What Would Happens To Meta and Google If Privacy Invasion Were Criminalized? 101
Apple's privacy push could cost Meta $10 billion in lost 2022 advertising revenue — and that news alone erased $250 billion in Meta's value, notes long-time Slashdot reader theodp.
But this leads them to a thought experiment: What would happen to Meta's and Google's business models if the privacy invasion behind the companies' lucrative advertising model were actually criminalized? While there would likely still be the same massive demand for the free services provided by Meta and Google, being unable to target customers of interest to advertisers based on snooped behaviors and demographics seems likely to throw the duopoly's lucrative cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) advertising model that powers these free services into disarray.
So what might the end game look like for Facebook and Google in a Web world where privacy was enforced by law? One imagines the pair could try to incur the additional cost of delivering many times more untargeted impressions in an effort to reach the same number of behavior and demographic-targeted impressions desired by advertisers, assuming they could get that to work and gain advertisers' trust in the new model. But one wonders if advertisers might start diverting more ad dollars away from Meta and Google to other sources such as media providers, whose varied content naturally segments audiences and could deliver greater assurance to advertisers that more relevant viewers are being reached. Might Meta and Google pivot to become syndicators of media content and be forced to share more of the advertising loot?
And what about the Metaverse — could Meta-sponsored events and interest groups hosted there provide Meta with opportunities to naturally segment its massive user base into areas that could facilitate targeting audiences relevant to advertisers even without privacy invasion?
Finally — if worse comes to worst — would users actually pay to use Meta's and Google's services if the new advertising model failed to deliver sufficient revenue to keep services free?
But this leads them to a thought experiment: What would happen to Meta's and Google's business models if the privacy invasion behind the companies' lucrative advertising model were actually criminalized? While there would likely still be the same massive demand for the free services provided by Meta and Google, being unable to target customers of interest to advertisers based on snooped behaviors and demographics seems likely to throw the duopoly's lucrative cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) advertising model that powers these free services into disarray.
So what might the end game look like for Facebook and Google in a Web world where privacy was enforced by law? One imagines the pair could try to incur the additional cost of delivering many times more untargeted impressions in an effort to reach the same number of behavior and demographic-targeted impressions desired by advertisers, assuming they could get that to work and gain advertisers' trust in the new model. But one wonders if advertisers might start diverting more ad dollars away from Meta and Google to other sources such as media providers, whose varied content naturally segments audiences and could deliver greater assurance to advertisers that more relevant viewers are being reached. Might Meta and Google pivot to become syndicators of media content and be forced to share more of the advertising loot?
And what about the Metaverse — could Meta-sponsored events and interest groups hosted there provide Meta with opportunities to naturally segment its massive user base into areas that could facilitate targeting audiences relevant to advertisers even without privacy invasion?
Finally — if worse comes to worst — would users actually pay to use Meta's and Google's services if the new advertising model failed to deliver sufficient revenue to keep services free?
Look to Europe (Score:5, Insightful)
It already is illegal in Europe thanks to GDPR, so just look at how it works there.
Re:Look to Europe (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, to be fair, that's part the problem. Even before GDPR with legislation like the Data Protection Act many of the things Facebook and Google did were illegal; Facebooks shadow accounts were never legal in Europe for example.
Yet they were never ever held to account for this and they should have been, had they been we wouldn't have the issues we've had like the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The first time they were ever held to account was in the now infamous "right to be forgotten" case which had nothing to do with the right to be forgotten, because that's not something that even existed in law at that point, but was simply about Google having been in breach of existing pre-GDPR data protection laws. Google manipulated the story around this with an expensive and extensive lobbying campaign to try and claim it was to do with the right to be forgotten being used for press censorship with the goal to defame GDPR before it was even law. It was all a lie, it was always a lie, all it was was Google collecting private information on someone and storing it when it had no legal basis to do so - something that's been illegal in pretty much all European jurisdictions from before Google even existed.
So yeah it's illegal, but decades of failure to enforce the law against American big tech when European companies were consistently held to it gave American big tech a big edge that's led to numerous abuses of consumer rights and privacy. Realistically non-consensual targeted advertising was never legal here, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist and hasn't been abused all these years.
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The EU implementation of "right to be forgotten" is misguided. The EU government has surrendered a sovereign power of decision making to a board of corporate employees who evaluate each case. And even worse this board is recreated at each search vendor. The government should not be giving away governmental powers to corporate entities.
In my opinion, the correct way to do "right to be forgotten" was via special government courts that were free as easy to use. This could have been done as a part-time acti
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The EU implementation of "right to be forgotten" is misguided. The EU government has surrendered a sovereign power of decision making to a board of corporate employees who evaluate each case. And even worse this board is recreated at each search vendor. The government should not be giving away governmental powers to corporate entities.
What? The right to be forgotten is really simple: If the corporation holding data does not have a valid business reason, it already has to delete everything without a request. Right-to-be-forgotten requests are only needed if, for example, you want to exist a customer-bonus program or the like. Hence there is basically no "decision making" involved. The only case where decision making comes into play is when deleting customer data is very difficult. Then a corporation may hold onto it under the legal princi
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No, there is entire process where people ask the search engines to remove listings....
https://www.npr.org/sections/t... [npr.org]
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No, there is entire process where people ask the search engines to remove listings....
https://www.npr.org/sections/t... [npr.org]
Ah, that one. This is properly in the hands of the corporations and the courts. It is a tiny faction of the whole thing though, because, for example, Google is not allowed to target ads for you based on what it finds in its search, unless you have explicitly consented.
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Right to be forgotten has been around for decades in one form or another.
For example, credit reference agencies aren't allowed to mention bankruptcies that happened more than X years ago. Less serious crimes don't get reported and don't need to be declared once the sentence is complete.
GDPR extends that principal to search engines and other business that allow users to research other people.
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It's pretty clear you don't understand how the right to be forgotten works, it's got nothing to do with corporate employees whatsoever, I don't even know where you get that. I've also no idea why you're mentioning robots.txt, that's such an arbitrary thing to focus on.
The right to be forgotten simply declares that companies can't hold data on your an excessive amount of time without good reason, those reasons include things like:
- Tackling crime
- Having your consent to do so
- Public interest reporting
I know
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GDPR is the stupidest thing ever. Everytime you go to any website there is a stupid GDPR pop-up. It does nothing, and means nothing. At this point they should just allow you to configure your browser so that it sends a fuck off don't annoy me header or something.
Re:Look to Europe (Score:4, Informative)
You are misinformed. The cookie popups are not related to GDPR. Their origin is the European "e-Privacy Directive", another piece of legislation that precedes GDPR.
EU laws system is complicated, as there is a complex system of interaction between the local laws of the member states and the directives established by EU / Brussels itself. Our laws can also be stupid, as is the case with the cookie banners. However you should not accuse one law for the shortcoming of another. The two directives are not related in any meaningful way. (And this is a problem in itself; the privacy-related laws should create a coherent system, but they do not.)
GDPR has its share of problems, but requiring cookie popups is not one of them.
Re: Look to Europe (Score:2)
It's very poorly implemented.
How many people actually bother to set all of the 'privacy' options, rather than just try to make the damn thing go away so it stops covering up what they are trying to read? I suspect you can count them on one hand.
The fact that there are multiple browser extentions designed to make these boxes go away automatically shows that the 'solution' is more troublesome than the problem.
Re: Look to Europe (Score:2)
Very much this. All these pop ups and nag screens about new and supposedly exciting features are slowly making tech unusable. We just installed an update let us walk you through crap you wonâ(TM)t use for 5 minutes and you cannot stop us from doing it! Click here to allow junk notifications to spam you say and night! Just get the hell out of my way and let me do what I came here to do!
Re: Look to Europe (Score:2)
A long time ago, someone came up with the term "dialog box fatigue". Meaning users get so tired of dealing with pop up after pop up, and blindly click "ok" just to make it go away, including boxes that indicate a severe system error or could wipe their data.
Who is going to keep setting "privacy options" or read privacy terms after the 4th or 5th popup? Just about no one.
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There's another law coming up which will hopefully fix this by forcing sites to use a single-click "no thanks" button and to no block any content if you say no.
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It's very poorly implemented.
It's not an issue of poor implementation. It's a dark pattern. Data vampires like Google or Facebook make it intentionally difficult to opt out completely, in the hope that most customers will either not know or won't bother navigating all the different and obscure settings and menus, and will just give up and consent to tracking (which, of course, is the easiest choice, with just one big button displayed straight in your face).
There is a recent legislative effort in France that would stop companies from tr
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Reminds me of this technician in Heathrow airport. Passenger arrives at a huge queue at security. She desperately clamps on a technician and asks if there is a faster way. The guy takes a few seconds, and then very calmly replies: "Ma'me in Heathrow, there is only sloow and slowerrr"
Good metaphor for EU operation.
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"GDPR is the stupidest thing ever. Everytime you go to any website there is a stupid GDPR pop-up. It does nothing, and means nothing"
Sure it does. You can ask for a copy of everything they have on you, even if it's the local McDonald with a security cam.
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That's not GDPR, that's cookie laws.
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You don't need to have that pop-up if you don't run unnecessary cookies. But many sites now uses evasive tactics to force people to approve those cookies.
Browsers also often have a "do not track" option. That should be a good enough "F off" option.
Re:Look to Europe (Score:5, Informative)
The pop ups are supposed to be illegal. I'm trying to get the regulator to take an interest.
Recital 34, the request can't induce the user to agree e.g. by covering up the page or making it easier to agree than disagree.
Unfortunately I think the UK regulator has given up and is expecting our privacy to get violated as soon as the government gets around to it. Another brexit bonus.
Re: Look to Europe (Score:2)
There is so much money involved in this that the regulator does not want to stand in the way of tax revenue collections of these mega corps. These laws are designed to give you an illusion ie it is all theater. They accomplish nothing because they mean nothing. They merely wrap the engines pumping you for information with a shroud of legitimacy.
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GDPR does not "criminalize" anything, and it also does not "make anything illegal".
GDPR places a set of burdens to service providers and gives a set of rights to people ("data subject"). The burdens are like "keep an inventory of all data you process", "ensure you have legal basis for collecting any data", "perform risk assessments (DPIA)", "make it difficult to export data out of EU", "ensure your processes honour the rights of data subjects", "be transparent about how you process and share data".
However,
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Re: Look to Europe (Score:2)
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To legally comply it would need to be a small link on the page. Showing you a full screen request or otherwise preventing you from freely using the site is inducing consent.
They'd switch to something else, (Score:2)
like selling NFTs to suckers.
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Or maybe they can just show non-targeted ads.
Targeted ads are pretty crap anyway. They rarely get it right (or so it seems to me).
Who gives a shit (Score:2)
I don't own stock.
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I don't own stock.
You don't own stock or you don't own stock in Meta or Google?
If you just don't own stock in Meta or Google (and you avoid any index or mutual funds that contain Meta or Google) then good on you for standing my your convictions.
If you aren't avoiding them in index funds, mutual funds, 401k, etc. then you probably should care.
If you truly don't own any stock in any format, I would I question your financial planning.
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They'd survive (Score:5, Interesting)
If you have an audience, you can monetize it with ads. If you don't have privacy invasion, then the ads won't be targeted and won't cost as much, but they'll be profitable.
Google survived before without knowing anything but search keywords. They would survive again.
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Google survived before without knowing anything but search keywords. They would survive again.
Plenty of advertising agencies existed - and many even thrived - decades before Page and Brin were even born.
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Worth mentioning that they had your personal info, though.
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No, they didn't. The soap operas on TV didn't have your info, nor did the radio shows nor newspapers. And yet last I checked, their advertisers were doing OK.
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No, they didn't. The soap operas on TV didn't have your info, nor did the radio shows nor newspapers.
By the 80s, you could get mailing lists for any demographic you wanted, and people used them. As for TV shows, the advertisers knew your age, location, gender and income.
Not to the same granularity as now, of course.
Re: They'd survive (Score:2)
Re: They'd survive (Score:2)
Yes, Google would do just fine. A lot of their targeting does not rely on scraping personal information. For example, you search for something and they show a relevant ad. Or they show display network ads on relevant websites.
It would hurt them when it comes to retargeting and Gmail. However, if this were a law it would affect everyone equally so Google would still be the best place to go for ads.
Facebook would be screwed. People buy Facebook ads specifically for their invasiveness. In fact, a privacy laws
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Facebook would be ok. Lots of trash websites used to exist with untargeted ads.
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For example, you search for something and they show a relevant ad.
And keep showing them presumably forever. I bought a new car last spring, but a huge number of the ads I get are still for new cars, even though I got one already and am no longer looking, nor will I be anytime soon.
I wish I could tell them I got one already, piss off with the car ads now and show me something useful instead.
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You can target ads without privacy invasion. Just base it on the content and audience research, like TV has been doing for decades.
It is criminalized, but not on the internet (Score:2)
The violation of the secret of communication is criminalized and worth years in jail, if a company would ever snoop on someone's phone landline or paper letters. Communication company made the same "but on the internet" and so managed to move all communications into the non-private world where they can snoop at will.
"What would happen" is that they would be a regular telecom operator and you would have to pay for the service. And they would have to be interoperable.
"Meta" stands for (Score:2)
"Metastasize"
Google could make ads based on content (Score:5, Interesting)
What I have noticed is that even with all the information these companies have they do a pretty poor job of targeting ads. Mostly they advertise stuff to you after you have purchased it. I bought a laptop recently and I see ads for laptops all over the place now. I don't need another laptop because I just purchased one. If they ran ads based on the content of the page or the content of the video it seems like it would be FAR more accurate and doesn't require any invasion of privacy.
Re:Google could make ads based on content (Score:4, Interesting)
Google would get ad revenue, as they do now, by posting ads in their search results & on their other "free" web services, but not targeted. They'd also still be able to act as a broker between advertisers & content providers, as they do now. However, larger media companies may decide that they'd prefer to cut out the middle-man & broker their advertising slots themselves, as they used to do when print media was still a big thing. Essentially, Google & anyone else with a similar ad-broker business model would have to adjust to the new reality. Their revenues may or may not shrink as a result. They may have a smaller role to play on the interweb pipes or not. They may have to diversify into other services.
Google & its tech-bro culture have proven themselves to be a despicable group of people (sexist, misogynistic, racist, elitist, hyper-exploitative, politically corrupting, morally bankrupt, etc.) so I don't really care what happens to them & their shareholders' profits/dividends. However, a world without intrusive corporate surveillance sounds just grand to me. Where do I sign/vote?
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My understanding is that most of google's ad revenue comes from running ads on other sites. Their script could look at the content of a page or even have the site declare the content and then run an appropriate at. If you are on a machine learning page then run ads related to online machine learning classes, hardware, cloud ml services etc. Same for almost any other product. If someone is reading an article about antivirus software that is a good time to show an ad for antivirus software.
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Google & its tech-bro culture have proven themselves to be a despicable group of people (sexist, misogynistic, racist, elitist, hyper-exploitative, politically corrupting, morally bankrupt, etc.)
The tech people are fine. It's the manager class and their elitism who cause problems.
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Babylon fan buys laptop. Let's hit him with ads for the DVD set. Stickers for the laptop.
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I already have all the DVDs.
Just waiting for JMS to produce something new.
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This is something Amazon does a MUCH better job with. Person X just bought an item. Maybe they would be interested in accessories for it or other items to go with it that complement it. If you order a pressure cooker you might get suggestions on cookbooks, accessories etc. You don't get suggestions for more pressure cookers.
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Mostly they advertise stuff to you after you have purchased it.
This. But some sucker company somewhere is still paying for those ads views, even if they are useless.
For this to ever happen (Score:2)
our powers that be would have to be honest and not take money from big tech.
So, yeah... Thought experiment.
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our powers that be would have to be honest and not take money from big tech.
We have to quit reelecting the ones that do
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Oh, it's worse, "big tech" are the ones getting them elected [opensecrets.org] and keeping them in power in the first place.
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Not true. People still have to vote for them. I see no compelling reason to do so. If they don't get elected, the money is chaff.
That is their problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know why people are even asking this. You do not have a right to a particular business model. If they do not adapt to the new legal environment then the free market will do what it does best: bankrupt them. I'm not going to cry if either or both completely collapse because their business models are predatory and should be illegal.
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And that is pretty much it: If their business model violates the law, then they are a criminal enterprise and get shut down.
There is nothing that would make the continued existence of Meta or Google critical.
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If you have any doubt about this, just think back to the 2008 crash. The greedy and corrupt lenders were bailed out while the people who were duped into unsustainable loans went bankrupt. Even thoug
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Any law, like the GDPR but more effective, would apply equally to any device or service. That would mean that Windows, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Slashdot, et al. would have to remove/disable the spyware from their devices/services wherever the law was in effect. I'm assuming they'd also have to delete any previously gathered data.
How many apps for both Android & iOS exist solely to surveil their users? A lot of SDKs for mobile apps automatically include surveillance functions that funne
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Yes you can still casually take pictures of people. If your course of conduct involves following them everywhere, taking photos in secret, climbing up trees and such so you can take photos if which keys they press and which web sites they visit and how long the
Not much of an impact long term (Score:2)
First, they'd likely require users to agree to various targeting options or cancel their account. I suspect enough people would be hooked already and simply agree.
Second, they could likely build, given their size, increase the use algorithms that target adds not based on an individual identity but behaviors, as alluded to in TFA. So even if they know you have a strong interest in X they don't tie that to you as an individual, but rather a user that fits a certain profile.
Privacy, as a concept, is likely to
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Agreeing to a crime doesn't make it not a crime. It makes you an accomplice to the crime.
True, but agreeing to share the information, vs collecting it illegally, are 2 different things, just as someone inviting you in vs breaking and entering. Only the latter is a crime.
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No. If it's a crime to collect & trade in people's personal data, then collecting & trading in people's personal data is a crime no matter whether they ask someone to read & click, "Agree." It's a bit like when they banned smoking in places open to the public: The moment they included exceptions & get-out clauses (of course, lobbied for by the tobacco corporations), it completely undermined the law & it was ineffective. Here, they did that, then a few years later they admitted it was a mistake & amended the law to take out the exceptions & get-out clauses, then it worked.
yea, they could pass a law banning any data collection and trade but that would be unworkable because there are times where it is useful to someone.
But that's not what TFA was talking about - it was collecting data without the user's knowledge or consent. That could be made illegal but still allow for consent which would not make it illegal since they now know data will be collected and agreed to it. Many things can either be illegal or legal, depending on the circumstances, and that's how laws are struct
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Been there, done that (Score:1)
Does targeting even work? (Score:2)
I have read some studies that claim targeting does not actually increase sales. You can achieve the same effect by simple context. For example, visitors to a tech site get tech-iriented ads - no need for personal information.
Targetting sounds good, but only serves to increase ad prices.
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AFAIK, it does indeed not. But advertising to the general public is fundamentally broken anyways. The thing they measure is brand and sometimes product recognition. Does not matter whether you remember it as "hate it, will never buy", the ad industry still reports this as a success to its customers. In a sense, the ad industry defrauds both its customers and its targets. Unfortunately, many companies believe they need advertising beyond being found by the search engines when somebody is looking for a produc
It's not just about advertising anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
> What would happen to Meta's and Google's business models if the privacy invasion behind the companies' lucrative advertising model ..
The reason this is being criminalized is because you can't separate the world of advertising from the world of insurance, banking, state surveillance andother "risk management" activities. The data trickles down. Cambridge Analytica used Facebook data. Experian and Facebook had close connections. By its very nature Google's ad bidding network leaks data. The Chinese government has its fingers in TikTok, and the reason Schrems 2 is a thing is because Snowden revealed that the American government can hoover up social media data like it's nothing.
There's just no way to keep the behavioural data confined to the advertising industry. And THAT'S what makes it dangerous.
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Data collected is available to the State (Score:2)
US government doctrine is that any information you provide to a third party (Google, Meta, etc.) is ipso facto available to them. with no protection against self-incrimination (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine).
The Leviathan will not give up this end-run around the 4th Amendment. As usual, the courts, who should protect us against the depredations of the Executive and Legislative branches, are only too willing to leave us to our fate.
Do not expect data collection to stop. It will only in
Yes (Score:3)
I don't know what would happen to meta (Score:2)
They'd get around it (Score:1)
Unless the law specifically said that they couldn't include data mining provisions in EULAs/etc, they'd just say people opted into it and nothing would change.
Why is it legal? (Score:2)
We call it stalking in meatspace and one can get a restraining order.
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What happens if privacy doesn’t really exist (Score:1)
please target my ads (Score:2)
I, for one, do not want untargeted advertisements. If I have to see ads (and I do because I don't want to have to pay more than the outrageous ISP fee I already have), I'd like them to be as relevant as possible.
Everybody seems to downplay that targeting ads serves two purposes. Yes, it allows advertisers with products you are interested in to target you. But, the flip side is that it helps to make sure I don't see ads of things that don't interest me.
Why is that important? We live in a highly multicultural
Nothing. They aren't invading privacy (Score:2)
We are welcoming them to take it. There's a big difference.
Businesses that depend on human abuse... (Score:2)
...like slavery and child labor - or involuntary harvesting of personal information - suddenly become worthless as any badly premised business will.
They would just go into (Score:1)
No such thing as pay to avoid ads (Score:2)
When I was a kid in the 1980s, cable was totally devoid of ads. That was the justification for paying the bill. Over the 1990s and into the 2000s we saw ads increase to the point that there are more ads there than on broadcast TV. I do not mind ads for free services because the ads are what make it free. As soon as the pay model comes out, it wonâ(TM)t take long for these pay for use services become just as infested with advertising as cable. In the meta verse there will be a stampede to see how much i
The IRS wanting a facial scan going to shady (Score:2)
3rd party vendors is more concerning to me. It's a moot point since they're all using these corporate spy agencies to circumvent the 4th amendment anyway. Everything from cell phones to fitness trackers are actively being used by LEOs already.
What privacy? (Score:1)
More prominent "I agree" prompts (Score:2)
That's it. You'd have to acknowledge and agree to a long document full of legalese, in order to use the sites. The legalese would essentially say that you agree to allow the companies to "invade your privacy" and do whatever they want with your data.
These companies pay armies of lawyers to figure out ways around rules and regulations, to get what they want. Rules like Europe's GDPR help lawyers justify their salaries, but they don't really change the game.
Unfortunatley, not going to happin in the US (Score:2)
Nothing of consequence. (Score:1)
software companies (Score:1)
what is invasion? (Score:2)
Whaaat? (Score:1)
Facebook is a champion of privacy.
I know so because they have tv commercials that tell me so
Just you wait until the Superb Owl comercials. You'll see for yourself!
You Aren't Getting What You Paid For (Score:2)
I'm going to use Twitter to illustrate a point. In 2020, Twitter had 290.5 million monthly users. They had $3.72 billion of revenue. That's $12.80 per user. Now, a good chunk of those "users" are actually botnets, alt accounts, and the like. Even more wouldn't pay for the service. But if you could get even 10% of users to pay $10 a month, that would almost equal current revenue. Plus, you could get rid of all the bots, improving the quality of the service tremendously. Which would bring in more users. As ri