Facebook Revenue Chief Says Ad-Supported Model Is 'Under Assault' Amid Apple Privacy Changes (cnbc.com) 142
Facebook Chief Revenue Officer David Fischer said Tuesday that the economic models that rely on personalized advertising are "under assault" as Apple readies changes that would limit the ability of Facebook and other companies to target ads and estimate how well they work. Apple frames the change as preserving users' privacy, rather than as an attack on the advertising industry, and has been promoting its privacy features as a core reason to get an iPhone. CNBC reports: The change to Apple's identifier for advertisers, or IDFA,will give iPhone users the option to block tracking when opening an app. It was originally planned for iOS 14, the version of the iPhone operating system that was released last month. But Apple said last month it was delaying the rollout until 2021 "to give developers time to make necessary changes." Fischer, speaking at a virtual Advertising Week session Tuesday morning, spoke about the changes after being asked about Facebook's vulnerability to the companies that control mobile platforms, like Apple and Google, which runs Android.
Fischer argued that though there's "angst and concern" about the risks of technology, personalized and targeted advertising has been essential to help the internet grow. "The economic model that not just we at Facebook, but so many businesses rely on, this model is worth preserving, one that makes content freely available, and the business that makes it run and hum, is via advertising," he said. "And right now, frankly, some of that is under assault, that the very tools that entrepreneurs, that businesses are relying on right now are being threatened. To me, the changes that Apple has proposed, pretty sweeping changes, are going to hurt developers and businesses the most."
Fischer said the company plans to "defend" its existing model. "There are different business models out there. Apple has one that sells luxury hardware or subscription services, mainly to consumers like us who are fortunate enough to have a lot of discretionary income in some of the world's wealthiest countries," he said. "That's fine, but I don't think it's appropriate to then dictate that has to be other business models, and the one that we believe is so valuable, one that relies on advertising, in our case, personalized ads, to enable free products, enable businesses to launch and grow and thrive, we're going to defend that. And we think it really important that not just we but our industry does that."
Fischer argued that though there's "angst and concern" about the risks of technology, personalized and targeted advertising has been essential to help the internet grow. "The economic model that not just we at Facebook, but so many businesses rely on, this model is worth preserving, one that makes content freely available, and the business that makes it run and hum, is via advertising," he said. "And right now, frankly, some of that is under assault, that the very tools that entrepreneurs, that businesses are relying on right now are being threatened. To me, the changes that Apple has proposed, pretty sweeping changes, are going to hurt developers and businesses the most."
Fischer said the company plans to "defend" its existing model. "There are different business models out there. Apple has one that sells luxury hardware or subscription services, mainly to consumers like us who are fortunate enough to have a lot of discretionary income in some of the world's wealthiest countries," he said. "That's fine, but I don't think it's appropriate to then dictate that has to be other business models, and the one that we believe is so valuable, one that relies on advertising, in our case, personalized ads, to enable free products, enable businesses to launch and grow and thrive, we're going to defend that. And we think it really important that not just we but our industry does that."
Glad to hear (Score:5, Informative)
I hope all their ads die in a ditch.
Re:Glad to hear (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Glad to hear (Score:5, Insightful)
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For the last few years, I've marked every single ad on Facebook as "irrelevant" and chosen not to see any more ads from that advertiser. Eventually, the algorithm gives up and the site is ad free for 1-6 months. Then it serves up a new batch, normally of 10-30 advertisers for me to block.
Oh I just mark them all as offensive or misleading. I think all advertisements are misleading in someway. But I stopped using facebook ages ago and they send me like 36 emails a day - worse than any other spammer I've ever seen. Anything they can to try and get me to log in.
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That works on Twitter too. Simply block every account associated with a promoted tweet and after a day or two you can enjoy ad free Twitter for a few weeks.
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If you systematically mark every ad as "irrelevant" then your preference over all products is equal so there's no specific information apart from that a) you hate ads and b) you are determined and tolerant of boredom. The worst thing I can think of coming from that is that someone from Facebook might attempt to employ you, but I would have thought you could still say 'no'.
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You're both wrong. Facebook will just invent interests from you based on your posts. I don't know if they're based on interests of other people who like the same posts or what, but I systematically deleted all my "interests" (literally hundreds of them, almost all of which were incorrect BTW — Facebook is actually tragically bad at learning anything about your interests, assuming they're even trying which is not a safe assumption) and I went back a couple of weeks later and bam, I had hundreds of inte
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[Upmod this comment to unlock]
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Haha, who would pay to read your doggerel?
Welcome to my point. You sound like you simultaneously understood it and missed it, which is impressively meta.
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What do Facebook, Epic and all the other "App Fairness Coalition" partners have in common? Apple's cutting them off from the user data, that's what.
Face it - everyone knows the way to bypass the Apple 30% cut is to run ads, because every dollar in ads goes straight to the developer - Apple takes none of it.
With all these user tracking restrictions being implemented by Apple, the ad rates for iOS are going to nosedive because the advertisers are getting cut off from that d
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I'd be becoming an Apple fanboy over this if I hadn't ditched apple 5 years ago because their software was increasingly trash and their hardware was starting to cost 2x as much as similar hardware that was 2-3 years out-of-date.
I don't understand apple's philosophy here in the least. Nice that they seem to be using their walled garden to both keep people in and keep their activities private, but how are you so customer focused on that front, while letting your hardware and software go to shit?
While a lot of
Boo-fucking-hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what is also under assault?
* My eyes with all the visual vomit of advertising,
* My privacy with you selling data about me, and
* Respect for the customer
Advertising, aka marketing propaganda, can fucking die for good. [youtube.com]
--
Necessity is the mother of invention; Curiosity is the father.
Re:Boo-fucking-hoo (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you know what is also under attack, our environment that we need to survive. Why not an attack on advertising that pushes consumption to excess. Why the hell would that be considered unreasonable, let me fucking guess because advertising tells you it would be.
They only spend money on advertising because it drives consumption and in their truly insane psychopathic greed, consumption to EXCESS. Why the fuck should advertising be given free rein in a time of environmental catastrophe, driven by ADVERTISING.
Advertising psychological attacking the entire population, 24/7/365 every single waking moment the goal, driving consumption to excess. Replacing last years model, accepting crap that does not last, buying stuff to through it away because it does not live up to the advertising illusion.
CLIMATE CHANGE MORONS, it is fucking time to put the breaks on psychologically targeted advertising that drives consumption to excess. Reduced advertising, HUGELY REDUCED advertising, all products vetted. How about a law, you advertise a product you are liable for it's false claims, you advertised it after all, you sold it, you profit from it.
In an era of climate change ADVERTISING IS PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE, it drives our current insane levels of consumption and it must be cut back dramatically. Wake up to your fucking selves, god damn it, advertising works or they would not spend money on it, people consume to excess because of it and in a era of climate change it fucking has to stop, wake the fuck up.
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The centralized advertising systems that Facebook and Google preside over are on their way out. They are being replaced by the model that puts advertising on podcasts and pays Youtube and Instagram influencers to "review" products, or pose for photos with them in some desirable setting.
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Its weird that you think youtube advertising isn't Google and Instagram marketing isn't Facebook.
Like, literally. they are the same companies.
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All that the privacy options really do is to prevent you from being tracked so the resolution would be from the ad servers to skip that and serve ads at random or possibly be filtered by the content creators.
The profiling of users to serve the "applicable" ads is in general just stupid since it invariably pushes ads for stuff you already bought.
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Thanks for warning me, I haven't seen more than 3 ads in a decade.
I'll keep doing what I'm doing then.
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How much did you pay to make this post?
sympathy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are they hoping for sympathy here? They've contributed to the crisis of democracy that we're now in the middle of. They've profited from conspiracy theories, fake news, outright lies and unrest. The value they had when it was about sharing photos of your kids with their grandmother has just about disappeared.
Think of the ad revenue.
Who will speak of the advertisers?
We will starve if big bad Apple and Google shut off our ability to mine and ell your data for all we can.
Well, I guess it just sucks to be Facebook.
So privacy is only for the wealthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If they actually supported free speech it wouldn't be a problem, but it's clear the people they have moderating things do so based on their personal political agendas.
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I think the bias is caused by one party being in power and threatening them rather then personal bias, still with the right views only being a couple of percent more, it isn't that uneven.
https://www.theverge.com/inter... [theverge.com]
Does the user get a say? (Score:2, Interesting)
While I don't generally like advertisements in the first place, I'd still far rather see an ad that is actually relevant to me than an ad that is not.
If I lack the resolve to refuse to buy something I see an advertisement for just because of the ad, isn't that my own problem?
Re:Does the user get a say? (Score:5, Informative)
First line in the quote article:
> The change to Apple's identifier for advertisers, or IDFA,will give iPhone users the option to block tracking when opening an app
The user has the option to block tracking. So, yes. The user does get to have a say.
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Re:Does the user get a say? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Does the user get a say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless that tracking is also used to identify you as a member of an undesirable group -- religion-of-the-week, sexual-orientation-of-the-week, skin-color-of-the-week, etc. -- correlate those with your location, and potentially let other undesirable groups target you for their own purposes. If I had to guess, I'd say Tim Cook has a particularly personal vested interest in pointing the vector towards more privacy instead of less.
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If they are going to be assigning me to a demographic I am not actually part of, then that means that their ads are not being effectively targeted, doesn't it?
As I said, all other things being equal, I would rather have to see ads that are relevant to my interests and circumstances than ones that are not.
And to that end, any ad targeting system that is ever going to hope to be effective needs an active feedback loop, where the person being advertised to can indicate that an ad for a product that they d
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> If they are going to be assigning me to a demographic I am not actually part of
No. The algorithms are assigning you to a demographic that we are a part of, and that's the problem. You may be fortunate to not be in any category of minority targeted for exploitation, suppression, or outright attack, but there's a lot of people who legitimately worry about that. We've long had systems for identifying minority neighborhoods and majority neighborhoods, which allow city planners to build highways that serve
Re:Does the user get a say? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of false equivalences going on:
- Behavioral Tracking does not necessarily result in more relevant ads. This is easily demonstrated when you see 100 ads for toasters after you bought a toaster, but there are a lot more cases that are harder to see
- Higher click rates does not necessarily result in higher sales. Fraud in online advertising is pervasive, and accidental clicks on mobile are also very high.
- Even a real, legit click does not necessarily mean your ad is effective. Instant purchasing decisions are a tiny percentage of purchases, this is why marketers focused on brand advertising for years, and it's why Coke and Pepsi still run ads.
Facebook et al are hiding behind the "magic" of behavioral tracking to justify high ad costs, claiming that your dollars are better spent because they can figure out who should see your ad. The actual advertisers (not the ad networks, but business actually buying ad space) are getting screwed. They're being charged 10-100x the actual value of the ad space they're being sold. FB is afraid that if advertisers find out behavioral tracking doesn't work, the advertisers will cut the amount they're willing to pay.
If Apple is successful in excluding their users from tracking, it will provide an A-B test for tracking, that's FB's nightmare scenario.
Re: Does the user get a say? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually all those targeted ads are worthless. Just modifying your search ranks does more to increase sales than facebook ads combined.
I worked at one company we gutted the paid ad budget 95% and put the money into modifying our website for better search ranking. And to make it easier to use.
We had 15% increase in sales over one year.
Paid targeted ads are money sinks for the stupids
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Feel being the operative word there.
Re:Does the user get a say? (Score:4, Insightful)
Long ago I posited that spam wasn't profitable, but sending spam was. I think that's true of internet advertising now as well.
Back then (and still) my assumption was that one in a million people who got spam in their inbox figured that if they were seeing it, it must work, and then spent a couple hundred dollars spamming 10 million people. The actual senders made a couple hundred dollars, but the person buying that spam got 0 return. But one out of every million people who got that spam also figured, "hey if I'm seeing this, it must work", and spent a couple hundred dollars spamming a few more million people. Rinse and repeat.
Internet ad buys can work the same way. Even if the ads don't ever produce a positive ROI, as long as they reach enough people that someone else assumes "they must or why would someone spend money on them?", another sucker will spend the money to buy internet advertising.
The big, professional businesses may have analytics and actually know what works and what doesn't and be optimizing to squeeze out tiny fractions of ROI. Everyone else is just throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. What they don't realize is that nothing sticks, but the volume of crap being thrown makes it look like some does, because there's always some there.
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There's enough stories about people being sucked into the Nigerian Prince scheme and similar that some spam must be clicked and followed up.
A common scam here, is a phone call saying it is from the CRA (Canadian taxman), which I got a voicemail from yesterday. The claim is that the person owes taxes, the cops are on the way and they better pay, in itunes cards. A surprisingly number of people get suckered into buying thousands of dollars in itunes cards and sending them off. I mean the idea that the governm
Re: Does the user get a say? (Score:3)
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Until the offer a paid option they have no desire to do anything but advertising.
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While I don't generally like advertisements in the first place, I'd still far rather see an ad that is actually relevant to me than an ad that is not.
If only they were capable of delivering that, instead of stuff I've already bought, stuff I looked at once years ago, completely random crap not in any way related to anything I've ever looked at, and outright snake oil.
People would complain a lot less about targeted advertising if it were relevant to the individual.
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No ads are relevant to me. Authentic, consolidated customer reviews are. Product specs are. But not advertisements. Why? Because they aren't true.
If advertisements were required to be factual, and they were required to be accurate, and they were required to not mislead by putting a positive spin on a product while hiding faults, they might be useful. But they are not.
If the fast food burger commercials were required to show a half dozen random burgers pulled out of bags purchased from the drive-through, the
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I believe that if you or I lack the resolve to not buy something that we do not need or really want, then that is our own problem... whether or not the advertiser has employed "psychological tricks" to do so.
If the mechanisms that an ad employs are offensive to my sensibilities, then I would flag the ad as such, which, in a proper adaptive ad targetting system, would affect what ads I am presented in the future.
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Psychology is real and can manipulate you. A simple example is hypnotism where you can be hypnotized and told you will crave something when you wake up and not remember being told. You will wake up with the craving and be likely to act on it as it just seems normal to crave whatever. it is more likely to work if told you're thirsty and need a glass of water vs need a diamond ring, but it will affect you.
There's been a lot of work into how to trick people subconsciously.
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I'd still far rather see an ad that is actually relevant to me than an ad that is not.
If you'd read the damn psychological studies that they use to jello your brain, you'd never have said that.
Oh, wait, shit. You would still say that, even if you read the study, if you were so arrogant you thought knowing about it meant it didn't affect you. Unless you also read that study. Or wait, I guess if you read that study too, and then kept inputting their data feed, you'd go right back to thinking it didn't affect you. I guess if it lasted long enough, you might even start to prefer the creepiest ad
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Read the studies, once worked in advertising (many, many years ago), and I'd still opt for the targeted and relevant ones. I still rarely buy, as I tend to know what I want, and can afford, but occasionally something really quite useful (or nice) appears that gets added to a list to be considered later.
About the best ones I've come across are when I used to use FB, and their algorithms worked out that I liked particular genres of literature, and I uncovered quite a few very good authors (also a few that di
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The issue I have with these personalised ads are they seem to seem to lag my purchasing decisions, not drive it.
For example: I need to buy a widget. I spend an hour searching the internet for my options of a widget to buy. I purchase a widget from a website. However, I get ads for that, and similar, widgets following me for the next week.
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the user can choose to let apps have access to the Advertising ID on a per app basis. Facebook just knows that most people will say no
I'm suspicious of Apple as well (Score:2, Insightful)
While I'm glad the privacy rapists known as Facebook face potential impending doom, the flip side is that Apple is building itself a nice little mechanism for potentially increasing its revenue in the future (remember: "services, services, services!").
First they cut off access to users' information completely to 3rd parties, and then when they're they only gatekeepers to that info, they start giving access to 'anonymized' information to those 3rd parties begging for data (again "services, services, services
Re:I'm suspicious of Apple as well (Score:5, Insightful)
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Praise them when they do something right,
Isn't that what got Facebook/Google where they are (their abusive power) now - too much praising, and not enough criticizing at the time? And now it's too late to 'criticize' them...
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Re:I'm suspicious of Apple as well (Score:4, Informative)
Praise them when they do something right,
Isn't that what got Facebook/Google where they are (their abusive power) now - too much praising, and not enough criticizing at the time? And now it's too late to 'criticize' them...
I certainly never praised Facebook and I don't think anyone with a modicum of foresight did, either. Google, on the other hand. . .they bamboozled the geek community. I must admit, I gave them the benefit of the doubt even after it should have been obvious they didn't deserve it.
Apple, on the other hand, I've always been pretty happy with. The nice part about paying a premium is that they are interested in selling me a product rather than making me the product.
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Google, on the other hand. . .they bamboozled the geek community.
I don't think they bamboozled anyone. The original people all left and the company changed.
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I think Google was honest with the community originally. But the first leadership retired, and the second generation did not have the same ideals. There was some shift under the founders, but it was clear they pushed back against the pressure regularly. Once they left, that back pressure vanished entirely.
A not so fond farewell to FB (Score:5, Insightful)
Surveillance business model is under threat (Score:5, Insightful)
The Facebook surveillance business model - follow you around the Internet and learn as much as possible about you, then sell this information to the highest bidder - is under threat.
Good riddance!
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So much this. The ads business is just fine. I hear them all the time in podcasts, and advertisers can estimate the rate of return on their investment by studying the usage of promo codes that they give out to different podcasts. I see them all the time on YouTube when the content creators themselves provide a paid endorsement for a sponsor, with the exact same promo code mechanism used to gauge ROI.
In both cases they don’t surveil me or otherwise gather any data on me until I choose to actually inter
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Facebook Revenue Chief Says Ad-Supported Model Is 'Under Assault' Amid Apple Privacy Changes
That's great, how can we help? I'm not one to kick a guy who's down, but I'm one to kick facebook when down.
Whats the cost to be free of ads? (Score:2)
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Let's look at the numbers (US Dollars):
2019 Revenue - $70.7 Billion
2019 Active Users - 2.7 Billion
If every single user stayed and paid an equal subscription price, you'd be on the hook for about $26/year. Of course, some percentage of those accounts are bots and a large number of real users will not stick around if they have to pay. And splitting the collection into ad supported and paid subscriptions won't work at this scale because the more people opt out of ads, the less value the remaining pool has, cau
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For the people who are cool with selling out their privacy for a hundred bucks worth of subscription services per year. There's an entire platform dedicated to that service model. It's called Android. Let them all go there.
This is actually free market at work. Multiple models to choose from. No
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I'm going to say $6 a month. I totally pulled that figure out of my ass but I'm OK with it. It kind of doesn't matter. What's more important is what you are willing to pay, because that's really what they'll charge you, if they ever decide to do it. It will simply be as much as they can get away with.
But this ignores what would be a fundamental change in mindset for these companies. The current model is like a farm. Users are livestock. Facebook does enough to keep the livestock alive (logged in) and viable
The only viable response (Score:5, Funny)
Is this one [9cache.com].
Their business model is under threat eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our business model is selling buggy whips, and we think it's not right that Ford sell petrol-powered cars."
Well cry me a fucking river: if you want your business model to be safe from assault, don't rely on somebody else's product having features that enables you to implement your business model.
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It’s not just that they had a dependency on third-party systems or are outdated and need to keep up, it’s that their business model depends on the continued existence of a problem they created, and they are shocked—shocked!—that people would seek out a solution to that problem. They’re the glazier in the story who pays children to throw rocks through windows to drive up business, and they’re complaining that people are trying to put a stop to the rock throwing.
Theirs was
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Advertising is not the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't mind being show advertisements. I do have a problem with being surveilled, having my bandwidth and CPU chewed up by video, and having my information and viewing habits distributed to third parties without my knowledge or consent. These are the reasons I run ad-blockers, disable auto-play, etc, run in incognito mode, etc. If the advertising industry were to do business in an ethical, transparent and honest manner; there would be far less of a counter-industry in developing counter-measures to what has become "business as usual".
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I don't mind being show advertisements.
I do. The point of advertising is to manipulate you out of your money. It's only legal because everyone believes advertising doesn't work on them, it only effects other people. I don't think it's possible to advertise in an ethical manner.
Advertising constantly does it's hardest to steal your attention from the thing you're actually trying to pay attention to. Driving? Have some billboards! No need to look at traffic, direct your attention over here instead!
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Advertising does work on me. Sometimes I see things that I didn’t know I wanted, and I then choose to buy them.
Honestly, if that didn’t happen, there are a number of purchases that I’ve been quite happy with over the years that I would never have made. So while you’re not wrong that I’ve been “manipulated”, the fact of the matter is that getting someone to buy anything is almost always an act of manipulation, and it’s only a matter of degree.
Passive manipulati
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It could be possible - just give me information to make an informed decision. Also, part of the point of advertising is to make people aware that your company and product exist. Without that, nothing could be sold.
Hey Siri (Score:2)
There is no right to track (Score:2)
This is not a hard concept.
There is no legal requirement that one company allow another to use their platform to track you.
Companies also are allowed to change their mind.
They didn't block them from showing ads, just from tracking to pick and choose ads.
Is it rally that bad that if I search for dishwashers I get ads for dishwashers, and the next day when I search for plankton I get ads for plankton?
High value ads require tracking (Score:3, Interesting)
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"High value ads require tracking" - Yeah, like the doc getting a cut from prescribing crack for a cold remedy.
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The Internet infastructure predates Facebook, predates widespread advertising (targeted or otherwise). Humans are addicted to communication and are unlikely to just drop it if the ad model fails. I bet without ads, Internet services (not just connectivity, but services such as e-mail, search, etc) would become more like telephone service: something most of us pay for and which we collectively subsidize for those on the edges of the network (both physical edges and financial edges). There are alternate model
Fingerprinting is getting harder to do (Score:2)
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Too bad (Score:2)
Deal with it or die, doesn't make a difference to me.
a model worth preserving (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently users strongly disagree on that "worth preserving" thing. But guess what: we don't need to debate this. Solve the disagreement with empiricism. You see, if we back things up just a bit...
"The option." Can you detect when someone is a blank slate, i.e. has opted to not be tracked? If so, then this is actually a non-problem. Just tell those users to fuck off. "Facebook doesn't serve your kind." Make it so that they choose between Facebook xor freedom. Nobody loses. Those users won't miss Facebook, and Facebook won't miss those users. Everyone gets what they want.
Oh, it makes you look bad? No, it only makes you look bad to people who disagree with you about the "this model is worth preserving" assertion. Surely, since you think the model is worth preserving, there are some users who agree with you. You won't look bad in their eyes.
Oh, it's only a few percent who agree with you? Well, then I guess you'll have to persuade people the panopticon is a good thing. How hard can that be?
Heard this argument before (Score:3)
"this model is worth preserving, one that makes content [freely] available, and the business that makes it run and hum, is via advertising"
This is exactly what the traditional media providers have been saying for the past 10 years as they watch their revenue dry up into nothing. Facebook had no problem disrupting that model, killing off a swathe of local news publications in the process, because they profited from it. This is self-interest, pure and simple. No one outside of that investment bubble is going to give a flying ferk if the businesses that currently live off targeted advertising die off, including facebook.
Simple solution (Score:2)
Seems like there is a pretty simple solution: Explain to consumers why it benefits them, and get them to opt in to being tracked.
Now, if it turns out that people don't like being tracked, then I'd say Facebook has a bigger problem.
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No, we're entitled to deceive! (WTF is the point of rape if you get consent?!)
Feeding the beast...always a bad idea (Score:3)
People tend to forget that before Google, Apple -Phones, and Facebook, advertisers were perfectly happy to make an ad that was either a static image pasted into newspapers and magazines, or an audio or video ad to be launched at the masses via TV or radio. We all got along just fine with that model, and advertisers were content with the knowledge that they could never be certain of how many were truly absorbing their ads and how many were ripping the pages out, or channel surfing or visiting the loo during the ads.
Along came the tech giants who were desperate for a chunk of that money, and they got it in part by telling advertisers that they could get much better feedback and even demographics if they spent their ad budgets on the internet instead of in newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio ads.
The advertisers were initially hesitant, but came to see the value and fell in love. Ad revenue for newspapers and magazines plummeted and those publishers never really understood what hit them. Unfortunately for everybody, there are more web sites needing ad revenue than there are quality advertisers with surplus cash, so the advertisers are in the driver's seat.
Whenever somebody on the web wants more ad money, they just offer better info and feedback for ads on their sites. Click Counts! GPS data! Phone numbers! It's become an arms race. The web site people offer more and more dirt on their users, and the voracious advertisers demand more of that info before agreeing to run ads. Any websites that cannot offer all that user data risk being relegated to ads from cheap scammy vendors who have less leverage than big well-monied advertisers; it's a viscous cycle which might only be stoppable by some laws that finally declare a person's personal data to be his/her personal property, and having it without permission to be prosecutable theft.
Another Arrogant Deceit from Faecesbook... (Score:2)
Faecesbook are expressing the height of hypocrisy here... In 2018 [techcrunch.com] Faecesbook made changes to the functionality of their API to restrict the abilities of third parties to access and use the data that Faecesbook had amassed about its user community.
They did this because the world had just seen a glimpse of the harm that Faecesbook could cause, thanks to the Cambridge Analytica scan
Good gods... (Score:2)
TL;DR: You're cutting our purse strings! We can't make any money otherwise! Stop that!
Flaw in the "essential to the internet" argument (Score:2)
While that may have been the primary driver of revenue for many services that have found their way to becoming the core of the internet, it didn't have to be. I don't know if they'd have come up with something as profitable, but I have no doubt that something sufficient would have been found.
Just watch (Score:2)
Complain about ads, but watch the friends and families of politicians to see if any are selling relevant stocks short, or investing in non-ad competitors.
Re: (Score:3)
And tell me: Did they ever once offer you an interesting and/or highly relevant ad beyond basic trends (i.e. you like sports, so they showed sports ads?)
In 30+ years of Internet use, I've never been targeted with a relevant advert at all. The closest you get is "You visited a Linux site! That's computers! We'll now spam you with adverts for a Dell Windows PC that you wouldn't touch with a bargepole and Business Intelligence services that you have literally zero need for or even understand what they are!