Seems impossible without outlawing all advertising. Advertising in the nytimes over some other paper or advertising on fox over cnn are all examples of targeted advertising. You'd have to make people randomly choose advertising spots from all of media. Doesn't seem feasible.

> Advertising in the nytimes over some other paper or advertising on fox over cnn are all examples of targeted advertising.

"Targeted" advertising generally refers to the tracking-based targeting of individual people. Re-defining the term to include all types of advertising makes the term mostly useless.

> Doesn't seem feasible.

Banning targeted advertising would be easy with legislation that bans tracking and showing ads to individuals.

> You'd have to make people randomly choose advertising spots from all of media.

Traditional advertising methods worked fine for centuries. Nobody[1] places ads randomly; you advertise where your product's audience will see it.

[1] Advertising intended to build general brand awareness instead of selling a specific product or service might buy ads somewhat randomly, because the goal is simply getting the brand name seen widely and often.

Well I understood targeted advertising as advertising with a target in mind. So advertising on msnbc to target liberals and fox for conservatives. In terms of tracking people and using their data to precisely target them then I agree with Richard Stallmann's article here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/03/facebo...

That's too broad of a definition, it effectively reduces the term 'targeted advertising' to just 'advertising'. For example, even if my advertisement isn't trying to target broad categories of people (roadside billboard, etc) any ad will have a target in mind: consumers of my product.

So no, targeted advertising is not any ad with a target in mind, that is just advertising. Targeted ads are distinguished from regular ads based on targeting a specific individual. An ad in the WSJ may be aimed at a broad category of people interested in business news, but if I know for a fact that 'Letmesleep69' happens to be a reader of that paper and I take out an ad that specifically refers to that user name, then it would be a targeted ad.

edit: formatting

I don't think the word 'targeted' has as narrow a definition as you are proposing (at least in the common vernacular). In writing laws, as in code, one has to be very specific and define things properly, but not in frank discussion.

Disclosure: I believe in the eventual success of the fediverse.

Yes. Perhaps "personalized advertising" would be a better term?

>> A lot would be solved by outlawing targeted advertising.

> Seems impossible without outlawing all advertising. Advertising in the nytimes over some other paper or advertising on fox over cnn are all examples of targeted advertising. You'd have to make people randomly choose advertising spots from all of media. Doesn't seem feasible.

Not the OP, but I think he has a good idea stated over-broadly. Let me fix it:

A lot would be solved by outlawing profile-based targeted advertising.

If Facebook can't use you profile to individually target you, the advertisers are left to target the mass of "Facebook users" like they target the mass of "NY Times readers."

Yes, and this also nicely self-regulates the media marketplace to balance monopolies like FB. Want to target a narrow niche, advertise in specialist media to a smaller audience at higher rates. Want to carpet bomb, advertise in mass media at bulk rates. Mass media being able to segment their audience has killed specialist titles income stream and created monopolies. Without that regulation FB has been allowed to have their cake and eat everybody elses.

Yeah, you'd have to define it precisely, and make a few broad exceptions to make it practical.

I should have added "by default" to my sentence.

It's a common misconception that you have to define law precisely in order for it to be useful. States of affairs are rarely fixed with one law, many times it's useful to proceed with the poor law that you can get passed as opposed to no law at all, and spend another season building up political will to pass a better one. The countless piracy acts that keep getting thrown at us every few years get slightly weaker as the content industry just tries to wedge a foot in the door.

Obamacare was intended to be like this. Legislators knew it was going to get attacked the second the ink was dry, so they built in a bunch of clauses making it extremely difficult to 'simply repeal'. New health care legislation almost certainly has to build on top of Obamacare, enough political capital can't possibly be raised to do anything else.

I'm sure there's a technical solution at the browser level -- a way to break cookie matchers. At least when I worked in retargeting, cookie matching was the secret sauce.

Preventing third party sources (images, scripts, "share buttons" etc.) from issuing or checking browser cookies might break a whole pile of useful things, but it'd make the world of retargeted ads dry up quickly.

The freely available non-cookie fingerprinting libraries are incredibly effective now.

I would also like to outlaw advertising in the following places: the in-flight announcements of airplanes, the loud, blaring tv kiosks at gas stations, and during movie previews.

In other words, create a modicum of public space which doesn’t have constant, intrusive noise.

GDPR does a beautiful thing bu limiting your ability to profile people without telling them exactly how you algorythm them and ability to opt out. Perhaps enough people on Facebook will be creeped out when they find out whats under their Faceook hood.

The problem is that Facebook have complete control over the user experience of opting out:

To opt in just click 'Agree and Continue'. You won't ever hear from Facebook about this issue again.

To opt out click the much less visible 'Other Options' link, then scroll to the bottom of the page and expand each section and untick each box, then click 'Yes' when Facebook asks if you are sure, given that it will cause these problems for you. Then click 'Continue'. Now every 3 months Facebook will ask if you still want to opt out.

Plus Facebook can frame the opt-out option in the most unattractive light. When I try to disable 'ads personalisation' in Google it tells me 'You'll no longer be able to block or mute some ads'. Who wants to give up the ability to block ads?

I suspect, and hope, that the screen FB implemented is seen as in violation of GDPR. Especially hiding the 'no' options on a second page.

Not all targeted advertising is bad. Would you try to stop a local high school fundraiser for intelligently reaching out to the community? Or your family's local small business from advertising to the audience most likely to want to shop there?

Targeted advertising in some shape or form has existed for a hundred years. Just open any magazine that is targeted at a specific audience and you'll see widely different ads running in those magazines. McDonalds or Coca-cola aren't going to waste ad dollars running campaigns in hunting or boating magazines for example.

> Would you try to stop a local high school fundraiser for intelligently reaching out to the community? Or your family's local small business from advertising to the audience most likely to shop there?

Can we just ban the rest of it then? ;)

> Would you try to stop a local high school fundraiser for intelligently reaching out to the community

Yes, because it makes inequality worse ;-)

>A lot would be solved by outlawing targeted advertising

Many users are in favor of targeted advertising. In a lot of forums where this is discussed, I usually just look for heavily downvoted comments - there's usually a bunch saying "I'd rather not have ads, but if I do have them, I want personalized ads."

Downvoting them won't make the sentiment go away.

I'd rather be exposed to generic advertising in the form of billboards, banners, and commercials, than head towards the dystopian future of The Minority Report in which you're constantly tracked, biometrics measured, and eyeballs scanned in order for advertisers to bombard you with personalized greetings and targeted ads that follow you relentlessly.

It's already too creepy that my smartphone has trained its autocorrect with words I've never texted before but can extrapolate from my digital footprint.

No, but I guess properly informing them about the consequences for privacy will.

> there's usually a bunch saying "I'd rather not have ads, but if I do have them, I want personalized ads."

How badly do they want that? It sounds to me like they don't really care.

>No, but I guess properly informing them about the consequences for privacy will.

That's a poor assumption on your part that they are not properly informed. In real life, when I've met such people, they are properly informed. It would be arrogant for me to think that the ones on the Internet forums are any different - especially when they are responding to submissions that are clearly outlining the negatives of this kind of tracking.

Then we'll have to see who has a stronger voice: the ones who prefer privacy, or the ones who prefer personalized ads.

Never gonna happen. The holy grail for advertisers is show you an ad on your phone, on your computer, on your car and in-person on signs and billboards enough that you’ll buy whatever it is to shut them up.