UK Privacy Watchdog Warns Adtech the End of Tracking is Nigh (techcrunch.com) 19
It's been well over two years since the UK's data protection watchdog warned the behavioural advertising industry it's wildly out of control. From a report: The ICO hasn't done anything to stop the systematic unlawfulness of the tracking and targeting industry abusing Internet users' personal data to try to manipulate their attention -- not in terms of actually enforcing the law against offenders and stopping what digital rights campaigners have described as the biggest data breach in history. Indeed, it's being sued over inaction against real-time-bidding's misuse of personal data by complainants who filed a petition on the issue all the way back in September 2018.
But today the UK's (outgoing) information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, published an opinion -- in which she warns the industry that its old unlawful tricks simply won't do in the future. New methods of advertising must be compliant with a set of what she describes as "clear data protection standards" in order to safeguard people's privacy online, she writes.
But today the UK's (outgoing) information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, published an opinion -- in which she warns the industry that its old unlawful tricks simply won't do in the future. New methods of advertising must be compliant with a set of what she describes as "clear data protection standards" in order to safeguard people's privacy online, she writes.
I don't think it'll effect advertising that much (Score:4, Insightful)
What it might effect is politics. While you can't get sales from online tracking, you can get votes from it. It becomes much harder to spread misinformation when you can't target it, because you need to modulate the craziness of that misinformation or you turn people off from it too soon, and they don't doom scroll.
Re: I don't think it'll effect advertising that mu (Score:1)
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As long as ads are only for stuff I already have it doesn't serve any purpose. So the profiling makes the ads served worse, not better.
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because multiple studies already show online ads are worthless. They just don't turn into sales.
I'd like to think that is true, but can you give references?
Re:I don't think it'll effect advertising that muc (Score:5, Interesting)
This is about so much more than advertising now.
Remember Cambridge Analytica? The whole point of that scandal was that people realised these profiles full of algorithmic predictions were used for much more than advertising. For political influence, yes. But even beyond that, for determining who is elegible for a job, for insurance, for a date, etc.
All these data brokers get their data data from 'public sources', which includes scraping social media. Heck, you don't even have to scrape. Just hook into the cookie matching systems, and Google essentiallty passes you the data, just so you can make the optimal bid for ad space. Or do waht Cambridge anallytica did. They made their own quiz app which over 100.000 people used. With that data they train algorithms to guess everyone's OCEAN score based on facebook likes patterns.
I gave a talk at an advertising conference years ago. I warned them: there will come a day when the public realise you have been "passing along" the data to all these other parties. People will realize their old-fashioned idea - I get free stuff in return for watching adds - no longer applies.
You get free stuff in return for being transparant to insurers and employers. You get free stuff in return for being a totally predictable, manageable risk, in all aspects of life. You get free stuff in return for giving away your power.
And then we haven't even gotten to the juicy stuff yet. What will happen when people realise that this is what's been going on? How will their behaviour change? Not because some party tried to influence them, but because their self-censor their own behaviour. If you think the attention economy has created problems.. just wait until you learn what the reputation economy will do.
I highly recommend this paper by Jon Penney (Oxford), who goes into how we aren't even theorizing chilling effects effectively yet.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p... [ssrn.com]
It really is wildly out of control.
Re:I don't think it'll effect advertising that muc (Score:4, Insightful)
"because multiple studies already show online ads are worthless. They just don't turn into sales. "
Each time after I buy a mattress I get mattresses ads for months, I guess just in case I own a hotel.
Privacy in the UK... right. (Score:2)
And don't even think about sending an offensive tweet!
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Surveillance is only allowed by the government, of course.
And don't even think about sending an offensive tweet!
In the end it all really depends on you and your opinion. While a private company is unlikely to throw you in jail directly, they'll still have access to their lawyers and their terms & conditions. Which is worse, I really I am not sure anymore.
Blah blah blah nothing will change (Score:2)
Even if you assume the commissioner will have enough freedom to follow through with their threat, they'll move so slowly that by the time new laws and regulations are put in place, the advertising industry will be 10 steps ahead with new dirty tricks that the law won't cover.
If this was the US... (Score:2)
But I'm not familiar with the situation in the UK.
Amazing how people start doing their job... (Score:3)