Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple Urged to Stop Advertising to Minors (bbc.com) 64
The BBC reports:
Tech firms have been urged to stop advertising to under-18s in an open letter signed by Members of Parliament, academics and children's-rights advocates. Behavioural advertising not only undermines privacy but puts "susceptible" youngsters under unfair marketing pressure, the letter says. It is addressed to Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.
In a separate move Google-owned YouTube is accused of unlawfully mining data from five million under-13s in the UK...
"The fact that ad-tech companies hold 72 million data points on a child by the time they turn 13 shows the extent of disregard for these laws, and the extraordinary surveillance to which children are subjected," the letter reads.
In a separate move Google-owned YouTube is accused of unlawfully mining data from five million under-13s in the UK...
"The fact that ad-tech companies hold 72 million data points on a child by the time they turn 13 shows the extent of disregard for these laws, and the extraordinary surveillance to which children are subjected," the letter reads.
What about TV (Score:2)
Does this mean that children shouldn't be able to watch TV either because there are embedded commercials?
Collecting data from children less than 13 is wrong but showing untargeted advertisements should still be okay unless you plan on banning advertisements everywhere that a child has access to including ads on the side of the street, on the shelves at the grocery store, and even through the mail because the kid could see it after mom get it inside the house.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the traditional TV content we consume we consume via streaming over the internet of the network's website.
How often do you hit the "Please choose your cable or satellite provider" wall?
Re:What about TV (Score:5, Informative)
Collecting data from children less than 13 is wrong but showing untargeted advertisements should still be okay
And it is. With TV/billboards/general advertising you can infer some basic things like, for example, show A is geared towards preteen girls so 12 year old Suzy may have watched it. The issue is with things like Youtube, social media, and internet tracking as whole can get much more detailed: 12 year old Suzy watched a youtube video, then watched a video by influencer X on social media site Y, then went and searched for product X which was sponsored content in influencer X's video. They can track how much time is spent on social media, what videos are watched, what they search for, etc. Enough information that they can start targeting more and more specific groups or demographics. And this capability, combined with the malleability of children, leads to a greater likelihood of deception, manipulating, or at the very least priming for later manipulation.
Re: (Score:2)
Methinks unless its a site specifically designed for kids it would actually be very difficult to provide "untargeted" ads to children. Just being able to determine they were underage and therefore should get ads for kids violates the whole don't collect data on kids thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Methinks unless its a site specifically designed for kids it would actually be very difficult to provide "untargeted" ads to children. Just being able to determine they were underage and therefore should get ads for kids violates the whole don't collect data on kids thing.
There's "youtube kids" but the article doesn't mention it so I don't know if there's any distinction there wrt advertising except for bumpers noted on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly what I was thinking about. That and sites like Disney and Nickelodeon have that are expressly for kids. You have a reasonable expectation that kids are the main demographic there so untargeted ads meant for kids make sense on those sites. But on other sites not so much.
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly what I was thinking about. That and sites like Disney and Nickelodeon have that are expressly for kids. You have a reasonable expectation that kids are the main demographic there so untargeted ads meant for kids make sense on those sites. But on other sites not so much.
Fun fact, my country has rules against ads targeted at kids so to circumvent that some channels are officially broadcasted from the UK who apparently are happy to to host them although afaik they can not be viewed from the UK nor are they broadcasting in english.
Re: (Score:2)
my country has rules against ads targeted at kids
How do regulators expect children's broadcasters to cover their operating expenses? Does your country allow encrypting broadcast TV to block non-subscribers from viewing? Or does your country impose a tax on TV use the way Britain does to fund the BBC?
Re: (Score:2)
We have public service and encrypted satellite/cable/terrestrial.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know what you mean by "public service" in this context.
For comparison, the USA has three categories of non-Internet TV:
- Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), funded by donations from viewers, donations from institutions, and the government
- Commercial free-to-air TV, funded entirely by ads
- Encrypted subscription TV (cable and satellite), most of which carries advertising in order to cover operation costs partly from subscriptions and partly from ads
Does your country have or lack the commercial free-t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Why would LEGO commercials solve anything?
Facebook, Google and Amazon I can understand (Score:2)
But Microsoft and Apple? They aren't in the same league in terms of data slurping and ad slinging.
Oh well, they are tech companies so Politicians who don't know better will lump them together.
Re:Facebook, Google and Amazon I can understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you think all those ads in iPad apps are *not* being targetted based on data gathered by Apple? It might not be so overt to the end-user, and certainly doesn't get the media coverage (viz. the spat with Epic over Fortnight's in-app sales), and they no doubt keep the data closer to their chest, but I have no doubt that Apple have every bit the stranglehold over their advertising partners as they do over the people hoping to sell Apps via their store. Microsoft is prhaps a little harder to pin down, but there are also plenty of ads in their Windows 10 Store apps, and they are well documented has being able to gather a huge amount of browser and telemetry data that can be used by data brokers to help advertisers target their wares.
They're absolutely in the same league as Amazon, FaceBook, and Google, even if their precise rankings are a little more difficult to pin down.
Re: (Score:2)
You make it sound like some big conspiracy when Apple is very clear about how they track and how they target.
Copy and paste from privacy settings...
Ads that are delivered by Apple’s advertising platform may appear on the AppStore, Apple News, and Stocks. Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, and does not share user or device data with data brokers.
Contextual Information
Contextual information may be used to serve ads to you, such as:
Device Information: Your keyboard language settings, device type, OS version, mobile carrier, and connection type.
Device Location: If Location Services is enabled and you’ve granted permission to the AppStore or Apple News apps to access your location, your location may be used to serve you geographically relevant ads. Your precise device location is not stored by Apple’s advertising platform, and profiles are not constructed from this information. To access these settings, go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services. ...
And so on ...
You can turn off the targeting with a simple toggle and get random ads from Apples platform at least. You can also toggle off app tracking from the same Privacy settings area, but apps and sites can always track you via other means if they're clever.
Re: (Score:2)
But Microsoft and Apple? They aren't in the same league in terms of data slurping and ad slinging.
You my friend, are extremely naive.
Re: (Score:3)
So they will never stop slinging recruitment ads at children. Because gay rights!
People don't get 'recruited' by the 'gay team', people are born gay.
Re: (Score:3)
So they will never stop slinging recruitment ads at children. Because gay rights!
People don't get 'recruited' by the 'gay team', people are born gay.
I've yet to see any scientific evidence of this.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Until today I have not even a single time heard or seen someone linking it to genetics.
We know almost with certainty that there is *some* connection to genetics. [nih.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
In a proper world, The People never granted government the power to regulate sexuality, so it would not and could not be made illegal.
Ergo whether born that way or not should be a purely academic question.
It's sad people have to resort to "born this way" just to be free.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think the bigger picture here would lead you to ask the question: Does it matter?
Re: (Score:2)
I personally don't care if people are gay, trans, or whatever. I do care when people hit on minors, which happened to me twice (by middle aged men) many years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
So they will never stop slinging recruitment ads at children. Because gay rights!
People don't get 'recruited' by the 'gay team', people are born gay.
I've yet to see any scientific evidence of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Fraternal birth order has been correlated with male sexual orientation, with a significant volume of research finding that the more older brothers a man has from the same mother, the greater the probability he will have a homosexual orientation. Ray Blanchard and Anthony Bogaert first identified the association in the 1990s and named it the fraternal birth order effect. Scientists have attributed the effect to a prenatal biological mechanism, since the association is only present in men with older biological brothers, and not present among men with older step-brothers and adoptive brothers. The mechanism is thought to be a maternal immune response to male fetuses, whereby antibodies neutralize male Y-proteins thought to play a role in sex-differentiation during development. This would leave some regions of the brain associated with sexual orientation in the 'female typical' arrangement – or attracted to men. Biochemical evidence for this hypothesis was identified in 2017, finding mothers with a gay son, particularly those with older brothers, had heightened levels of antibodies to the NLGN4Y Y-protein than mothers with heterosexual sons.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting. I'd mod you Informative if I could.
Re:All these companies are led by pedophiles (Score:5, Informative)
Gosh I'm so fucking tired of this bullshit. Do you personnaly know any gay people ? Have you ever talked to one ? Have you ever come out of your mother's fucking basement and actually met real people in real life ?
I have met, talked and worked with a lot of gay people, both male and female. I've never known one single gay person that actually chose to be gay. And I've never met anyone who met someone who knew a gay person who chose to be gay. And yet, somehow, even today, in the 21st century, there are still people who believe that being gay is a choice, and keep repeating that same bullshit over and over in their little homophobic echo chambers.
Get this through your thick skull once and for all: Sexual orientation is not a choice ! Whether it is genetic, congenital, environemental or something else, whether it happens at conception, in the womb, or in early life is still subject of research. But it is not a choice !
For fuck's sake, think about it: My guess is you're a heterosexual male; could you "choose" to be sexually attracted to a man ? Could you "choose" to stop feeling sexual attraction towards women ? And even if you could, and homosexuallity was a "lifestyle choice", like so many ignorant homophobic jerks pretend, would you willingly make a "choice" that would condemn you to discrimination, rejection, social ostratization, constant risk of bodily harm, and even risk of death ?
That such an obviously ridiculous belief completely disconnected with reality still manages to endure is just beyond me. I guess there will always be people born with such a strong desire to hate that they will jump through any intellectual loop that's being offered to them to rationalize and justify their hatred.
Re: All these companies are led by pedophiles (Score:2)
You're misunderstanding the argument. Pretty much no one is suggesting gay thoughts are a choice. The argument is that gay sex is a choice. In the Christian communities of Evangelical America, you can think about doing things with dicks all day. But what makes you homoSEXUAL is the homo-sex.
Re: (Score:2)
You're misunderstanding the argument. Pretty much no one is suggesting gay thoughts are a choice. The argument is that gay sex is a choice. In the Christian communities of Evangelical America, you can think about doing things with dicks all day. But what makes you homoSEXUAL is the homo-sex.
And yet even with clergy who have taken vows of chastidy but can't keep it in their pants, or evangelical preachers talking about the sanctity of marriage that keep getting caught in affairs (even homosexual affairs), they expect the laity to completely suppress a biological urge? If those who sought out taking the cloth would actually listen and follow one of Jesus' most powerful sayings-"let he without sin cast the first stone"-we would have a lot less stone throwing and a lot more of just letting people
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, and if people are born gay, that means God made them that way. Why would God then demand that they act against urges that He gave them and then punish them if they do not? Doesn't sound like a very just God to me.
Sounds like the same God that supposedly made us very curious, then put the Fruit of Doom right in front of us and said "nope, can't eat this, I could hide it but nope." And then punished not just the people who ate it, but every descendant for ever and ever. Because that's a rational reaction from an omniscient, omni-benevolent being.
So it's crazy and moronic, but it's consistently crazy and moronic.
Re: (Score:2)
We really don't know that. It may be that at least some people learn to be gay or straight.
We shouldn't base our treatment of people based on whether their behavior is bred or learned. It should be based on their treatment of people.
Adults are fair game (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Urging is meaningless. (Score:3)
Anyone who understands how publicly traded businesses work understands that if there is profit in it, a business will do it. Until they pass a law, exactly nothing will change. After they pass a law, they will comply only as long as the cost of violating the law is higher than the profit gained from violating the law.
Re: (Score:1)
Not Tenable (Score:2)
Re:Not Tenable (Score:4, Interesting)
Certain advertising should not be directed at children, but to ask all advertising to not be directed to children; you might as well go back to the generic, white label label packaging.
Since most goods are bought by adults, having to aim the advertising at them wouldn't be too much of a restriction imho.
Just like no "targeted" adds. (Score:2)
This BS is why I have to endure 7 minute commercials for business point of sale software during my grand-kids Blippy show on YouTube. At least a 30 second advert for a toy watergun is vaguely relevant to a child.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's cut straight to the heart of the problem (Score:2)
We're fighting almost all corporate (mis)-behaviours, such as those mentioned in the summary, on individual fronts. We're never going to win more than a few minor skirmishes with this emphasis on tactics rather than on strategy. We need to start strategically rolling back corporate power and freedoms.
Corporations are legally mandated to maximize shareholder profits as their only priority. They are legally prohibited from placing a higher priority on any other factor, including the social good and mental hea
Re: (Score:2)
Corporations are legally mandated to maximize shareholder profits as their only priority. They are legally prohibited from placing a higher priority on any other factor,
All pure bullshit. Corporations are legally mandated to follow their charter. If the charter says that the corporation's goal is to maximize shareholder value (or similar) then you're right. If the charter says that its goal is to make sure every child gets a pony free of charge, then it's about ponies and not about profit.
What's primarily wrong with corporations is that they are essentially automatically granted. You should have to prove public interest in order to form a corp.
Re: (Score:2)
Corporations are legally mandated to maximize shareholder profits as their only priority. They are legally prohibited from placing a higher priority on any other factor,
All pure bullshit. Corporations are legally mandated to follow their charter. If the charter says that the corporation's goal is to maximize shareholder value (or similar) then you're right.
That strikes me as a distinction without a difference, given that a corporation that doesn't adopt maximizing shareholder value as a key point in its charter is unlikely to grow to the size where it can do much damage.
What's primarily wrong with corporations is that they are essentially automatically granted.
I would argue that what's primarily wrong with corporations is the concept of corporate personhood. If you can't slap it in the face, make it weep, reason with it, or throw its ass in prison, then it ain't a person and ought not to be treated as one.
You should have to prove public interest in order to form a corp.
I agree entirely. But I have to wonder how m
Re: (Score:2)
There's definitely a lot more to be done than to stop handing out corporations like candy. Not giving corporations special rights would be a good place to start. But then, the whole point of a corporation is to separate profit from responsibility. Arguably, they should not exist at all. Co-ops of co-ops can do everything that corporations do, except produce profit for people with no responsibility.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree wholeheartedly, but anything that even remotely looks like collectivism draws so much contempt on Slashdot that I've always hesitated to mention it here. Replacing corporations with co-ops may be civilization's last best hope for survival.
Harassment (Score:2)
If you don't want your kid to see ads, then why are you letting them on facebook? How many regulations are we going to burden internet companies with? At this point it's harassment. You will need massive federal bureacracies to watch for these silly things. What will the bureacracy do when it has tackled facebook? Probably find something else to fuck with.
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't want your kid to see ads, then why are you letting them on facebook? How many regulations are we going to burden internet companies with? At this point it's harassment. You will need massive federal bureacracies to watch for these silly things. What will the bureacracy do when it has tackled facebook? Probably find something else to fuck with.
It's basically the same as blaming cigarette companies for kids smoking, or the brewing companies for them drinking. Kid's are smoking weed? Must have been a drug pusher.
We blame everyone else for our problems, and nobody wants to take any personal responsibility. It's kind of a modern "the devil made me do it" thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Teach your kids the evils of ads (Score:2)
If you are like me, you have drilled into them at a young age that commercials are evil, are designed to trick you into thinking you want to give them all your money. My kids now yell at the ads more often than me, so I am slightly less worried. However... I still regret letting my kids have so much access to Youtube. They waste way more time on it than my siblings and I ever did with TV, and that is saying a lot. I drag them off it every chance I get, but it just got a lot harder with them schooling from h
Re: (Score:1)
The art of advertising is the effort to arrest human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
Humans have a hard enough time trying to form an independent thought. To employ critical thinking, or even just questioning the motives of the second party's mind. Maybe when you think your little bubble is the whole universe, your existence is all, Look Out For Number One, there is no hope of conceiving of another mind.
I've sat through enough mandatory cybersecurity trainings to know they basically repeat the
Re: (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/YhrnMbhMgmw?t... [youtu.be]
Well its not really new. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Are commercial broadcasters in the Nordic countries required to show programming targeting children, as with the E/I mandate in US law? If so, how should they cover the cost of doing so without ads?
Saturday Morning Cartoons (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
And the cartoons themselves were not advertising the cartoon themselves nor any actions in the cartoons targeting directly children. And what about the no-smoking, no-drinking, and all the safety advertising directed at children - shouldn't that be banned too?
Ban all ads for minors' content (Score:1)