Should Facebook and Google be banned from selling advertising?
It seems the fundamental problem with privacy on Facebook is that Facebook has a primary motive to violate privacy by selling private user data to advertisers. It's a fundamental conflict of interest that will probably never be resolved so long as companies like Facebook are allowed to sell advertising. Facebook could still have ads, but they would be from a separate advertising business, and advertising businesses would be prohibited from running non advertising content. The advertising business should be spun off as a separate company and the social network platform banned from sharing user data with the advertising company. Advertisers should be regulated the way that financial companies are, banning them from creating implicit profiles or even from developing their own content. The advertising company could collect preferences directly from users by explicitly asking for product preferences ONLY for the purpose of advertising and NOT used for any other propose. Creating profile data used for advertising by indirect profiling or implicitly from browsing activity should be illegal. The same should apply to Google. Adwords should be separated into its own company legally segregated from the search and Android businesses and they should be banned from sharing user data with it. Until this happens these companies are going to continue to be a problem.
I think they shouldn’t use or horde our data, but then again I don’t have a FB.
I would be in favor of regulating social media age requirements as we do tobacco and alcohol.
Doesn't Amazon have the purchasing history of all it's users that advertisers can use to do audience based targeting? What about them or msft??
The same. Any profile should be created only from explicit advertising preference and not inferred from browsing activity. A button on a page could be used, "show me ads for products like this", an explicit advertising preference, and that advertising profile information should never be used for any other purpose. I think it would be dangerous to allow any exception. And arguably you might want to search for adult products secure in the knowledge that your searching isn't contributing to a profile that might be shared with third parties. Amazon, and Microsoft, can build a profile about you based on the movies you watch, the games you play, as well as product searches and that's really pretty intrusive into your privacy. Advertising companies should be legally separate from content companies and not allowed to share data with them.
Only one question, how would the spun off social platform on its own support itself financially? You understand this is a for profit business not a charity right?
They could still have ads on their site and receive a payment from the advertising company. I used to have a website that had AdWords ads on it and I made some good money from the site. I note that I didn't share any private user data with Adsense, and Adsense didn't share any data with me, but it was still profitable for my to earn money from ads. There is no reason for a content company like Google search or Facebook to share data with the advertising business in order to make money from ads.
You did not host live videos with hundreds of thousands of viewers by any chance???
Cool, you will soon see ads for diaper or tampon on your page. Or viagra ads on 16 years old girl
I have used all settings on both Facebook and Google to block them both from personalizing ads, and now the ads are relevant to the content I am browsing. If I am reading an article about changing diapers I will see diaper ads. Seems alright. I also have no problem with the advertising company, eg AdWords, explicitly asking me about my ad preferences so I can customize ads. No problem with a preference that says "(don't) show me more ads like this one", or letting me pick categories for ads. I just don't want them inferring a profile about me from my browsing, contacts, and other online activity.
And who is asking this questions? Lol
I agree the ban should apply to all companies including Amazon. Amazon should not be using your prime video or music preferences to build a profile either. Advertising should be restricted to regulated companies that are banned from producing content not explicitly labeled as an ad, and banned from using browsing history or sharing personal data with non advertising companies. Should apply to Amazon as much as any other company.
Well done for taking it sportingly, appreciated.
Advertising makes the world go around. I have zero problem with Facebook using whatever data they want to target whatever ads they want. I chose to have Facebook profile, it wasn't forced on me. In addition, I often times see ads for things that I think are actually pretty awesome and I likely wouldn't have seen if it wasn't for their ad targeting. There's so much information that's gathered from analyzing things you didn't explictly choose to share. For example PYMK - people you may know, that feature is one of the biggest reasons that Facebook and LinkedIn even exist today. And you wouldn't have that feature if it wasn't for some data scientists doing some "creepy" analysis of your data. You can't say you want these useful features but then say they can't use your data. The whole argument around it is stupid.
Facebook would actually do a better job of things like PYMK if they were building profiles to benefit YOU instead of to benefit advertisers. There is nothing wrong with building a better social network, it's the conflict of interest created by advertising that worries me.
How do you expect Facebook to make money as a business? Let's not forget that they are in fact a business. They aren't just some benevolent entity providing a free product.
Makes sense to me, just split AdWords from Google. They have a good business model even without the private Google data, and Google could still have advertising results in searches, just not linked to your Google account. Same with Facebook and their ad program.
Can you explain how exactly you believe companies sell your data? Can you be explicit? Do they send an API call to these advertisers with name/userid/email? What do you think actually happens? I’m not trolling, I genuinely want to know.
I believe Facebook markets its advertising service to its advertising customers by claiming that it has detailed profiles of its users. By claiming to have more detailed information, Facebook claims to be able to better target ads. It therefore sells more ads, and at a higher price, the more private information it collects. This creates a fundamental conflict of interest where Facebook is motivated to engage in privacy violations of its own user's privacy in order to improve the performance of its advertising offering for which it gets paid. On the one hand it is expected to protect the privacy of its users, on the other hand it gets paid to violate their privacy. Same applies to Google and to any other company that claims to sell advertising on the basis of collecting private information about its users. Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, and others also do the same to a greater or lesser extent. Hence the calls for regulation.
Moron detected.