about privacy, you can take steps that mitigate a lot of the harm, and you can always choose not to use services that collect data.
Consent to what exactly? Businesses have to collect some data to provide individualized service. Is it reselling the data? Then there’s a question of who owns the data. I think there’s a fair presumption that when you go to a web server and type data in and submit it, you are literally giving your data.
Well for instance, when I navigate to CNN to read national headlines let’s say, I know they do not need to insert advertising trackers on my computer without my knowledge or consent in order to provide the service I through I was seeking when I went to the site. As far as who “owns” my data, is say that placing anything persistent on my computer without my knowledge or consent is a pretty clear and fair dividing line that one could argue shouldn’t be crossed. It will be interesting when Apple surfaces this choice for consumers to make. I have a feeling that both advertisers, myself, and you know how it will turn out :)
But that’s how HTTP works. You click a link, and a server that receives your request sends HTML and JavaScript and CSS and images and who knows what else right on your hard drive. It is persistent until you clear the cache.placing anything persistent on my computer without my knowledge or consent is a pretty clear and fair dividing line that one could argue shouldn’t be crossed
CNN is not a charity, to provide the service you demand they incur costs. Of course there are a variety of models but by far the most popular by Internet consensus is “free content” whatever the consequences. It’s been interesting since I set up Pi-Hole. I used to think of ads as a kind of tax on browsing. Annoying and inevitable like junk mail, and at worst something that would make me spend less time online. But blocking ads made browsing much pleasanter. Everyone should do this ... but I hope they don’t so I can continue to be a free rider. Some sites broke. I learned that family members actually click on the sponsored links in search results, even when the desired link appears just below. Some sites detect the ad blocker and refuse to serve the content, with a polite explanation. Others request that I enable ads, but allow me to dismiss the request without complying. I usually decline any kind of tracking, and would probably use the Apple feature, but I don’t assume I will have a better experience. I’ll just see more random ads and fewer targeted ads.
Oh I totally agree that CNN is not a charity! But what is interesting is that I have ad blockers installed on my browser, and there a number of sites that recognize that, and refuse to load when it detects them unless I turn them off. Which is great, as it means the software I’ve installed to block the non-consensual Software from being loaded onto my hardware is working. And you know what? I’ve never granted permission and loaded an article I was trying to read when the price of admission was allowing it to load software onto my machine. When consent exists and the choices are surfaced for the participants, different permissions manifest I think.
It sounds like you have found a good balance. You learned about the tech, you made an effort to install ad blocking, and now things are better. That time and effort is a cost not everyone wants to make when they could be looking at more cat photos. I asked around the house a week after Pi-Hole and nobody had noticed the change. I live with people who will watch a video with a banner covering the bottom quarter of the picture. Pity them if you will, but the bottom line is people who are tolerant of ads make CNN free for all of us. It’s cool that Apple is experimenting with this feature, though they are also in the game. Usually the solution is to demand legislation to fix the problem, and we end up with the same internet but we have to accept cookies fifty times a day.
I'd argue that the ability to request a copy of your Amazon data amounts to not much, because nobody knows that you can, by design, and doing so doesn't do anything to prevent it from being collected, stored, and possibly sold in the first place. But at the end of the day, I do like that Apple is taking stand and differentiating in a way that lets consumers decide on if they want to buy their products for these reasons or go with an alternative. I just find it hilarious that tracking companies are crying foul. Even if you don't buy Gruber's other framing, you have to admit that they have zero right to complain here. Side note: I do think that if people were better informed they would take more issue with these types of intrusions. It's the entire reason that the Apple ad resonates and can be effective at all.
I agree, the Amazon data dump was just a curiosity. I was surprised at how little personal information it contained. The tracking companies are free to complain, and Apple should do what is best for Apple. What the ad doesn’t show is how when your personal info is broadcast someone seizes the moment to shill some product and the presumed victim is instead delighted to buy the gizmo relevant to their personal situation.
Speaking as someone who used to spec Vizio TVs a thousand at a time, they were going for quantity before they were smart. The profit margin on a Vizio TV was around 4% in 2005 and at quantities of a thousand, wholesaler discounts were 1.5%. Compare and contrast with Philips, who would offer you a whopping 15% discount in an environment where the traditional reseller discount was 40%. This is the principal reason my entire industry died while I was away. Of the 20-odd installers, distributors and consultants that were the ecosystem when I left it in 2007, three are still standing. Vizio was the American face of LeEco, a Chinese National Champion, until even support by Chinese state funds wasn't enough to prop up LeEco's business model at which point they were absorbed by Sunac, another Champion firm. Vizio sued. Vizio's TVs, as with so many Chinese TVs, are cheap for the same reason Solyndra couldn't make any money: the Chinese are subsidizing their production at a loss in order to take market share from Korea and Japan. From 2001 to 2004, 80% of the large-scale LCDs in the world were made at one Chinese factory and different brands just bought their panels off different places on the yield curve. By 2010 95% of the large scale LCDs in the world were made at about four Chinese factories and foreign firms only had access to two, as I recall. Your Samsung TV is so cheap because the Chinese are forcing the world to compete on Chinese terms. Samsung is a Chaebol, and has never not been subsidized. The data Vizio is selling isn't worth much. Every little bit helps, sure but it's like Amazon Kindles: would you pay an extra $20 to have the thing not show you ads? Your arguments fundamentally presume that there are no externalities and that both parties are operating with perfect information. Take your 2% facial recognition opt-outs. The question is not "am I willing to forego the convenience of facial recognition for my privacy" the question is "am I willing to antagonize every gate agent and security official for my privacy." It's much like the TSA's porno scanners: when traveling alone, I would absolutely refuse to use them, require the TSA to pull me aside, stand there with my arms crossed while they ignored me for fifteen minutes, glower at them while they picked apart my luggage and call their supervisors over when they decided that I couldn't fly with cheese. "I don't want to use your porno scanner" is shorthand for "I want to fight the TSA" and both parties know it. Opting out of an airline's system means antagonizing the humans you do have to interact with. Those humans control things like first class upgrades and, if you fly American, who gets bumped. Opting out of any system any airline comes up with gives the airline employees carte blanche to antagonize you at every point of interaction. Privacy advocates see these systems as antagonism and bullying in no small part because the employees who enforce them use them for antagonism and bullying. To view it as a purely economic transaction is myopic.