Splitting the Web
This rings true to me.
Link tags: advertising
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Scams upon scams: The data-driven advertising grift – Another angry woman
On day 1 of your class about behaviour change in a science course, you learn that behaviour change is not a simple matter of information in, behaviour out. Human behaviour, and changing it, is big and complex.
Meanwhile, on your marketing courses, which I have had the misfortune to attend, the model of changing behaviour is pretty much this: information in, behaviour out.
Google AMP: how Google tried to fix the web by taking it over - The Verge
AMP succeeded spectacularly. Then it failed. And to anyone looking for a reason not to trust the biggest company on the internet, AMP’s story contains all the evidence you’ll ever need.
This is a really good oral history of how AMP soured Google’s reputation.
Full disclosure: I’m briefly cited:
“When it suited them, it was open-source,” says Jeremy Keith, a web developer and a former member of AMP’s advisory council. “But whenever there were any questions about direction and control… it was Google’s.”
As an aside, this article contains a perfect description of the company cultures of Facebook, Apple, and Google:
“You meet with a Facebook person and you see in their eyes they’re psychotic,” says one media executive who’s dealt with all the major platforms. “The Apple person kind of listens but then does what it wants to do. The Google person honestly thinks what they’re doing is the best thing.”
Spot. On.
Highlights | Catalogue | Sainsbury Archive
There are some tasty designs in this archive from Sainbury’s.
Ban Online Behavioral Advertising | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Targeted advertising based on online behavior doesn’t just hurt privacy. It also contributes to a range of other harms.
I very much agree with this call to action from the EFF.
Maybe we can finally get away from the ludicrious idea that behavioural advertising is the only possible form of effective advertising. It’s simply not true.
Is Momentum Shifting Toward a Ban on Behavioral Advertising? – The Markup
I really hope that Betteridge’s Law doesn’t apply to this headline.
Daring Fireball: Robin Berjon on ‘Topics’, Google’s Proposed Replacement for FLoC
Google Topics is the successor to Google FLoC. It seems to require collusion from your “user agent”:
I can’t see why any other browser would consider supporting Topics. Google wants to keep tracking users across the entire web in a world where users realize they don’t want to be tracked. Why help Google?
Google sees Chrome as a way to embed the entire web into an iframe on Google.com.
Google, Facebook hiding behind skirts of small business
While the dream of “personalized” ads has turned out to be mostly a nightmare, adtech has built some of the wealthiest companies in the world based on tracking us. It’s no surprise to me that as Members of the European Parliament contemplate tackling these many harms, Big Tech is throwing millions of Euros behind a “necessary evil” PR defense for its business model.
But tracking is an unnecessary evil.
Even in today’s tracking-obsessed digital ecosystem it’s perfectly possible to target ads successfully without placing people under surveillance. In fact right now, some of the most effective and highly valued online advertising is contextual — based on search terms, other non-tracking based data, and the context of websites rather than intrusive, dangerous surveillance.
Let’s be clear. Advertising is essential for small and medium size businesses, but tracking is not.
Rather than creating advertising that is more relevant, more timely and more likable we are creating advertising that is more annoying, more disliked, and more avoided.
I promise you, the minute tracking is outlawed, Facebook, Google and the rest of the adtech giants will claim that their new targeting mechanisms (whatever they turn out to be) are superior to tracking.
UK ICO: surveillance advertising is dead
Behavioral ads are only more profitable than context ads if all the costs of surveillance – the emotional burden of being watched; the risk of breach, identity-theft and fraud; the potential for government seizure of surveillance data – is pushed onto internet users. If companies have to bear those costs, behavioral ads are a total failure, because no one in the history of the human race would actually grant consent to all the things that gets done with our data.
Tracking-industry body IAB Europe told that it has infringed the GDPR, and its “consent” pop-ups used by Google and other tech firms are unlawful. - Irish Council for Civil Liberties
Google and the entire tracking industry relies on IAB Europe’s consent system, which has now been found to be illegal.
Signal >> Blog >> The Instagram ads Facebook won’t show you
The way most of the internet works today would be considered intolerable if translated into comprehensible real world analogs, but it endures because it is invisible.
You can try to use Facebook’s own tools to make the invisible visible but that kind of transparency isn’t allowed.
Google Is Testing Its Controversial New Ad Targeting Tech in Millions of Browsers. Here’s What We Know. | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Following on from the piece they ran called Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea, the EFF now have the details of the origin trial and it’s even worse than what was originally planned.
I strongly encourage you to use a privacy-preserving browser like Firefox or Safari.
Daring Fireball: Google’s Outsized Share of Advertising Money
Privacy-invasive user tracking is to Google and Facebook what carbon emissions are to fossil fuel companies — a form of highly profitable pollution that for a very long time few people in the mainstream cared about, but now, seemingly suddenly, very many care about quite a bit.
Why The IndieWeb? (Webbed Briefs)
Heydon keeps on producing more caustically funny videos that are made for me. After the last one about progressive enhancement, this one is about the indie web.
This is the story of the birth of the web, its loss of innocence, its decline, and what we can do to make it a bit less gross.
Contextual ads | Dave Smyth
If behavioural ads aren’t more effective than contextual ads, what is all of that data collected for?
If websites opted for a context ads and privacy-focused analytics approach, cookie banners could become obsolete…
Facebook’s Attempt to Vilify Apple — Pixel Envy
See, that’s what I’m talking about;
Levy deftly conflates “advertising” and “personalized advertising”, as if there are no ways to target people planning a wedding without surveilling their web browsing behaviour. Facebook’s campaign casually ignores decades of advertising targeted based on the current webpage or video instead of who those people are because it would impact Facebook’s primary business. Most people who are reading an article about great wedding venues are probably planning a wedding, but you don’t need quite as much of the ad tech stack to make that work.
FSG Originals | Subprime Attention Crisis
For anyone who expressed doubt at my depiction of behavioural advertising simply not working, this book by Tim Hwang is for you:
From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars, to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers’ attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself—much like subprime mortgages—is wildly misrepresented.
Why The Web Is Such A Mess - YouTube
Tom gives a succinct history of the ongoing arms race between trackers and end users.
How To Protect Your Privacy Online In 8 Tips : Life Kit : NPR
Take a look at your smartphone and delete all the apps you don’t really need. For many tasks, you can use a browser on your phone instead of an app.
Privacy-wise, browsers are preferable, because they can’t access as much of your information as an app can.
Feds may target Google’s Chrome browser for breakup - POLITICO
The unfair collusion between Google AMP and Google Search might just bite ‘em on the ass.