this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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Norway has succeeded in getting the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) to make permanent and extend across Europe its ban on Meta (Facebook's parent company) harvesting user data for targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

why do you think that would get "the same or better result"?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's how advertising worked for literally the entire history of advertising before the modern internet. You put ads for car stuff on the cars website. You don't need to build an entire dossier on me. If I'm looking at the star wars wiki, you can be pretty confident that I'm interested in sci-fi and fantasy. You don't need to spend billions of dollars tracking me to know that.

This is not an expert opinion so I could be wrong, but I think it would be a better system. Simpler to implement, less stalking, less "oops we didn't show any house ads to black people" potential.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

these companies spend a lot of money and computation power on intelligent targeting systems because they are in fact better from a capitalist perspective

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Maybe. I guess it makes it easier for Google to sell many different ads in the same time/space. Still sucks for everyone else though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

the companies optimize for profit and nothing else. you do not matter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But people advertise with Google precisely because they know the ads will be targeted at relevent people. If Google just sell loads of ad slots that just show to random users then that's just a waste of money. If I'm selling motorbike helmets I don't want to waste my money having Google show those ads to 60 year old men who only travel by bus or golfers or people who use wheelchairs.

Google won't just sell loads of ads here, they'll totally change their business model to something closer to the targetting approach.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You target the ads based on the content of the page rather than the identity of the viewer. That's how tv radio and print ads work.